Light In The Darkness

When you turn out of Leasowe station, north of the level crossing, you pass between two large industrial concerns.  To your right is BristolMyersSquibb, the multinational pharmaceutical company, where employees are working on medicines to cure and alleviate any number of ailments.

To your left, is Premier Foods, which, as large lettering on the front of the building clearly informs you, is the Home of the Mini Roll.  

I will leave it to the reader to decide which business is providing the more valuable service to society.  All I will say is that I have never needed an anti-diabetes medicine, but I have eaten a Cadbury's Mini Roll with a raspberry jam filling, so as far as I'm concerned the Moreton Bakery wins.  They don't make Typhoo tea here any more, by the way, despite what that building says: various corporate takeovers and buyouts over the years led to Typhoo closing the factory in 2023.  They went bust shortly after, so there's karma for you.  

Reeds Lane continues for a while as a mix of open space and odd buildings.  The Birket, a small river that empties into the Wallasey Docks, runs through here, and combined with the proximity to the top of the peninsula it means that the land round here is often marshy or prone to flooding.  It'll seem like you're in a perfectly ordinary housing estate and then there's a patch of scrubland, unloved and unattended, though in the 21st century they're getting fewer and fewer as Wirral tries to build as many homes as possible.  I'm very much of the opinion that if people have lived in this part of the world for a thousand years but haven't seen to build their home on that bit of land there's probably a very good reason for it but then I'm not willing to put up with a small amount of annual flooding in exchange for a three bed semi with its own parking space.

I passed a shopping corner, the Tesco Express (est. 2022) unable to compete with the glittering sign of the Leasowe Local Store over the road, a store that promised "tobacco-drinks-vapes-groceries", and I think it's very telling that "groceries" is fourth in that list.  Beside it was a pharmacy without a branded sign, merely promising that it would "provide NHS services"; it used to be a Well, but given how pharmacy services in this country are constantly chopping and changing, it could be a Boots by the time you read this.  I'm not even sure what company provides my drugs any more, I just go in and see what tabard the girl behind the counter is being made to wear this week.

Leasowe is a good, stout, old-fashioned council estate, and I absolutely mean that as a compliment.  It was laid out by Wallasey Council starting in the 20s and 30s and it still carries the air of aspiration and hope.  The roads are wide and straight, the houses large, with gardens at the front and back and enough room on the side return for a garage or a porch.  There are grass verges, and greens.  I crossed one diagonally, a wide square of grass with children's play equipment at its centre.  It must be great to open your front door and let your kid go on the swings while you watch from a distance.

Of course, since this is 2026, most of the houses have been bought and sold many times.  (Bloody Thatcher).  Each home had its own distinct fencing, its own front wall, its own front door, as the new people sought to make their mark and make it a bit less... council.  Now and then there were homes that looked like they must've done when they were built - unencumbered by a double glazed front entry, the garden a stretch of grass that hasn't been paved over, a lack of any boundary barrier at all.  Everyone else was trying hard to be different, mainly by covering up the grass with tarmac and parking a couple of cars on it, though one house had a plastic lawn with a Mickey Mouse ears motif made out of white stones laid into it, so the imagination can take you anywhere.

St Chad's was opened in 1954, as a combination church hall and place for prayer, but it was quickly decided that this was undignified and money was raised for a proper church alongside it.  It opened in 1967, reeking of Swinging Britain, all concrete and stained glass.  It's lovely.

It's not ostentatious or over the top but it's just that bit special enough to be interesting.  I particularly like the bell tower.

St Chad's sits alongside a long avenue that forms the spine of the estate, at the point where Castleway North becomes Castleway South.  Again, it's a piece of elegant town planning, a central route lined with trees.  It's a community area, which is something we've lost from new housing estates these days.  Homes are rammed up against one another without room to breathe.

I continued along Twickenham Drive, past tight blocks of flats, three stories high with a central stairwell.  The entrance was enclosed with a glass front door for security these days but I liked their symmetry and their politeness.  They added bulk and density without being ugly.  There was a leisure centre here, too, as the residents of Leasowe were gifted with all the community facilities they could need.  (This sort of thing used to be a bone of contention for my mum when I was growing up less well-off on a private estate, while the council estate next door got multiple bus routes, a swimming pool, a market and a shopping precinct.  They also used to regularly have riots and sex workers on the streets and dead drug addicts being found in bin stores but she was still annoyed that their library was so much bigger than ours just because they were local authority).  

A noticeboard promised Unity in Our Community with flyers for energy saving advice and the name of the local housing association.  A faded poster pushed the Leasowe Fun Day, back on the 21st August (Bouncy castles and assault courses, face painting with the Hive, entrance through the Addy) and behind it was the Millennium Centre, a building whose name was modern for exactly one year and now seems hopelessly dated.  The Millennium Centre houses the library and council services and a Family Centre, one of those places for parents to get an hour's supervised contact with their children once a week to prove they're definitely not going to belt them any more.  Behind it were some newer houses, built on top of a different, long-demolished Council building; that had once been home to the Wirral Incontinence Laundry Service, so I imagine it must've smelt lovely round here when they had the machines on the go.

I followed the road round, past a house with a flagpole in its garden flying both the Union Jack and the England flag.  One good thing about living on Merseyside is we've been largely exempt from the flag-shagging madness which has gripped the nation over the past year.  Liverpool is, after all, "Scouse, not English", a city whose football supporters boo the national anthem at Wembley.  Nationalism gets a very short shrift round here, and its roundabouts and lampposts have been largely unadorned - the closest to home I've seen them is in Ellesmere Port, over the border in Cheshire.  If you want to go for that sort of nonsense you have to put up your own flagpole in your own garden and even then I've seen way more flags flying to commemorate Liverpool's 20th league victory than a tribute to His Majesty.

There was a small parade of shops here, including a Sayers, the Merseyside bakery that was thoroughly tramped underfoot by the mighty Greggs.  (For the record, I much prefer a Sayers sausage roll, though I admit there's a certain amount of nostalgia involved in that).  Opposite, Heron Foods occupied what used to be the estate pub, the Oyster Catcher.  

While the pub closed in 2016, it still lives on in a mural on the side wall, showing that nostalgia comes round quicker and quicker these days.  Also there, somewhat incongruously, is a hovercraft.  Scousers have long enjoyed trips to North Wales, spending holidays in Rhyl, Prestatyn and Talacre, but the Dee Estuary means that while it's an extremely short distance as the crow flies, you have to basically travel via Chester to get there.

The invention of the hovercraft suddenly opened up a new option.  In 1962, a summer service from Leasowe to Rhyl opened, skipping across the water in a straight line and cutting travel time hugely.  It's a brilliant idea, and hovercrafts will never not be exciting; I myself used the one from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight a few years ago and it was like being in an episode of Thunderbirds.  The wide beaches at Leasowe and Rhyl made them ideal spots to launch the service from.

Unfortunately, it was perhaps a little too soon to launch a hovercraft route.  The technology was still new and so there were technical problems - the sand would get in the engines, putting the craft out of service, and if the weather was bad it couldn't run at all.  The Irish Sea is famously short of millpond-like conditions, meaning it was an unreliable route to the seaside, so the passenger numbers weren't there on the days it did run - which turned out to be only 19 out of the scheduled 59.  It would've been lovely if it had succeeded.  To this day, it takes an hour to get from Leasowe to Rhyl by road, and even longer by train.  Perhaps Rhyl wouldn't be quite as sad as it is today if the hovercraft was turning up on a regular basis.

I disappeared back into the streets of the estate, past more open green spaces and builders laying down paving slabs over grassy lawns.  An electricity substation was accompanied by an abandoned fridge freezer and a shopping trolley; you don't really see shopping trollies outside of the supermarket car park these days, so it was somehow a delightful throwback.

I paused outside a block of flats and took a picture of the number of the block.  The address is housed in a light box, with the numbers on the outside, and I find them very charming.  I walked on, taking in the folding chairs around the front door, and the swing set in the garden.  How nice, I thought.  What a lovely little community.

Then I heard a strong, violent hammering.  It caught my attention and I saw a man behind the window of one of the flats.  He was pointing right at me and shouting.  There's a certain kind of noise Scousers make when they're really annoyed, when all you can understand is vowels and s's, and he was in full flow.  "uuuus AAAAY eeeee aaaarrrss DICKHEAD".  I understood that last bit.

I put my head down and hurried on.

A few seconds later I heard the noise again, the mass of vowels and the scream, and I realised that this time it was outdoors.  That he'd come outside and was in the street and hurling abuse at me.  I assume this man didn't like having his block of flats photographed for some reason.  He was taking it very personally.

I could've turned round and walked back to him.  Said, "hey, I'm just an architecture fan, and I liked your home.  If you're not happy having it photographed I'm fine with deleting it, that's no problem.  Have a great day!"  I did not do this.  I kept my head down and carried on walking and didn't look back.  In my pocket, my hand curled protectively round my phone.  The third volley of indecipherable fury sounded like it was closer to me, and I was ready to hear running footsteps, and prepped myself to use my iPhone as a club if I had to.  It would've been pathetic and I would've got my teeth kicked in and the phone would've been robbed but hey, you've got to have a plan.

He didn't chase after me any further.  I made it to the Leasowe Road, a long dual carriageway that shadows the coast, and I dashed across to try and put some traffic between me and him.  Only then did I pause and look back and make sure nobody was behind me.  

I've gone to some very dodgy places over the years for this blog.  Nationally infamous spots, both at home and abroad.  But I think this was the first time I genuinely thought I was about to get lamped.  I took a moment to swallow my heart and try and get it back into my chest then started walking again.

The Leasowe Road is a very long, very straight, very boring four-lane road that runs from Wallasey Village towards Moreton.  The most exciting thing about it is that you can get up a fair old head of steam on it if you're a man with a small penis.  There was one on the road that day, in a black car with tinted windows, who put his foot down and roared down the road as though it were Le Mans, the engine making a noise it almost certainly wasn't supposed to the whole time.  I was, needless to say, incredibly impressed.

Further along I encountered a man digging around in the bushes.  He was holding a gardening cane with a coat hook strapped to the end and pushing it at random into the greenery.  I couldn't work out what was going on.  Had he lost a gerbil down there and was hoping to trap it?  

Past the golf course - this part of the Wirral is 20% bunker - I encountered the entrance to the Leasowe Castle Hotel.  I have fond memories of this place, because one of my best friends was married here about twenty years ago, and I got astonishingly drunk and danced until my shirt was wet with sweat; there was also a buffet, and a buffet is the best food, and makes everything better.

Unfortunately the hotel closed suddenly last year, without warning, leaving staff unpaid and the building to rot.  This seems to be the 2020s way to close businesses; every other week there's a report of a bar or a restaurant where the waitresses have turned up on Monday morning and found the windows  boarded up.  Like everything in the UK today the hospitality industry is on a knife edge and it's entirely down to fate which side you'll fall on.

I took a wander up the drive for a look and it was sad and derelict.  Little memories of the hot day of the wedding came rushing back, the photos in the garden, the laughs in the bar, the picture I took of my friend Jennie smoking a fag where she looks ridiculously cool.  It's not really a castle, just a manor house with ideas above its station, that has been occupied and abandoned over and over for five hundred years, extended then demolished, useful then a drain.  It's currently on a downward slope but will no doubt swing back up again one day.

There was a sanatorium and hospital on the front here for decades, until medical science developed to the extent where a cure for tuberculosis was something better than "some sea air?"  Flats fill the spot now, looking over the marshes and grasses of the North Wirral Country Park, a spot of open land between the road and the sea defences here which mean you can walk from New Brighton to West Kirby without ever leaving the coast.  There are still concrete anti-landing craft defences on the shore.

I was heading for Leasowe Lighthouse, which is technically in Moreton, but I felt I had to visit to finish the area off.  You can see it looming up at you as you walk along the road, the end point you're aiming for, a white column of brick rising up over the flat marshlands.

There was, for centuries, only one way to reach the port of Liverpool from the Irish Sea, and that was to follow the coast of the Wirral between often hidden sandbanks.  As the port expanded, the chance of shipwreck expanded too, and so a system of lighthouses was built along the shore to warn off vessels.  The one at Hoylake is now a private home; the one a little further downstream was washed away in a storm and replaced by one on Bidston Hill.  The one at Leasowe was constructed in 1763 and originally had a brazier on the roof.  

Leasowe lighthouse was the first in the world to receive a parabolic reflector behind the light, put there by the Liverpool dockmaster, William Hutchinson.  He'd been experimenting with using mirrors to increase the visibility and he installed them here in 1772; suddenly the light was visible from 20 miles away, instead of five.  

It is, undeniably, an incredibly important building, locally, nationally, and internationally; it helped change maritime navigation and helped turn Liverpool into the world's most important port.  It's 2026, though, and nobody has any money for anything, so as a result it is cared for by dedicated volunteers, and only open a few times a year - the next one is on the 18th February, if you're in the area and have strong calf muscles that can carry you up to the top.  Alternatively they host abseiling days, if you really want to hurl yourself off a monument; you do you.

I took a seat at the base and had a drink of water.  When I'd last visited Leasowe I'd whizzed through, basing my entire visit around a very poor gag about Danger Lane.  This revisit really showed me what I'd missed back in those days when the station sign was the important part and the rest was irrelevant.  I'd experienced history, culture, and a little threat of physical violence.  Not bad for a Friday morning.

Do Your Palms Ever Itch?

Despite being forty years old and a massive nerd, I had never in my life been to a fan convention.  Not for James Bond, nor Doctor Who, not one of those weird "Autograph Festivals" featuring Caroline Munro, Madeline Smith and the boy from George & Mildred.  I've not even been to a Star Trek convention, and I own a hoodie which is specifically designed to look like the Next Generation command uniform.  (That emotion you're experiencing right now is jealousy). 

So when my friend Jennie suggested we go to a Twin Peaks fan festival in London, I was a little trepidatious.  Twin Peaks is, of course, one of the finest television shows to ever grace the airwaves; three series and a film of comprehensive, insane headfucking, mixed with generous lashings of humour and sex.  I imagined it would be somewhat... unusual.  However, Jennie offered up the clinching factor: Sherilyn Fenn would be there.  Audrey Horne.

I loved Audrey.  I loved her fun, her cruelty, her intelligence.  She was astonishingly beautiful.  And while she was shortchanged by Twin Peaks: The Return, the opportunity to be in the same room as Ms Horne was too good to pass up.

It meant travelling to London, which meant using the Underground.  As I have posted many times on here before, the London Underground is my one true love.  I get a thrill just from using the escalators.  I find it all tremendously exciting.  Of course Jennie didn't find it quite so adrenaline inducing so on the Sunday morning, before the festival started, I got up early for a little bit of station collecting.

We were staying at the Travelodge on the Wood Green High Road, a resolutely unlovely strip of London commerce.  Sometime in the Seventies a great brick slab of a building, the "Shopping City", crashed into the centre of Wood Green and blocked out the light.  It dominated the street and the local district, sucking in all the chain stores and leaving the main road to be populated with pound shops and bargain stores.  It was a grim walk, the pavements still being scrubbed of the Saturday night's messes, and there was very little to rescue it.  Until the Underground came along.

Just a glimpse of roundel can raise my spirits, but Turnpike Lane did more than that.  It was a singular ray of joy after the grime of the High Road.

Turnpike Lane was opened in 1932 as part of the Piccadilly Line extension to Cockfosters.  It was designed by architectural genius Charles Holden and the care and attention to detail is obvious throughout.  Look at this subway entrance, for example:

It leads you into a small area beneath the roadway with this circulation space at its centre.  It's charming and well lit, with the glowing column to draw your eye and move you on to the station.

That takes you into the station proper.  Holden's signature design was the box - a high vaulted cube that housed the ticket office.  It made the station feel bright and airy, while also providing a landmark in the street to attract attention and passengers.  I'd been to another Holden Box station, Acton Town, and this was similar, but different enough to make it your station.  Churn out a series of identikit railway buildings and it becomes anonymous; the trick is put in enough slight modifications to make your station your station.

Light streamed in through the high windows, illuminating what could have been a dark space with a dramatic glow straight out of a Spielberg film.  It was joyous.  

I wafted my Oyster card at the ticket barriers.  I love the smooth electric swipe, the swift check and the clatter of the gates, but there's a little piece of me that regrets the loss of the Tube's passimeters, mainly because passimeter is such a fantastic word.  On the escalator I found another delight: uplighters!

I'm not sure if they're original or modern facsimiles but either way, they're beautiful.   It's weird how uplighters are such a simple, effective way of lighting escalator banks, but no-one seems to do it any more, favouring harsher strip lights instead.  Merseyrail would look a lot sexier with lighting like this.  It'd also stop idiots from trying to slide all the way down, unless they fancied getting their groin bisected by a pole.

One quick whizz on the Piccadilly Line back the way I came, and I was at Wood Green.  If Turnpike Lane is a glittering tiara, Wood Green is costume jewellery.  It's fine, and it looks ok.  These ornate vents on the platform, for example, are a delight:

And a combination roundel/Way Out arrow is something that will always make me cheery:

But the rest of it is just Holden standard.  Which is a very fine standard of course, one of the best, but still not exemplary.  When the bar is set so high, it becomes harder to clear it.

It does form a distinctive and attractive presence on the corner.  I headed back to the hotel, ready for a shower and the day ahead.  As I climbed the stairs I felt the rumble of an Underground train beneath my feet.  It'll never fail to thrill me.

P.S. Yes, pedants, these photos were take on two separate occasions; I forgot to take a photo of Turnpike Lane because I was too busy swooning.  Hence my completely different outfit.

P.P.S.  The Twin Peaks Festival was good fun, though marred by the fact that I spent much of the day wracked with anxiety which made it hard for me to enjoy stuff quite so much.  I DID meet Sherilyn Fenn, though:

...and I got her autograph:

Unfortunately during the Q&A she was kind of bitchy and sullen, which was a disappointment.  The rest of the panel were a delight.  Never meet your heroes, folks.

Swiss Movement

The train bursts out of the tunnel into monochrome.  The world is black and white.  Thick snow whirls against the windows.  The Stanley Dock buildings, normally a redbrick monolith, are just a grey blob in the distance.  The only colour is the bright green corporate branding of a BP garage, glowing through the weather.

I'm on my way to Southport for breakfast.  The wonderful Bob Stanley, Saint Etienne legend and lover of anything that can be given the description, "New Elizabethan", posted this on his twitter feed:

On the main road in Southport was the Swiss Chalet, a cafe straight out of a Cliff Richard film.  I knew I had to visit before it closed forever, so I grabbed a Day Saver and headed for the Northern Line.

The carriage smells of Doritos, thanks to a man working his way through a party sized bag of Chilli Heatwave flavour, and there's the occasional incursion of snowflakes through an open window.  I wasn't sure why the window was open on what seemed to be one of the coldest days of 2015 so far, but there was a woman sat right underneath it.  She clearly needed the air.

Sandhills seems deserted until the train came to a complete halt.  Then the doors on the waiting room slid open and bundled up humanoids shuffled on board, like the world's slowest zombie film.  Sandhills is aggressively chilly at the best of times; the wind whips across the Mersey and hammers at the viaduct, whisking at coats and umbrellas.  With snow too, it must be hell.

The seat across the aisle from me is taken by a teenage girl who is, at first glance, talking to herself.  Only when she shifts her head does her hair catch on her shoulder and reveal the slim microphone of a hands-free kit.  She begins what seems to be a monologue - I assume she's on the phone to someone; hopefully she's paying, because the other person isn't getting a single word in - that stops suddenly when two British Transport Policewomen push down the aisle and into the next carriage.

"Fuuuuuuuck" she hisses into the mic.  "The police are on the damn train."  I guess that the little chatterbox has declined to buy a ticket, and secretly pray that the police make their way back with an inspector.  We pass through Bank Hall, a white strip of platform against the black walls, and she bellows, "I just missed a call off Kevin 'cos I'm on the phone to you!"  A tap at her smartphone with her touchscreen enabled gloves and she switches to Kevin.  "Yeah, I know.  I'm getting off, like, now."  While I wonder if there's any call for a Scouse Catherine Tate, the rest of the carriage heaves a sigh of relief when she leaps off at Bootle Oriel Road.

Her replacement is a neat middle aged lady with enormous glasses, swaddled in a camel coat.  She immediately pulls out a 2015 diary from her sensible handbag and begins flicking through it.  Barely a month into the year and already the pages are defaced with squiggles and doodles.  She snaps through the weeks, sighing at all the jobs still to come.

The snow doesn't seem to be settling everywhere.  The roofs of Bootle are white, but the streets just look wet, and the playing fields of schools are streaked with green.  It tries to hide the heaps of rubbish abandoned trackside at Seaforth, but can't make it pretty; nor can it conceal the boarded up windows or the graffiti on the tower block.

A man, further down the carriage, seems to have a cold, or the early stages of one.  He coughs, hacks, sniffs, then clears his throat of a voluminous amount of phlegm.  I'm scared he's about to gob it onto the floor of the train and I'll have to stare at it for another half an hour, but he gets off at Waterloo and the spit goes with him.

Beyond Blundellsands the houses double in size.  Terraces are replaced by semis; there are gardens and driveways.  At Hall Road, the old engine shed has been demolished to leave what a sign advertises as a Development Opportunity; no-one is biting, and so there's just an expanse of concrete.  The coastal dunes appear, sandy heights, mixed with the sand traps of our first golf courses.  With no buildings or trees to stop it the wind barrels across Liverpool Bay and assaults our little train, hammering at it loudly, making me hunch up in my seat.

As we approach Hightown the woman across the way folds her diary back into her bag and clutches her head, suddenly panic stricken.  She closes her eyes for a while so she can think hard, then tips her head back and stares at the ceiling.  Her fingers play with the mittens in her lap.

Floodlights and high fences; the military firing range skulks between the line and the sea, red and white Keep Out signs every few metres.  The snow seems to be letting up.  Formby just looks damp, not frozen.  The platform is packed and a stream of pensioners board the train; one takes the seat opposite diary lady and pulls out a crumpled copy of The Times.  There's suddenly life on board.  Until now the passengers have been silent, but now there's a gang of old ladies gossiping at one end, and two workers in high vis jackets laughing boisterously at the other.

More golf courses, low rises among patches of flat, so artificial looking, with their tatty little flags hanging limply in the rain.  The woman with the diary gets off at Ainsdale, and then there are trees, high, regimented pine trees, dark and swaying and filling my window.  A pair of hardy walkers battle the winds with their tiny Jack Russell; he's wearing a little tartan coat.

There's a sudden smell of chimney smoke before Hillside, drifting in through that bafflingly still open window.  Fake flowers in tubs look ridiculous on the platform, the bitter darkness around them making their plastic blooms look cheap.  The computerised voice has started spluttering; her next station announcements are accompanied by a sharp crackle of static and feedback.  The heavy squeak of the brakes as we pull into Birkdale, wheels struggling with the wet and cold tracks, add to the feeling that this train is past its best.

The guard talks over the computerised voice to announce the end of the line, adding a "small reminder" for us to take all our goods with us.  The Times is folded away and the woman roots around in her handbag for her Concessionary Travel Pass - I must be one of the few people on the train with a paper ticket.

I barrel out of the station and straight down to Lord Street, not pausing, so that I could reach  the Swiss Chalet before it gets busy with lunch.  It's a tiny doorway with Grill Room above it, white on black, then a flight of steps upstairs.  I push up, nervously.  I have a prejudice against cafes on the first floor of buildings; totally irrational, but I'm always slightly afraid of what I'll find when I get up there.  By then it's too late, there's no turning back, and you have to partake.

Upstairs it's warm and clean and very, very empty.  I'm the only patron.  At the back, a little grey haired waitress in a very traditional black uniform is chatting to the chef.  His kitchen is fully open for us to see inside, and he leans on the counter, master of his domain.  I hesitantly slide into one of the banquettes at the side and the waitress spots me.  She hurries over with a menu, apologetic for not spotting me, and then leaves me to look down the page.

It's a feast of food you didn't realise restaurants still served.  There are six starters: soup of the day (mushroom, I've been told), grapefruit cocktail, prawn platter, tuna platter, egg mayonnaise and orange juice.  Just a glass of orange juice.  It's brilliant.  Further down there are lamb cutlets, gammon (with a choice of pineapple, egg or mushrooms), a mixed grill.  Omelettes, sandwiches - open and closed - and various things on toast.  I plump for a tea and a toasted sandwich.

"Do you want chips or salad with that?" she asks.  I go for salad.  "Aww, being good are you?  Well done."

The seats are leatherette, the place mats are decorated with herbs.  On the walls are pictures of French drinks (reproductions) and hefty pieces of tree bark to underline that Swiss Chalet feel.  I don't think it's been redecorated for at least thirty years, probably more.  Karen, the second waitress, bashes her way up the stairs and calls her hello across to her colleague.  Diane tells her it's been dead - "bit of snow, risk of slipping, they don't come."

I warm my cold hands on the stainless steel teapot as Diane offers the chef a drink.  He's Spanish, and he goes for "one of his Spanish hot chocolates"; she wanders behind the counter and busies herself with the steaming hot water.  She's barely served it up before my sandwich is brought over.  Toasted white bread and a pile of salad leaves and carrot shavings.  "Do you want any sauce with that?" she asks.  "Salad cream?"  I decline, and take up my knife and fork.

As I eat, a pair of pensioners stagger up the stairs, pausing at the top for breath.  They greet Diane by name and take a seat in the window.  She chats to them for a bit, then takes their order, two coffees and a toasted teacake each.  The wife snorts.  "I guess that means he's off his diet!"  In the background, Kate Garroway is taking hints for beating a cold on Heart FM.  "Chew a raw clove of garlic?  I don't think my husband would be happy about that!"

I'm suddenly sad this place is up for sale.  The owner is retiring and I doubt it'll be bought as a going concern.  It'll be ripped out and upgraded; the banquettes will be replaced by sofas and wooden chairs.  The grill hatch will be closed off.  They'll offer paninis and lattes and another piece of the past will quietly die.  I wonder where the pensioners will go for their teacakes.

I eat my sandwich - the salad is incredibly dry without any kind of vinaigrette; I should have taken her up on her offer of salad cream - then I wait by the till to pay.  There are postcards tucked into the top of it, from loyal customers no doubt.  Diane is busy talking to her regulars, but the Spanish chef spots me and calls out for her.  I over tipped, partly because I'm hopeless at that sort of thing, partly because I felt bad about her being put out of a job.

I went straight back to the station.  I'd been in Southport only the previous week, with my friend Jennie; we'd have gone to the Swiss Chalet then if she didn't have a pram with her adorable son Robin in it.  My train is waiting for me at platform 3 and I realise that it's the one I came in on.  The skies have now turned bright blue, a fact that had annoyed Diane in her chat with the old folks - "I'm covered in layers!"  I'm the only one in the front carriage until just before departure, when a distinguished man with a walking stick and a Metro under his arm clatters aboard.

The guard on this train is far more refined than the one on the journey in.  His voice is only slightly accented, as though he went to public school and had the Scouse forced out of him.  "I'll be making my way through the train as we work our way down to Liverpool; if you have any questions feel free to ask."

The sun's refracted off the water on the parked cars at Birkdale; it shatters into pieces and fills the carriage.  We pause a little longer because there's a teenager with a broken leg struggling to board.  The tannoy has been fixed - turned off and on.  Through a series of level crossings to Hillside, where a woman in an elaborate furry hat boards.  Behind her is a tiny brown spaniel.  I would never feel comfortable taking my dog on a train - what if it needs to pee?  She goes to the front of the carriage and the dog settles in at her feet, used to the trip.

At Ainsdale another swarm of pensioners board; their Reactolite glasses have turned black in the sun, making them look like the cast of Oceans 80.  They're talking about someone who's about to go in for heart surgery in frankly disturbing detail - "is it open or keyhole?" - and we're nearly at Freshfield before I realise they're talking about a dog.  In the seats opposite is a smart-looking man in a buttoned up wool coat; at his feet is a University of Liverpool bag.  He's bashing at his smart phone, tapping out a series of messages, until an expanse of golf course kills his signal.  He tucks the phone back into his pocket, but at the next station it's out again.  Across from him an old man reads the Racing Post.

The guard appears in the carriage, and it turns out he's something of a silver fox; a little chubby, but with a lovely smile.  He leans in the doorway and watches the scenery spin past.  Behind me, the old people are now talking about someone called Elsie.  They've lowered their voices and I can tell from the murmurs that Elsie is not getting a glowing report.

"Tickets and passes please."  To my surprise, the smart man looks suddenly shifty.  He looks up at the guard pleadingly.  "The man at Ainsdale told me to pay at my destination."  The guard doesn't seem convinced, but he tells him he'll have to pay in Liverpool and moves on.

Two women have clearly got chatting on the platform at Formby, and are now in full flow.  "I'm going to the Adelphi.  Three courses for six pounds."  They both oooh approvingly.  "There's usually a roast," the woman continues, "or a beef thing in gravy, but the veggies never alter.  Still, six pounds!"  They both seem blown away by this, even the one who goes there regularly.  It suddenly becomes clear why the Adelphi - once the jewel in Liverpool's hotel crown - will never stop being crappy and down at heel.  With a constant stream of pensioners filling its dining rooms, why change?

Another dog gets on at Hall Road; its owner keeps it well away from the furry hat lady's spaniel.  At Blundellsands, a Britpop refugee sits down across from me.  He's got huge sideburns and a tight leather jacket and looks very Paul Weller circa "Stanley Road".  He balls one hand into a fist over and over while across the way the smart man is talking loudly on his phone.  The entire carriage is horrified to learn that the Bristol office is DEFINITELY closing.  Britpop pulls out an iPod shuffle, and I choose to believe he's listening to a mix of Menswear, Kula Shaker and Elastica.

Racing Post gets off at Bootle New Strand, and is replaced by another Metro reader.  I don't like the Metro because it's taken one of the lovely parts of rail travel - people neatly folding their read newspaper and leaving it on the seat for someone else to pick up - and turned it into an irritation.  Now the train is flooded with copies of that day's paper with its wraparound cover advertising the newest drama on Sky Atlantic.

The train is really getting warm now; I suddenly understand why the woman on the journey up had the window open.  It's stuffy, filled with people who've overdressed for the weather, noses poking out of hoods.  There's a canal at Sandhills, struggling to look pretty in the midday sun, but too industrial to pass.  The wrecked viaducts on Pall Mall, the old lines into Exchange Station, beg to be put to some use, but I can't think what, then we disappear into the tunnel under the Echo building.  Britpop gets off at Moorfields, but we are joined by half a dozen other passengers.

I've decided to go to the end of the line.  While most of the train gets up and shuffles off at Liverpool Central, I stay seated, the same place I've sat for three quarters of an hour.  Someone smelling of chips gets on board - not chips, fries; they smell wet in a way that chips don't - and a woman with leggings printed with the sky holds an expensive looking carrier bag between her legs.  Behind me, someone is talking about their daughter - "Catherine was very overweight so they took her to Slimming World and she lost four stone!"  I wonder who 'they' are; I imagine some kind of intervention, with Catherine being bundled into the back of a van and driven to a church hall to be re-educated.

I look up for the gap in the tunnel that signifies the old St James station, as I always do when I come this way, and briefly fantasise about a day when there will actually be a Baltic station there.  A sudden deceleration and we drift into Brunswick beneath high sandstone walls.  The woman with sky-painted leggings gets off, and I see that her expensive looking bag is from Swarovski.  The train is silent again.  No excitable pensioners, no groups.  A girl stares at her phone as though willing it to come to life, then drops it into her lap, exasperated, halfway through the tunnel to St Michaels.  When daylight appears she snatches it up again eagerly.

St Michaels station needs an ALF, maybe two; one for the Festival Gardens, one for Lark Lane and Sefton Park.  As we continue onwards, the computer voice tells us the next station will be St Michaels; she gets stuck on that station for the rest of the journey.  Clearly her reboot didn't take.  Aigburth obviously makes me think of Robert, who lives within spitting distance of its platforms, and Cressington is as charming as ever.  A workman is painting the woodwork in corporate grey.  I'm surprised his tin of paint is from Dulux and doesn't have Colour Tsar Approved stamped all over it.

Furry hat woman gets off at Liverpool South Parkway; I'd forgotten she was still there.  Her dog was so well-behaved throughout.  I also forgot to look out for any remnants of the old Garston station, though I don't think there are any.  It's now a slow creep to Hunts Cross, a kind of extended sigh at having to go this far.  There are men on the tracks by the Northern depot and I try to remember the last time I came this way.  I've certainly never gone end to end on the Northern Line before, top to bottom and back again.

I head out of the station for a bottle of water, and return in the midst of a sudden, violent hailstorm.  I'm behind two Community Police ladies, knocking off their shift for the day, chatting about where they're going to go tomorrow morning.  We huddle in the warm waiting room - there used to be a coffee bar in here, but it seems long gone - while the hail batters at the windows.  A new train comes in and we hustle aboard along with a member of the "Train Presentation Team".  He whisks down the aisle with a black bin bag, completely missing the Nature Valley wrapper under the seat in front of me.  I am momentarily anxious that future passengers will think it's my litter.

There are already people on board; I suppose they just grab the first train they see, rather than wait at the station in the cold, and go to the end of the line and back.  The new guard is a woman, and she tells us in enthusiastic Scouse to change at Liverpool South Parkway for mainline services.  Ones like the fast East Midlands train that we're forced to let by at the flat junction outside the station.  We cross over to the local lines and sink down to LSP's Northern Line platform.  The computer voice tells us to change for long distance services, but she says "Birmingham" with a slight question in her voice - "Birmingham?".  A kind of, why would you want to go there?

A couple get on, already bickering.  "Don't shout at me, I'm not stupid," she snarls at him when he calls her over to an empty seat.  He lays out a cushion on the seat next to him and their tiny dog leaps up and makes himself comfortable.  She pulls off her scarf furiously and they sit in angry silence; I'm so busy watching them I miss Garston again.  My neighbour is a man with an upside down head - bald on top, beard on the bottom - who taps at a game on his phone.  His high forehead wrinkles with concentration.

Aigburth again, and a gaggle of nice ladies with handbags in the crook of their arms get on board.  My ears pop in the tunnel after St Michaels.  The angry wife now pulls her coat off, but she seems to have calmed down, perhaps taking her cue from her dog who is utterly unruffled.  A harassed looking woman whose hair has escaped her pony tail boards; she jabs at her phone so hard I can hear the crack of stylus on glass across the aisle.

At Brunswick, a rough looking woman with a tooth missing is fascinated by the dog on the cushion.  She starts talking to it then, when it unsurprisingly fails to respond, she turns to the owner and starts yammering to them.  We learn that the dog is called Filo, which immediately makes me think of pastry, and the woman starts calling his name.  Filo looks terrified.  She calls out "seeya!" as though the angry couple were old pals and jumps off at Central.  I'm not surprised that the wife says "seeya!" back before following it up with a roll of her eyes and a whisper to her husband.

I thought about getting off at Central, but the OCD part of me knew I'd have to cover that last little bit of line so I ended up back where I started from.  A fabulous looking old lady takes a seat with her leopard skin suitcase and an enormous handbag; she looks like a Lancashire Elaine Stritch,  I get up, my knees protesting now that I'm 38, and wait by the doors as we pull into Moorfields.  There and back.