Map To The Stars

Last week I went to see Robert, because I'm a gracious person and sometimes you have to bring joy to the little people.  We were heading into town from Aigburth station and I spotted something on the line diagram on the platform:

Do you see it?  Computer, zoom and enhance.

The map has been printed with Liverpool Baltic station already on it.  According to Robert the sticker covering it keeps being ripped off, an act of vandalism I absolutely support.  A two minute journey time from Central seems about right for an inner city service, and has me eyeing that four minute gap between Moorfields and Sandhills that happens to pass the new Everton stadium.  This comes as the planning application for the station was lodged with the council.  All wonderful news, apart from the fact that they've still not built it, which is the main annoyance.  Get on with it!

Wolves, Lower

 

Despite passing through it every time I headed for New Street, I'd put off collecting Wolverhampton station for a long time.  The reason was simple: shortly after I started this stupid scheme, they announced a comprehensive rebuild, and I wanted to see it at its best.

I say "comprehensive" but it mainly extends to the edge platforms.  In the centre, the buildings are still 1960s West Coast Electrification standard, with flat concrete and wooden roofs.  On the left and right, though, there's a lot of shiny metallic cladding and glass.

The most practical addition to Wolverhampton station in the rebuild was a massive new footbridge with lifts to all the platforms, replacing a subway which you can still see disappearing beneath platform 1.  It's a gargantuan, no-expense spared construction, mightily traversing the tracks and providing plenty of opportunity to stop and admire the trains going under.

All this redevelopment has to be paid for somehow, because heaven forbid you get something for nothing, and so the ticket hall has been given half a dozen retail units.  Fortunately it all works.  The new space is bright and airy with plenty of circulation room.  You don't feel like you've accidentally wandered into a small shopping arcade that happens to have trains at the back.

And, of course, this all comes with a glamorous and ostentatious sign in West Midlands Railway orange.

The outside was another reason for the delay.  For years a tram extension had been under construction - basically since I started doing this ill-advised nonsense.  The Metro terminated in Wolverhampton city centre, by the shops, but an extension with two further stops for the bus and rail stations was planned.  It was funded, it got planning permission, construction began... and continued.  And went on.  And on.  Admittedly there was a global pandemic in the middle of all that but it still took an inordinate amount of time to open a small spur of a tram line.

It's finally here though so I jumped onboard and went to buy a day ticket on the app.  The tram got going, negotiated the streets of the city centre, and dropped me at Piper's Row, and I was still trying to buy a ticket on the app.  It wanted so many details about me, demanded registration and security codes, but fortunately the conductor was busy chatting to the driver so he never came to me for a check.  I sat on a bench to finish the transaction, next to a man who smelt of weed telling his mate about the palliative care his mum was receiving.

From here it was a short walk through the city centre to reach the other terminus, Wolverhampton St George's.  It was very clear, from my brief stroll, that Wolvo was not having a great time.  It has the classic problem, shared with Gateshead and Salford and Birkenhead and Bradford, of being a very large city in close proximity to an even larger one.  Before mass transport this was fine - you stuck to what you knew.  Now we all have cars and buses and trains and trams to take us to the more interesting place, creating a vicious cycle where the big city gets bigger and sucks the life out of the smaller one.

Obviously, before a pedant appears in the comments, I am fully aware that Birkenhead is not a city.

The cumulative impression I got as I walked was that Wolverhampton should perhaps consider a large demolition scheme.  There were empty shops, and shops that would look better if they were empty, and sad looking memorials.  It didn't encourage lingering.

The council was doing its best.  There was an empty shop turned into a public engagement centre, a sign in the window asking how would you change Wolverhampton?  I saw banners on empty buildings advising me "site acquired for future development" and uplifting billboards naming new quarters.  It didn't feel like it was reaching the people, though.

I found the tram stop and was confronted with this message:

Naively I'd thought that in all that time sorting out the new branch of the tram line the old one would be swiftly and effectively merged with it.  No, apparently they've had to close that one now, for "integration works".  I couldn't see any works actually going on but I'm sure there's something happening somewhere.

Fortunately I'd collected Wolverhampton St George's eleven years ago.

I'd travelled on the Midland Metro once before, with Robert and Ian back in 2013, and I'd not been a fan.  No, that's an understatement: I was vitriolic.  If you think I've been a miserable sod in this post, try reading that one.  

I descended into a roundabout on the ring road, another wide open space surrounded by roads.  It'll never stop being thrilling for me, down under the road in a hidden world.  It appeals to that moleman part of me.  The grand arched bridge above took the tram across on the most direct route to its next stop, The Royal.  I got there by walking along a busy dual carriageway.  There were signs of regeneration here, with apartments and town houses opposite me, as I crossed to the centre for the island platform.

My plan, worked out on a spreadsheet a few days ago, was to visit every stop on the Midland Metro in one day.  This was a patently ridiculous idea.  Somehow, getting absolutely blitzed visiting 100 stations in Stockholm hadn't made me think that a lot of transport stops in one day is a stupid aim.  I simply do not learn.

(Click for a bigger version).

What had unfortunately happened was I had a combination of time on my hands and an anal desire to collect everything I saw.  I was in the Midlands to see a Bond film; the Mockingbird Cinema was showing Live and Let Die with an intro from Dame Madeline Smith the following day, so I'd booked a hotel for the weekend to make sure there was no chance of me missing it.  The hotel, of course, didn't let you check in until three, so I'd joined the dots in my head and thought "oh, just travel on the tram, it's a piece of piss."

There are some Metro stops on the West Midlands Railway map, so I'd have had to collect some of them anyway.  "Some" isn't good enough for me.  All or nothing.

Wolverhampton St Georges being closed was an annoying little glitch, however.  I'd planned on getting off the tram at The Royal, not on, and so all my careful planning was to pot.  I decided that I'd have to loiter at the next stop, Priestfield.

Instead of walking on again, I went up to street level, took the sign selfie, and walked back down again.  Some boys were in the shelter, loudly enjoying themselves (youthful bastards), so I stood on the end and quietly sweated until the next tram came in.

If you did read that bitter diatribe against the West Midlands tram network I linked to earlier, you'll have seen that I absolutely hated the noisy rattling trams with a strange raised platform in the middle of the cabin.  These have all gone now, replaced by something a bit more 21st century, silent and electric and elegant.

They've kept the onboard conductors to sell you tickets, but it looks like their days were numbered.  Ticket machines were springing up all over the place, covered with a tarpaulin to stop you trying to use them.  This is how ticketing on the Manchester Metrolink works, so it makes sense, though you do wonder how revenues will plummet without an actual person demanding to see your ticket.  In 2024 though, with travel cards and apps, the idea of a piece of paper given to you by a clippy seems increasingly antiquated.  

That sign could do with a wipe down with a damp cloth.  

I was now in the Bilston district, and it brought with it a pleasing mix of old buildings and parkland.  There was a library and a small Sikh temple.  The clock tower of the town hall showed the correct time, which is increasingly a rarity these days, and though nobody will come here for a romantic getaway, it seemed like a decent little area.  

Opposite the entrance to the tram stop, the bridge had been decorated with a piece of artwork, words from the locals and inspiring quotes - "Bilston is an urban village of its own" "You could see the air that you breathed" and, slightly worryingly, "Say hello to the master."  I don't think I want to delve too deeply into that one.

Bilston Central, as its name implies, was once a heavy rail station.  The majority of the Metro is on a repurposed railway line that closed in 1983.  Now you descend into a deep cutting with brick arches around you - quite the change from the minimalist architecture elsewhere on the line.

A quick ride and I was at Loxdale. 

This was, though I hadn't realised it, a landmark station.  Loxdale is the home of Wolverhampton's taxi licensing bureau and as such is a spot of national importance.  As this report from the BBC says, 21,188 taxi driving licences were issued by Wolverhampton Council in 2023/24: 813 for residents of the city, and 20,375 for people from the rest of the country.

There's some debate about why Wolverhampton is quite so popular for licences (they've had to take on extra staff) - it seems to come down to price and the speed they process the applications.  I wouldn't dream of suggesting that they are, perhaps, a little less thorough with their checks as well, but it's certainly riled up other councils, who are missing out on all that revenue concerned about the qualifications of drivers operating in their area.

The High Street wasn't, as the name implied, a delightful run of small historic outlets, but was instead a busy road running between ugly industrial units.  One had been turned into a bright red cube that promised a "dance bar, adult shop, and adult cinema"; it was barely half eleven but an A board advised me that the cinema was open.  I had a small moment of disquiet imagining the hygiene standards inside.  I'd advise taking your own bottle of Flash and perhaps a course of penicillin.

It seemed very on-brand for the West Midlands that a park with a playground also had a whopping great electric pylon towering over it.

I was now in a small estate of tight roads, built when the assumption was that council tenants wouldn't be able to afford their own cars and now littered with parked vehicles everywhere.  Front gardens had been paved over to try and make room for the two or three vehicles.  It meant that the cars that drove down the roads did so in a kind of wild slalom, swinging between gaps to make their way through.

I emerged the other side and headed for my next stop.

It was another island stop, and the indicator told me I had one minute before the next tram arrived.  I had a vague feeling of disquiet as I crossed.  I could see all the way down the tracks, and there was no sign, but part of me still expected to be mown down indiscriminately.

Wednesbury Parkway brought a brief moment of excitement.  Clustered around one end of the platform were a load of trainees in hi-vis being taught about the electrics for the line.  They gave the driver a cheery wave and went back to their lesson.

Perhaps they could've got one of them out with a mop and bucket because this was another mouldy sign.

I followed a small footpath under another roundabout.  As I turned the corner, a young mum with a little girl came down the steps, and I tried to shape my face to convey don't worry about being in this lonely spot with me, I'm not a rapist.  She moved past me quickly so I'm not sure I succeeded.  

Wednesbury Great Western Street is a stop that doesn't really exist for the public.  It's far too close to Wednesbury Parkway, and it's stuck down the back of an industrial estate.  However, it backs onto the tram depot and staff training facility, so it's very much "may as well stick a stop here as well".

One day soon this stop will acquire a new importance as it'll be the terminus of Metro's second line.  Currently under construction, this goes from Wednesbury to Dudley.  The completion date is apparently "Autumn 2025" but as with seemingly everything to do with the Midlands Metro, that's very tentative.

I think we'd best leave it there, hadn't you?  That's quite enough trammage for the time being.  Come back later for more hot Metro action.  And when I say "hot" I mean "tepid".

Anhedonia

Eagle-eyed viewers will spot that I'm at Stoke-on-Trent station.  "But wait!" you're saying, because apparently you're the kind of person who talks to webpages.  "Didn't you do Stoke-on-Trent station already?"  And it's true, I have visited this station before.  I came here with Robert and Ian in 2012 when we were looking at where a station used to be on the West Coast Main Line.  I felt for a long time that I did Stoke dirty.  Yes, I went to the station, and yes, I got a sign pic - inside, because it doesn't have a sign outside, a situation that is somehow still true in 2024 -  but I felt like the city deserved more.  When it showed up again on the West Midlands Railway map I thought, well here's an opportunity to visit the city again and visit it properly.

I almost immediately went off this idea.  The main reason was the strange way Stoke exists as a city.  It's not one conurbation; it's actually a conglomeration of six towns brought together under one unifying name.  As such, I'm pretty sure that anything I did there would alienate about eighty percent of the city.  I imagined furious comments: why did you go to Hanley?  Burslem's where's it's at!  and No wonder you found the architecture in Fenton uninspiring, it's nothing compared to Tunstall and Longton4eva.  The only possible way around that would be to visit all six towns and give my careful measured thoughts about all of them - possibly with some kind of ranking scheme - and I really can't be bothered.

I therefore decided what I'd do was get the hell out of Stoke and walk to Newcastle-under-Lyme instead.  If this offends you as a resident of Stoke, then (a) I'm sorry and (b) probably don't read on any further.  I walked out of the station, hoping to take in the magnificent station square laid out by the railway company, but it was covered with Heras fencing and cones and the statue of Josiah Wedgewood was barely visible.  Under the tracks via a low underpass and then back up again to cross a huge dual carriageway, the Queensway, which slices through the city parallel to the railway.  A silver plaque on the bridge commemorated its opening in 1977, and most of it was a little faded, the name of the actual Secretary of State for Transport was entirely scrubbed out.

A little light investigation and I discovered that the name of the Transport Secretary at that time was the Right Honourable William Rodgers MP, who caused a great deal of political disquiet by leaving the Labour Party to form the SDP in 1981.  I like to imagine his name was scrubbed off by a furious Trotskyite, perhaps shouting "Splitter!" as he did so.  

Up ahead of me was Stoke-on-Trent's Civic Centre.  I saw this on the map and I got a bit excited.  I love a Civic Centre.  They're almost inevitably a slab of 1970s concrete, all weird angles and unusual staircases.

Stoke's Civic Centre is not like that.  This one looks like it's escaped from an office park on the edge of Braintree.  It's hopelessly dull and unimaginative and pedestrian.  I walked round it, and found it abutted a nice old Victorian Town Hall, but that made it worse.  It was so bland, and yet, huge; like a really massive Ryvita.  There was a small square wedged behind the Civic Centre, with a large piece of curving metal art that had been systematically and repeatedly defaced by teenagers.  There's something extremely depressing about graffiti that's been done in permanent marker.  At least spray paint has a bit of colour and artistry about it.  Bland swear words and names scrawled in a sharpie is so basic.

I disappeared into the back streets of Stoke, long rows of terraces.  The whiff of neglect hung over them.  Weeds sprouted out of brickwork and windows were covered with chipboard.  Heavy metal doors stopped squatters and looters.   Where they were occupied, thick blinds were pulled down over the front window to hide the interior from passers by.  Occasionally there'd be a home that was properly maintained - nicely painted woodwork, a gate neatly closed - a jar of flowers on the windowsill - but more often that not the houses were faded and unloved.  On one corner, Keir Starmer looked down at us from an electronic billboard and promised a better world than this one.

I wasn't sure there was one.  Not in Stoke, anyway.  Everything about it seemed so ugly.  I've been in inner cities before, over and over; I've worked my way round the post-industrial North.  I've seen brutality and abandonment.  There was something about Stoke that was actively, forcefully, violently unpleasant.  As though the city was conspiring to be as depressed as possible.  The shops were mean and unfriendly.  Offices and workshops stood away from the road, hiding, walls and fences keeping passers by at a distance.  New builds, where they came, were defensive and blockish, without any art or elegance.  You could almost hear the Planning Committee: you want to build some flats there?  Sure, why not.  Do whatever you want.  Rather you than me.

Yes, that hideous building is called Champagne House.

I crossed over a wet A-road and into a side street that went up the hill.  When I say up the hill, I actually mean, it was a hill, because this road was vertiginous.  It started reasonably enough, then basically went vertical; I regretted not packing crampons in my backpack.  I'd not been prepared for this and I had to pause halfway for breath, looking down with a vague sense of wonder at the drop.

A sign warned me that the top of the road was a dead end, but I gambled that was for cars only, and found a small cut-through by some pensioner bungalows.  It brought me out on a village green, a small oasis of trees in the middle of Penkhull.  There was a Co-op and a pub and a chippy getting the fryers ready for opening; through the window I could see the fat bubbling under lights, pumping out a tantalising smell.  

It should've been enough to win me back but it didn't.  I was having a miserable time.  The rain was constant and relentless.  The streets were at best hideous and at worse boring.  I still had a way to go to get to Newcastle and there wasn't even a railway station waiting for me there.  I was livid, to be honest, and I decided Stoke could go fuck itself.

I was soon walking round the back of Stoke's hospital, past more old people residences.  I couldn't decide if that was cruel or practical.  Yes Agnes, it is a lovely house, and over there is the building you're probably going to die in, and sooner rather than later.  The Council had put in a cycleway, sort of, slipping a long stretch of tarmac between the curb and the paving slabs, but not marking it as reserved for bikes; I avoided it, because I knew that the second I stepped in it the entire Tour of Britain would appear and scream at me to get out of the way.  I followed a desire path over a hillock of green and ended up on The Avenue.

Now that I've written it was called The Avenue, you know what this road was like, right?  Huge trees and grass verges.  Large but undistinguished houses at the end of an acre of block paving, the kind of houses that are advertised based on how many bedrooms they've got rather than their actual features; it's about square footage, not charm.  The newer houses built on the side roads were even less attractive, because they didn't even have space, pressed up against one another with barely a gap inbetween.  The best bit of the walk was when I got an unexpected whiff of solder, a smell I haven't smelled for decades, and which immediately transported me back to teenage lessons in CDT labs.

At some point I must have crossed the border, because I found myself walking along the sports fields of Newcastle-Under-Lyme School (founded 1602).  You could tell it was a posh school because it had one of those metal and foam structures for the boys to practice their rugby scrums on.  I looked up its alumni, and the most prominent one to me is Roger Johnson off North West Tonight, unless you count a former Rear Admiral with the delightful nickname of "Spam".  

This being the Midlands, I soon found myself at a ring road, and disappeared into a dark underpass decorated with friezes celebrating Victoria and Elizabeth II.  A statue of the former Queen stood in the middle of the gardens at the top of the underpass, and I idly wondered where they're going to put the inevitable statues of ERII.  There's not the opportunity to build grand parkland and distinguished squares any more - that sort of thing takes up land and costs money - so I can only imagine that Her Majesty's effigies will all be wedged on the side of office blocks or in the foyer of council buildings.

Newcastle-Under-Lyme has had a charter for nearly a thousand years, which is why I'm willing to overlook it calling itself Newcastle when we already have a perfectly good Newcastle in the North East.  It does seem to be trying to rebrand itself as NUL on the banners and websites I saw (#lovenul) but that cancels itself out to be honest.

The shopping centre was what you'd expect from a town in England in 2024; a bit scruffy, a bit unloved.  Stores that had been built in a flush of post-war prosperity were now either empty or covered in corporate branding so you couldn't see their charm.  There was a square with an open air market, but it was the quietest market I have ever seen.  It was lunchtime on a Tuesday and it was covered with a deathly silence, as though everyone was already packing up to go home.  

I wandered aimlessly, not really sure where I was, but when I encountered the bus station I decided I'd stop.  Nothing had grabbed me enough to make me want to stay and I had a bus to catch.  I've reached a point on the West Midlands Railway map where there are a lot of single, isolated stations, towns and cities I left for special one-off visits or which I missed due to shenanigans on the railway.  I'd put them off because I like the walking, to be honest, and now there's not much walking left, so I'm going to have to bite the bullet and visit them one after the other.  Stoke was one station on its own, and Nantwich is another.  For a mad moment I considered walking between them; there's actually a long-distance footpath that connects them, The Two Saints Way, but that would've taken the best part of eight or nine hours to walk and I wasn't that committed to the idea. 

Instead I boarded a bus, the 85, which connects Newcastle-Under-Lyme and Nantwich.  It takes an hour and forty minutes to do the whole journey but, thanks to the government, it's still only two pounds, which surprised me; I was sure there would be some sort of get out clause on the price.  I clambered aboard with a mix of pensioners and students, took a seat, and was taken out of Newcastle and into the countryside.

Our first proper stop was at Keele University, which was a little triggering for me.  Keele was my first choice university - my only choice, if I'm honest.  My reasoning was this: I was an extremely shy teen who found it difficult to make friends and talk to people.  If I went to a university that was in the middle of nowhere - where the students had to live, study and exist on a single site - then I was bound to encounter at least one humanoid I could be friends with.  They'd be trapped with me.  As it turned out, my grades were just too low, by two points, and they kept me waiting for a week while they decided whether to take me or not.   They eventually decided "not".

This is actually a good thing, because I am 100% sure I wouldn't be here writing this if I had gone.  Keele is an extremely isolated place to study and if you're even slightly inclined to melancholia it can push you over the edge.  About a decade later, I stayed there for five days as part of a study course for work, and it was exactly as I had feared it would be: nobody talked to me, I had nowhere to go, and I spent an awful lot of time in my room feeling depressed.  I really did have a lucky escape.

Like all educational establishments, Keele had transformed itself completely over the last twenty years, and I struggled to recognise any of it.  I thought I recognised the hall of residence I'd stayed at during that work's trip, but it was only briefly, and soon we were in the village of Keele itself.  I was frankly surprised how easy the transition was - I suspected the villagers would've set up gates and a watch tower to stop students wandering into their homestead.  Mind you, students are very different these days, very sensible and teetotal, so they probably encourage them.

More countryside, and then Madeley, which had an actual duck pond with actual ducks on it.  We stopped for a bit, to even out the service; at least I assume that's why we stopped.  In London, I believe the buses tell you this is what is happening, and apologise; here in the provinces, we sit in awkward silence and hope it hasn't broken down.  The woman behind me sneezed as we took off again, and I wondered if she'd covered her mouth.  Betley smelt of silage and had a village green with black silhouettes of servicemen on it; every lamppost had been decorated with D-DAY 80 signs.  As we left the village, we passed a statue of a greyhound in someone's garden; the statue had been given a cape and a helmet and a shield with the flag of St George on it.

At forty minutes in we passed from Newcastle-Under-Lyme into Cheshire East.  By now I was starting to get pins and needles and I wondered if I should walk up and down the aisle like they tell you to do on flights to stop getting deep vein thrombosis.  The passenger tally had barely shifted, which surprised me; these people were keen enough to visit Newcastle they'd take an extremely long bus ride to get there.  The Wychwood Park signposted its Hotel - Golf Club - Residential Hamlets, while the White Lion Pub invited you to JOIN US ROUND THE BACK FOR A BEER.

The outskirts of Crewe brought another shudder - this was where I'd worked for eighteen months until I had a nervous breakdown and took redundancy.  There was the Crewe Hall Hotel, where I had the most miserable Christmas lunch of my life - a department of complainers who moaned about the free meal and the fact that they had to attend and be all jolly when they could be enjoying an afternoon off.  I may have got a little drunk to get through it.  We passed the station, first the shiny new glass entrance at the back, then the dated front, where again we paused to even out the service.  The bus took a route into town down Edlestone Road, and I was hit with a memory of walking along that street and seeing the sky absolutely full of circling birds.  It was phenomenal.

Crewe bus station is so new most of the passengers on board expressed surprise at it being open; it was less than a month old.  It replaced a bus station that absolutely needed to be replaced and was intended to be the centre of a brand new regeneration scheme.  Unfortunately the developers pulled out, leaving a gleaming interchange and multi-storey car park in the centre of literally nothing.  The buildings around it were demolished but nothing is being built to replace them.  It's been hit by the one-two-three of pandemic, Liz Truss, and HS2 being withdrawn from the town.  So much of Crewe's future was predicated around them being a hub for the 21st century and beyond and now it's been snatched away with nothing to replace it.  I'd almost feel sorry for the town if I didn't have such traumatic memories of it.

The bus skirted the suburbs of Crewe, through council estates and new builds, though always with a patina of grim over the top.  An extremely hot scaffolder with jug ears and a turned up nose got on and flicked through a handful of fivers.  Outside the Minshull takeaway, a small boy, about four years old, boarded with his mother, and his beaming excited grin immediately lifted the mood of everyone on board.  He skipped down the aisle and I found myself smiling back.  I'm not completely dead inside.

Welcome to Nantwich: Floral Market Town.  The woman who'd sneezed behind me finally got off the bus at a small patch of green; she'd been my companion the whole journey.  We pulled into the bus station at exactly two thirty, bang on time.  I unfolded myself from my seat, hoping the blood would rush back to my legs, thanked the driver because I was brought up right, and stepped down.

I'd like to extend an apology to Nantwich.  I'd long held a vague grudge against it, based on the fact that I'd once spent a day there on a course and I'd hated it.  It turns out that wasn't Nantwich at all.  I'd misremembered, and it was some other small market town in Cheshire where I'd had an awful time.  (I'm not 100% sure but I think it might have been Congleton).

Nantwich, it turned out, was a delight.  It was everything you'd want from an English market town.  Narrow pedestrianised streets lined with charming buildings.  A town square with trees and a church.  Interesting shops and pubs and cafes.  A sense of purpose and pride.

It was, admittedly, Very Tory.  The whole place was decked out in Union Jack bunting and a yellow AA sign informed me that the streets would be closed for the D-Day Commemorations.  There was a branch of Joules and a branch of Fat Face and there was a menswear shop that seemed to specialise in clothes Nigel Farage would love: pastel chinos and linen jackets and so many hats.  You couldn't wear those trousers if you'd ever voted Green, they'd simply crumble to dust in your hands.  

The local branch of WH Smith was branded WH Smith Stationers which intrigued me.  I wondered if this was perhaps a new look for the store.  It turned out that Nantwich used to have two Smiths, one across the way with the books and so on, and this one purely for stationery; the larger branch closed earlier this year and they consolidated the whole thing into one without bothering to replace the sign.  Inside it very much felt like two shops shoved together inelegantly; the windows were covered to give more shelf room, making it dark inside, and deep canyons of merchandise were laid out without much regard.

I'm going to go off on one now, and feel free to skip these two paragraphs because it's very personal, but what has been done to WH Smith over the past twenty years feels like what has happened to the United Kingdom over the same period of time.  It used to be an absolute icon of the High Street and a place of pilgrimage for thousands of families.  Everybody loved it.  I can't be the only child whose mum would leave him in Smiths while she shopped elsewhere, knowing that the combination of books and videos and stationery would keep me entertained and safe.  WH Smith was a legend and we were all proud to visit it; hell, I worked there for five years, mainly because it was a dream come true.

Now it's nothing.  Now it's The Works, but without the bright stores and friendly interiors.  It's downmarket and grim while still, for some reason, being very expensive.  WH Smith in 2024 is a tarnished, destroyed brand, and entire generations of children have grown up seeing it as just another shop.  They could've been a classy, premium store - armchairs to relax in, coffee shops, art clubs and calligraphy lessons and book talks.  A kind of Waterstones plus.  Instead, like UK PLC, they've cut every corner to maximise profit, creating an experience nobody enjoys, nobody wants to pay for, and are somehow still stinking up perfectly reasonable neighbourhoods.  It makes me sad and angry and I want the whole thing to go under to put it out of its misery.

I followed the streets round and round, taking it all in, until the rain started to spot again.  The Nantwich-Crewe trains are every two hours, so I had a choice: barrel down the road to the station and get the three o'clock train, or go for a pint until the 16:55.

Duh.

One pint became two, and then I left, happier than when I sat down.  Alcohol is famously a depressant, and if you're in a bad mood, it's probably not wise to take a glass.  On the other hand, it cheered me right up.  I left the town centre, past a banner for Nantwich Pride (July 20th, Nantwich Civic Hall - Families Welcome) and a pub that had a cartoon of the Beatles on it, for some reason, before I reached the level crossing for Nantwich station.

It wasn't, if I'm honest, one of my favourite trips out on the trains.  There hadn't really been much to see.  I seem to have managed to write an awful lot about it though.  Sorry about that.

Once again, thank you to the Ko-fi contributors who helped pay for the train trips here.  You're marvellous.