Best Days

A-level results day inevitably prompts mixed feelings in me.  Feelings of nostalgia and regret.  It's eighteen years since I flunked my A-levels, denying me my first choice university (Keele) and sending me off to Edge Hill in Ormskirk instead.  At the time I was distraught and unhappy.  Now I see it as a blessing.  I've been to Keele, and it's a massive sucky hole of misery in the middle of nowhere (highest suicide rate among all UK universities, I believe).  Edge Hill was small enough for you to get to know people, to have fun and not be lost, and it had that wonderful Merseyrail line to take me off to Liverpool.

I fell in love with Liverpool, I fell in love with the BF, I fell in love with some of the best friends I've ever known, all while I was at Edge Hill.  I didn't make it to my first choice but I had a hell of a good time anyway.  The best time of my life, in fact; everyone should be a student.  It's three years of being an adult, but without any responsibility.  You get to drink and have sex and stay out all night and eat junk food, but you don't have work in the morning or a mortgage or kids or anything to drag you down.  It's half a life away - literally - but it still makes me smile.  My only regret is the one that's beautifully articulated in the song I Wish I Could Go Back to College, from Avenue Q: "I wish that I'd taken more pictures."

For some reason Edge Hill didn't shut up shop after I graduated; in fact it just grew and grew, like a giant academic fungus.  The campus is enormous now; what were sports pitches and the Rose Garden when I was there are now giant teaching centres with acronym names.  The boiler room has been replaced by a huge student complex with coffee shops and breakout areas - we had the bar and a vending machine and the Terrace Cafe, and you'd only go there if you wanted something to eat and you were really desperate.  It's a behemoth.  In a way it's outgrown Ormskirk itself; this tiny market town now has thousands of youths streaming through it for ten months a year.

Last week I went back to Ormskirk to meet Jennie (second from left above).  We took her adorable children Adam and Joy to the park, went on the swings, had a coffee, bitched about life.  The usual stuff 36 year olds do.  Coronation Park was on the way back to our student house in Cottage Lane; it was strange for us to be there without being just a little bit drunk.

At the station there was a real indication that Edge Hill dominates the town.  For many years, Ormskirk's Attractive Local Feature board was this:

Pretty typical for a small country town.  My latest visit revealed that the ALF had changed:

This pleases me for a number of reasons.  Firstly, I'm glad that Merseytravel and Merseyrail are still doing the ALFs; I was worried they'd been phased out.  Plus they kept the old colour scheme.  And of course I'm just happy to see Edge Hill getting some recognition, even if they picked a pretty bland building to represent the university.  I suppose they want to look all "modern" and "thrusting", but that building could be anywhere.  They should have used a picture of my beloved LRC (Learning Resource Centre, now unimaginatively renamed the "Library"), or the Venue, or a drunken student getting his stomach pumped after failing to handle all the alcohol in the "Around the World in Forest Court" booze crawl.  Next time, come to me for advice.

Now I'm off to have a little nostalgia fest: drinking cheap lager while I listen to Space and Gina G and Echobelly and Alisha's Attic and Terrorvision (Whales and dolphins, whales and dolphins, yeah!) and missing the old days.  

Tweet and Lowdown

Don't get me wrong: I love Twitter.  In the few years I've been using it I've become an addict and a devotee.  I rarely go a whole day without firing at least one idle thought out into the ether - for example:

It's all become a bit of a strain lately, though.  Some of the fun's gone out of it.  Between rape threats, calls for moderation, Russian boycotts, racist vans, Sun front pages and the continuing presence of One Direction in the Trending Topics, it's all got a bit stressful.  My timeline used to just be people tweeting their dinners and sarcastic comments about Gail Platt's hair; now the vortex of hysteria which sometimes engulfs Twitter is demanding I sign petitions or boycott the platform for a day.  Plus I follow Mia Farrow, and though she tweets a lot of great fun stuff (including the revelation that she was watching Sharknado with Philip Roth, which may be my favourite thing ever) she also regularly tells you about the latest Third World atrocity.  Bit of a bummer.

Thank goodness then, for the odd little ray of sunshine, like Tim and Andy at Northern Rail.  There's a bunch of tweeters employed by the rail company to keep passengers informed about delays and cancellations, and frankly I'd rather be minesweeping in the Afghan foothills than do that job.  Every day you have to put up with this kind of shit:

That was following a theft of overhead lines in Stockport.   I'm afraid I might have responded with something a little more direct, like "What do you want me to do?  Come down there and strap you to my back and run you to work?"

In the old days, of course, people would have just tutted and rolled their eyes and gone back to reading the Metro.  Twitter has enabled direct, one to one conversations with the rail companies in real time, and so frustrated people on the platform just start venting wildly:

I wouldn't put up with that kind of crap.  I am a real loss to the customer service industry.

There are a whole bunch of people who do the tweeting on behalf of Northern Rail, but Tim and Andy are my favourites.  They're relentlessly upbeat, unfailingly polite, and sometimes wilfully surreal:

Now that's good social networking.  Engaging, pleasant and fun.  Or this one:

which is just plain camp.

I might feel different if I had to put up with cheery little gags when I'm getting drenched on a platform in Arnside because the promised train hasn't turned up, but sitting at home with a cup of tea I appreciate the moments of levity.  I can't decide who my favourite is though.  On the one hand, Andy often begins his weekend shifts with "Sunday Sunday, here again in tidy attire" so we clearly share a spirit animal.  I couldn't find an example of him actually saying it, sadly, because I went back through Northern Rail's timeline and I hit all their apologies to people incensed that they were refusing to run trains following flash flooding at Walsden and I had to go and have a lie down because RAGE.

On the other hand, I got this response from Tim:

so you know: there's that.  Tim is also the one running the current #NorthernView contest:

It's a nice little competition, and he retweets the best shots, so you get a little moment of pride.  I haven't entered because I rarely take photos out the window of trains - I'm so boring that England's magnificent scenery is so much blah to me; I'm just waiting for the next station to turn up.  It seems to be something Tim's done off his own back, even though he's doomed to be unappreciated:

Twitter's an informal medium so it's good to have companies being friendly and a bit more "dress down Fridays", even when they're telling us that something horrible has happened.  Merseyrail's Twitter account is a lot less fun.  It's mainly used to tweet bad news - trains turning back at Hillside or the continued loop closure - so you start to think bad things when that yellow M pops up.  It's never a joke about the heat, put it that way, though now and then they'll have a competition to win tickets to see Jessie J in Chester or something, which is somehow worse.  And, worst of all, they stop tweeting at four o'clock, and don't tweet at all on weekends - they actually admit to it in their profile.  I can see why people get in a rage when they're waiting for their delayed train home and Merseyrail's front-facing services seem to have knocked off.

Yesterday, they did tweet something fun and interesting though:

It seems that the poster dates from 1962, when the Beatles were regulars at New Brighton's Tower Ballroom.  It ended up being the tweet that was heard round the world, thanks to Scouse actor David Morrissey.  He retweeted Merseyrail's picture, and then followed it up with this:

Good on you Dave; this more than makes up for Basic Instinct 2.  (And thanks to @sebpatrick for the heads up).

I love that it's been uncovered completely accidentally, and I really hope it's not going to be disposed of too quickly.  Maaaaaaaaarten Spaaaaaaaaaargaren, Merseyrail's Grand Chief Poobah, tweeted:

My suggestion is that they frame it and put it up in a station, either Bidston or New Brighton.  I wouldn't want it to just be handed over to the Beatles Story (who've probably got hundreds of these things) or auctioned off to some American who'll stick it in a glass case in his mansion.  Frame it and put it up on Merseyrail: make it a treat for passengers and tourists.  I'm sure it'd be an attraction in its own right; all those slightly scary Japanese tourists you see doing V-signs outside the Cavern would love it.

Of course, some people had alternative suggestions:

Sigh.

Be Here Now

Manchester's tram network is starting to get annoying.  It's good, it's clean, it's fast, and it keeps expanding.  It's that clever, pretty friend you have on Facebook whose status updates are all "OMG! Just found out that painting I bought at the car boot is a long-lost Rembrandt!" or "LOL It's so hard being teetotal when you keep winning magnums of champagne in competitions!".

Last month Metrolink opened yet another line - a route out to East Didsbury.  Since Ian was up from London again, and Robert was about as well, we decided to have a trip out on the new tram and then collect some stations on the way back into the city.

After grappling with the ticket machines on the platform at Piccadilly - only two were working, which is no problem in one of the busiest railway stations in the UK - we boarded a tram into the city.  There was a lengthy pause at Piccadilly Gardens, while we changed drivers; Ian had to be restrained from breaking into the cabin and driving it himself.  Round the corner, a poor woman was stood alone on the Moseley Street platform, looking confused as the tram swept past.  She clearly hadn't noticed the half-dozen THIS STOP IS NOT IN USE signs pinned all over the fence.  A change at Cornbrook, and finally we were on an East Didsbury tram.

The early part was familiar enough; in fact, I'd been on this route on my very first Metrolink ride.  At St Werburgh's Road, we pulled away from the platform onto new tracks, passing the under construction Airport spur as we did so.  The track follows an old railway line that was Beechinged, but much of the infrastructure - bridges and underpasses - is new for the Metrolink.  Not so new that it hasn't been graffiti'd.  South Manchester's street artists have pounced on the new blank canvases of concrete.  There isn't much street art, though, mostly just people writing their name in permanent marker and colouring it in.

We travelled all the way to the terminus at East Didsbury.  There's a park and ride here, with space for 300 cars, and it seemed to be well-used already.  The island platform was full of passengers heading into the city for shopping.  There are two tracks here, which seems like a bit of a waste for a terminus, but it's another of those "live in hope" constructions.

The railway line continued from here through Heaton Mersey and on to Cheadle, and the Metrolink planners have pointed the line firmly in that direction.  Stockport is temptingly close to that alignment.  There's little chance of it being built, but you never know, right?

We crossed the tracks and walked back up the line towards Didsbury Village.  It would have been easier to just get off at the earlier stop, but then we wouldn't have ridden the line right to the end, and that sort of thing is important to me and my tribe.  Under a road bridge there were hints of old railway infrastructure; tiled walls covered with tags.

Didsbury Village is a charming little place.  I've been here a few times, as I have a friend who lives nearby, and it's got a great mix of shops and restaurants.  There's a place called The Cheese Hamlet, and I feel the need to record the "To Brie or not to Brie?" gag I made at the time.  Obvious, perhaps, but I do love a pun.  The arrival of the Metrolink can only make it more desirable.

After coffee and paninis amidst yummy mummies and men reading the Daily Express we left the village for some proper station collecting.  Trams are all well and good, but their stops are basically shelters with a bit of concrete attached; it's not architecturally inspiring.  We walked out to Parrs Wood Road, past the copyright baiting Didsbury Perk and towards East Didsbury station.  It's separate to the Metrolink stop - there's about 200m difference - and it was far more unloved.

A hamster run of ramps and steps carried you up to the platform.  There was a waiting room, with windows thick with dirt and scratches, and that was your lot as far as passenger facilities were concerned.  It was clear that East Didsbury and Didsbury were similar in name only, a bit like South Wimbledon Tube station; it's trying to capture a bit of magic fairy dust it's not really entitled to.

On the platform, Ian found a map and pointed out station names to me.  "Have you been to Hall i' th' Wood yet?"

"Not yet."

"How about Patricroft?"

"It's on the list."

"Dore & Totley?"

"No."

It was a little dispiriting.  Where the hell had I been?  I've been doing the Northern Rail map for over a year now, and there's still bloody hundreds of stations left on it.

Luckily a train came along to interrupt his line of inquiry.  We travelled one stop south, to Burnage, a station that was even less inspiring than East Didsbury.  Everything at Burnage seemed to be boarded up.

Burnage is, of course, the home of the Gallagher brothers, meaning I could wheel out both my Liam impression and my long-held animosity towards Oasis.  I was on the side of Blur in the Great Britpop War of 1995; my brother was on the side of Oasis, so the week Roll With It battled with Country House for number one was a hotbed of sniping and taunting (even more than usual).  I won, of course, because I always do, but eighteen years later I have to admit that Country House is not a very good song.  Roll With It isn't either, to be fair.

I just wasn't an Oasis person.  I will freely admit that Definitely Maybe and (What's The Story) Morning Glory? are great albums, but they are pretty much two halves of the same train of thought.  Even now I have problems remembering what track was on what album.  Be Here Now is the sound of cocaine and partying and self-indulgence (there is absolutely no reason on earth for All Around The World to be NINE MINUTES long) and the rest of their albums have the odd ok single that's a bit like a B-side they might have put out in 1996 but are otherwise forgettable.

Blur, on the other hand, are amazing.  I'll freely admit that they've had their dodgy albums too - Leisure is like a chick that's broken out of its shell too early, unformed and unfinished; Think Tank is too fractured; The Great Escape too decadent.  But each of those albums contains a handful of tracks that hit the target full on (Sing, She's So High, There's No Other Way on Leisure; Out of Time, Brothers and Sisters and Crazy Beat on Think Tank; The Universal, Best Days and Fade Away on The Great Escape).  And a song that misfires on a Blur album - something like Mr Robinson's Quango - is still trying to be different and innovative, whereas a misfiring Oasis song is just dull.

And then you have the just plain great albums - Blur and 13 - and the masterpieces: Modern Life is Rubbish and Parklife, both of which are as perfect as it is possible to be.  Oasis has never written a single track which can even sit in the same room as Advert or Sunday Sunday or Turn It Up or End of a Century or London Loves or This Is A Low.  The minute of noodling that is Lot 105 contains more imagination and experimentation and joy than the whole of Heathen Chemistry.  I mean, after the band split up, Liam and Noel both went on to release albums that sounded like they were made up of tracks found down the back of Creation's sofa.  Damon Albarn went off and formed Gorillaz and wrote an opera based on Monkey.  Case closed.

(I will concede that Alex James is an annoyingly smug Tory cheesemongering twat.  But Coxon and Rowntree more than balance him out).

Ian and I, as Britpop veterans with the scars to prove it, filled in Robert with a rough history as we left the station.  He was too young to pogo in the indie room of a club to Road Rage; he had never worked out a series of dance moves to Supergrass's Alright; he'd never known the heady joy of seeing Pulp get to number one on the chart with an album about class war.  Robert reached adulthood at a time when number ones were going to Craig David and Westlife, which tells you all about the collapse of human civilisation you need to know.

Beyond the station entrance was a parade of shops, including Sifters record shop, which actually appears in an Oasis track (Shakermaker; it's on Definitely Maybe.  I looked it up).  I imagined the young Noel in the store, buying second-hand albums and taking them home, then lovingly copying all the good bits and pretending he wrote them.  You can imagine my delight when I saw a poster in the window, here in Gallagher territory, for a music festival called Parklife.

The most surprising thing about Burnage was how posh it was.  It was working class, yes, but the houses were generously proportioned Corporation semis, with gardens and driveways.  There was parkland and wide avenues.  From the way Liam and Noel had spoken, I'd imagined them being dragged up in a terraced house somewhere, playing on cobbled streets and fighting in ginnels.  It was used as a stick to beat the art school Blur with; their claim that they were proper rough, unlike Damon and his Estuary vowels and evenings down the dog track.  Burnage seemed quite nice.

It even has a blue plaque.  Louis Paulhan flew from London to Manchester in 1910, the first man to do so, and the plaque commemorates the spot where he landed.  It took him twelve hours to make the flight; four hours in the air, plus an overnight stop in Lichfield for refuelling.  I've flown from London to Manchester - you've barely unbuckled your seatbelt before you're coming in to land again these days.  The road where he made the landing is named Paulhan Road in his honour.

We cut across Ladybarn Park on route to Mauldeth Road station.  Our debate about whether we were heading the right way was picked up by a local, who turned back and said to us, "Station's this way.  Train leaves in three minutes.  Follow me."  He looked like he had just finished fighting a Staffordshire Bull Terrier with his bare hands, so we thanked him then let him get on ahead so we wouldn't have to be on the same train.

A video tape had been unspooled across the path, a delightfully retro touch of litter.  Normally I'd be complaining about some inconsiderate sod making the place a mess, but it just reminded me of my childhood; there were always unspooled cassettes in parks, usually hanging from the trees.  Can you decorate a silver birch with an MP3?  No you can't, which is why my childhood was better than today's kids' childhoods.

Hanging back to avoid The Man With The Golden Knuckledusters meant we missed the train into Manchester, so we wandered round the corner to get some water from the local Londis.  The assistant shouted over our heads to a departing customer: "You know Eileen's back in hospital, don't you?"

"I didn't even know she were out."

This end of Burnage was more Asian than the other one, with a Halal butcher and Indian restaurants.  An office building had green Arabic written on its front, with the English translation on a sign round the side.  There was still enough custom to support a hefty pub though, with Saturday afternoon drinkers hovering in the doorway for their ciggies.

As we approached the station, Ian made a suggestion.  The trip through South Manchester had taken less time than I'd thought, and so we'd polished off the stations I'd planned in superfast time.  We had ages until our dinner reservation.  Why not collect a couple more?  Why not collect Gatley and Heald Green, the next two stations between East Didsbury and Manchester Airport?

And that, folks, is exactly why we are friends.

We went to the southbound platform of Mauldeth Road instead of the northbound one.  The ticket office was undergoing reconstruction, but judging by the blank facilities on the viaduct, I doubt the new structure will rival St Pancras International.

Gatley had more of a rural vibe.

You don't get many wooden awnings on station buildings any more.  Yes, it's been done over by the Purple Gang, and yes, it could do with a clean, but most of them have been pulled down as too much hassle to maintain.

Gatley also has two station signs, which is just showing off.

We let two Jewish gentlemen with matching pullovers and skull caps pass, then crossed over into the suburban backwaters of Gatley.  Long avenues of discreet homes curved into one another.  The streets were empty; the only people we saw were builders putting together a new bay window on a house, and a pair of boys in Manchester United colours tossing a football from hand to hand.

It was while walking through Gatley that I was involved in probably the most niche conversation I have ever been part of.  The topic was thus: "Which now-retired ITV regional ident does the Arriva Trains Wales announcement chime sound most like?"

THIS IS A REAL THING THAT HAPPENED.

We went through the options - Tyne Tees?  Yorkshire?  Thames ("Here they are now MORECAMBE AND WISE")?  Finally Robert did some YouTubing on his phone, and came up with Anglia, which he then played at full volume in the street.

I took a moment to dwell on that little chat and I could make only one conclusion.  "Fellas.  I think our virginities just grew back."

The road swung past a row of local shops and a nice looking pub, and we were forced to concede that, yes, this looked like a pretty nice place to live in.  Then an EasyJet plane roared overhead, skimming the tops of the trees, and we remembered just how close we were to Manchester Airport's two runways.  We postponed any estate agent searches.

I like it when railway stations are surrounded by shops and libraries and people.  It feels so much more lively and part of a community.  Park and rides out on the edge of town are all well and good, but they're often sterile and dead.  Heald Green station was slap bang in the middle of the excitement.

It is not, however, in the middle of Wythenshawe, despite the presence of signs advertising the shopping centre.

I dislike these commercial Attractive Local Feature boards (CALFs?) anyway, but plugging a place that they cheerily admit is 1 and a half miles away is just taking the piss.  Plus Wythenshawe is going to be getting its own tram link soon enough, and I bet the advertising money will vanish the minute that opens.  If you must have this form of craven advertising, it should be truly local; I'd have rather seen a plug for the nearest Subway sandwich outlet if it was "only two minutes from this station!".

It had been a fun afternoon.  Station collecting is a lonely business.  It's nice to find a couple of kindred spirits who don't mind larking around in Manchester's suburban sprawl.  Thanks again, Robert and Ian.  Always a pleasure.

Day Three: This Is A Low (But It Won't Hurt You)

The streets had been washed the night before by heavy rain, but it looked like that would be it.  The sun was already burning off the excesses, reducing puddles to spots, creating steam on flat patches of concrete.  I jumped on the train out of Barrow and was in Askam a few minutes later.

There were more people getting on than getting off.  Not really a surprise: Askam's an ugly little village.  It was founded for mine workers, and it still feels perfunctory.  Its position by the bay should make it a prime commuter spot but it felt as though the houses were there in spite of the sea - they could really have come from anywhere in the North.

Still, the station was nice enough.  Half of the long platform had been allowed to grass over, like a neatly tended lawn for trains.  Inside the open waiting room, there was still an iron hearth (no sign of a fire though).  I wondered if Northern Rail were aware of that nice architectural feature just sitting there doing nothing.  I'm guessing not, or they'd have ripped it out and flogged it to some builder in Didsbury who was restoring a turn of the century villa.

I did my best with the sign photo.  There was a bus stop outside, where some boys were waiting for their lift to school; I didn't want to look too much of an arse.

From there it was a straight walk down to the beach.  My only companions were dog walkers, hauling big heavy animals towards the dunes.  A playground was empty, the flaps on the recycling bins clattering in the wind.  Big red signs told me that there was no entry to a side road - "not any!".  An idle thought about what the locals got up to round here was answered by a poster stapled to a telegraph pole.

Nope.  No idea.

I stumbled down the slope to the beach - only noticing a flight of steps when I was halfway down - and took in the view.  A cool Cumbrian morning.  There was something silent and recessive about the sea that day, as though it was taking a breath.  It hid in the distance and made little noise.

I took a right, shadowing the dunes northwards, sticking to the shingle where my feet wouldn't sink into the soft wet sand.  A man up ahead idly threw sticks for his mongrel, who then splashed happily through shallow pools to bring it back.  All of it under that amazing forever sky.

As I advanced I began to feel an uncomfortable tickle at the back of my head.  Just a spot of anxiety inside my skull.  This walk seemed to be taking a long time.  I had about ninety minutes to get to the next station, Kirkby-in-Furness, but I'd been walking for nearly half an hour and I couldn't see any sign of a village.  There was no sign of humanity at all, just endless rough grass and sand.

I pulled out my Ordnance Survey map and my phone so I could cross reference it with Google Maps (I often got the strongest signal in very unlikely places).  It homed in on my position with ease.  I was nowhere near Kirkby-in-Furness.  As in, absolutely bloody miles away.  As in, there was not a hope I would make it for the train.  Somewhere along the line I'd gone awry.  Either I'd planned it wrong back home, or I'd taken a different route out of the station.

Four times out of five I'd have had a small panic, a whizz through my maps and my timetables, and sorted out an alternative route.  I'd have just laid back and enjoyed the stroll and not really thought about it.

This was that fifth occasion.  This was the start of a spiral.  I felt that tightness and anger and frustration sweeping up and over me.  I was falling into a sink hole of depression.

I can feel it, the despair, the fury, the hatred, rising up inside my veins.  My head becomes tight, as though my brain is expanding inside me; my neck and my fingers and my legs become stiff as adrenaline courses through me, filling me with self-loathing.  At that moment in time I despised myself, my mind, my stupidity.

This probably sounds over the top to you, I know.  A complete overreaction.  Yes, it is, but it's the kind of thing that can trigger me off.  My depression - my low self-esteem - it's always there, and if I make a mistake, like planning the wrong route to a station, it turns on me.  Stupid cunt, it says to me.  Worthless.  Dumb.  Pathetic.

I started crying.  I was stumbling forward across the field, the blackness all around me, wanting to just lie down in the muck and stay there.  I was a stupid, pathetic, low human being, a complete nothing.  That ambitious plan I'd worked out in front of my computer back home, that little spreadsheet with walking times and station names and train times?  What a waste of time.  What a waste of space.

 
I was on autopilot from then on.  My legs just carried me forward while my mind fought with itself.  There was a bit of it still working - a bit that was telling me to step onto the verge when a car came up behind me, a bit that was stopping me from falling into the ditch at the side of the road - but most of it was concerned with hating myself.  I yanked up my hood so that I could hide under there.  The cheeky hoot of the train passing in the distance just rubbed it in.

There was a single moment of grace - a woman in a black Rover saw me staggering at the side of the road, and pulled over and offered me a lift.  I declined, because being with another human being would have just made me even worse (the social pressure on TOP of all that?  Never!) and she drove away.  A sign in the back of her car wobbled - This is Anfield.  A hundred miles away from home and Liverpool was still looking after me.

It was that distance that slowly pulled me out of the funk again.  I had no-one to rescue me.  I had no-one to help.  If I'd been at home, I could have gone to bed and slept the worst of it off.  Here, there wasn't anything to do but press on.  I had to just button it up and try and get past it.

I found a little bus shelter (the bus had passed long ago, coughing diesel at me as it did so) and sat down.  I took deep long breaths, trying to get my heart beat back under control.  I wiped at my face with a handkerchief, blew my nose.  I brought up Google Maps and calculated the distance to the station again - 0.8 miles.  Not so bad I tried to convince myself.  Nearly there.

I sat there a little while longer, feeling the blood pulse through my ears, letting the grim thoughts dissipate.  These depressive episodes suck the heart out of me.  For a while afterwards I'm reduced to a shell.  It's like someone hoovered out my insides and I have to grow a new interior.

It meant that I probably didn't appreciate Kirkby-in-Furness as much as I probably should have.  I didn't find the irony of heading all the way up the coast to end up in Kirkby, of all places, quite as hilarious as I should have done.  I did notice that a garden centre had thrown up on every house in the village; every one was covered with gnomes, angels, wind charms, hand-painted wooden signs saying LOVE.  It was all a bit twee.

A real fire-and-brimstone church didn't help.  It looked terrifying, like that one Charlotte Coleman went to in Oranges are Not the Only Fruit.  Perhaps, I wondered, I should go in and see if they can banish my demons with a bit of faith healing?

The sight of the railway station cheered me immensely.  Finally!  It didn't matter that it was a bit run-down.  It was there.

It was actually in quite a pretty spot, down by the coast, a beach right behind it.

My next station, Foxfield, was even more desolate.  It was an island platform, the last stop before a bridge over a river.  Once again, there was no way for pedestrians cross, so I had resigned myself to an hour's wait on the platform for the next train.

Maybe there'll be a cafe or something, I thought.  Nope.

There was a pub, the Prince of Wales, but that was closed until 6pm.  Beyond that was a string of low houses and that was it.  The village itself was up a steep hill, well away from the station.

I went back to the waiting room to kill the time.  It was surprisingly chilly, the thick concrete walls not letting any of the outside warmth inside.  I'd barely sat down before three pensioners appeared in the doorway.  Lord knows where they came from; perhaps they apparated on the tracks.  There were only three chairs in the waiting room, so I gave mine up and went to sit on the platform, where it was warmer anyway.

Something twigged inside of me.  If those pensioners were there, it was because they were expecting a train. I could get that train out of Foxfield, rather than hover here with nothing to do, and go somewhere with a bit of civilisation.  I remembered there had been a little row of shops by the station in Askam.

Before long I was sat on the platform at Askam, a cup of tea in one hand, a bacon roll in the other.  The woman in the Humble Pie cafe had been cheery and friendly to me, a dose of much-needed humanity.  I guzzled the roll, licking the red sauce off eagerly, then sipped at the polystyrene cup of tea.  Never, ever underestimate the power of tea.  As it gurgled inside of me I felt warmth, cheer, comfort.  I felt refreshed and renewed.  I was back up to working levels again.