Corporate Whore

Here's a little New Year viewing for your Bank Holiday. It's a Merseyrail corporate video, plugging their general amazingness to all and sundry. It's a pretty interesting ten minutes. My thoughts can be summarised thus:

1) Pretty overhead shots!
2) Bart Schmeink! Bart Schmeink speaking! Bart Schmeink being as wonderfully Dutch as I hoped he'd be!
3) Mention of the popular Christmas Cracker promotion. Whoops.
4) Footage from the Merseyrail New Year's party. Where was my invite, eh?
5) Lots of shots of pretty ladies going to the races, if you like that sort of thing.

With thanks to Robert, as is usually the case for this sort of thing...

You Can't Go Home Again

Happy New Year! I hope you all got drunk and threw coal at a first footer while singing Auld Lang Syne, or something. Personally I stayed in and watched telly, which was great. I'm not a big fan of New Year's Eve, but then I hate anything which demands I enjoy myself. It offends my misanthropic soul.

Anyway, before New Year, there's Christmas, and with it, the obligatory trip down south to visit the family. It was all very jolly, apart from that strange disconnect you always get when you return to the house you grew up in. Things look the same, but not quite; rooms are the same shape, but smaller. It doesn't help that my brother annexed my childhood bedroom a long time ago so I end up sleeping in "his" room. It all gets a bit alternate universey.

On the last day, I went off to catch my train and, in the process, capture Luton's three stations. I explained to my mum that I needed to visit all three stations, and she looked at me with the kind of expression reserved for elderly relatives with early signs of Alzheimers. She couldn't quite understand me, and thought it was probably best to just move on.

The first station was Leagrave, in the north of Luton, and the closest to my home. This was the station I used to regularly walk to for the trip into town, rather than piling on board the 23 into town. It's a proper old school station, built in the 19th century and well-preserved. In the snow it looked picturesque, and brought back a whole load of memories of trips to London and so on.

I risked the ridicule of the cabbies outside by getting the station shot and bought my ticket for the trip to Luton. £2.90! For one stop! Still, the one time I ever travelled without a ticket was when I jumped on a train to Luton from here, and I was caught by a Revenue Protection Officer. I was sixteen and the shame of it still burns inside me to this day. He took my name and address - well, a name and address; I wasn't going to give him my real one - and charged me a tenner. My cheeks are turning crimson just at the memory.

I stomped my feet on the snow outside. There was a fifteen minute wait for the next train, and I paced the platform, trying to keep the blood flowing. It was absolutely freezing.

The train might have been warm, but it no longer had a nice little picture of the London skyline inside. Boo to First Capital Connect, not least for that ridiculously contrived name. I miss good old Thameslink. It's especially galling when you see all the posters plugging the Thameslink Programme around the stations.

Readers with long memories will remember that Luton was declared the 8th worst station in Britain. The correct response to that is "only 8th"? It is - and I'm going to use a technical phrase here - a shithole. Luton station is one of the most unremittingly grim stations, anywhere. It doesn't so much welcome you to the town as spit on your foot and demand to know what the hell you want.

I'd hoped that I'd be able to report things had changed, that it was all sunshine and daffodils, but no. It's as horrible as I remembered. The building is angular, badly constructed, and falling apart. A new mult-storey car park looms over the platforms and cuts out the sky. There was water dripping into the bridge over the platforms as my fellow passengers and I shuffled out into the main concourse. Like Moorfields, the ticket office is built on the first floor; unlike Moorfields, Luton station's a dump.

The reason the ticket office is a floor up is because the train station is because a public right of way runs right through it - a bridge connecting the High Town district with the town centre. The route to the town is via this charming edifice:

Would you believe me if I said that bridge used to be worse? It used to be clad with filthy frosted glass, covered in steel mesh - they may as well have put up a sign saying "Luton welcomes careful rapists" over the entrance. At least now they've taken the glass off, you can't smell the tramp's piss.

It's so depressing to find the main railway station in my home town is unrelentingly horrific. It's an outrage, a blot, and the council should have demanded action a long time ago. They have plans to build a new station square, with a bus exchange, but frankly they've been saying that for twenty years. I'll believe it when I see it. They can't even put hands on the station clock.

Just to compound the misery, there weren't any trains south. It turned out that there was emergency work going on between Luton and St Pancras - something to do with the snow, I should imagine - so there would be a replacement bus. All the way to London. Since I just wanted to go to the next station on the line, Luton Airport Parkway, I thought I'd walk. So yes, pedants, I didn't actually take a train to or from it, so it violates the Merseytart rules, but tough.

I'm not sure what goes on in the head of Luton's planners. I'm not sure if there are any planners. If there are, their default setting is "pug ugly". I didn't remember the town being so depressingly miserable. There's the Arndale of course (you can call it The Mall all you like - it's still the Arndale to me) - a massive, all encompassing, pile of hideousness that squats over the entire town centre. Back in the 1970s, shopping precincts were all the rage, and Luton didn't so much embrace it, as have a filthy love affair that gave it syphilis. Entire streets of historic warehouses were demolished and replaced by indoor malls, while the streets around it were reduced to access routes to car parks and delivery areas. At the time it opened, it was the biggest covered shopping mall in Europe - ridiculously oversized for a town of only 160,000 people. It's too big to destroy now, though, so it strangles the town centre with its cheerless bulk.

Beyond that, there are grim blocks of ugly offices and light industry, right in the centre of town. The main parish church - just about the only historic building left in the entire town - is hemmed in by dual carriageways, car parks, and 1960s concrete. Right behind it, the University of Bedfordshire - or Luton Technical College as it was - is building a block of student flats that are about nine storeys tall, higher than the church's checkerboard tower. It's as though they want to keep compounding that error.

At some point Luton decided to pledge its heart to industry above anything else. It invited all these big companies in, big strapping factories, and let them run roughshod over the town. They built what they wanted, where they wanted.

The industry's gone now, though, and what the town's left with is the ugly grey hangover. As I walked out of the town there were signs all around me of despair - the grim aftermath of a town that doesn't quite know what to do with itself. The population's still growing, but the new residents are commuters - they're using that fast train link to London, and using Luton as somewhere to sleep. The town's in danger of becoming one large bedroom.

Towering over me as I walked was the proud sign of Vauxhall House, the HQ of the company - but they don't build cars here any more. They're built in Spain or Italy or, yes, Ellesmere Port. How long before they pull out of Luton completely?

The only thing that will be left is the airport. This is at least one industry in the town that's still growing. When I lived there, I remember the celebrations when they hit three million passengers a year - now it's pushing ten million, and still growing. The terminal I used to visit on days out as a kid (we were simple folks) has now been subsumed into a much larger building.

And it's finally got its own train station. Opened in 1999, Luton Airport Parkway might still be a mile away from the terminal, but it's a lot prettier than Luton mainline. It comes in that standard grey and glass Network Rail chic, to the extent that the name of the station is barely visible in case it ruins the charming lines of the building. Squint and you can see it over the entrance.

I hurried inside and bought a coffee to warm my frost bitten fingers. Even though there were no trains, the ticket hall was packed - mainly confused tourists, trying to work out how to get to London. There was another queue for the free shuttle bus to the airport - take note, Merseytravel, this is what you should be doing from South Parkway.

I was left feeling deflated, sad. This was the first time I'd ventured out of Sundon Park, my little home quarter of Luton, and into the town for years. And it was awful. I was seeing it all with new eyes, spoiled by Liverpool and Birkenhead. I felt let down, somehow. Luton is my home town, the place I lived in for the first twenty years of my life, and I wanted it to delight me. Instead it just made me want to return to Merseyside.

Snowed Under

Whoops.

Apologies for the lack of updates lately; I haven't been feeling too jolly and I've been spending most of my days comatose at home, only emerging for the odd pint. I'm hoping to get in at least one more post before 2011, but we shall see.

Anyway, if you don't hear from me till then - Merry Christmas!

Rozzers

As seen last night in Hamilton Square station: the police rounding up someone in the passageway underground. I'm not sure what was going on, but they had a guy spreadeagled against the wall getting patted down.

It's curious how sometimes an increased police presence makes you feel more secure, and sometimes it scares the heck out of you. Approaching them from the Chester platform I felt incredibly paranoid and nervous, and I'd done nothing wrong. Of course, that might be down to the half a dozen pints of bitter I'd had that afternoon...

Round Up

***beep beep, beep beep, beep beep, beep beepity beep***

That was me doing an exciting news theme. It still needs a little work.

There's been a few exciting Merseyrail related news stories floating around the last few days, so I thought I'd do a quick rundown, interspersed with my usual ill-informed comment. Just for your delectation.

1) Four Trains an Hour to Chester

It's been a long time coming but yes, from December 13th, there will be a train between Chester and Liverpool every quarter of an hour. That is of course a doubling of the service, and means there's a whopping six trains an hour between Hooton and Birkenhead once you add in Ellesmere Port.

To squeeze in the extra services, they've had to cut something - and that poor victim is Capenhurst. The little station with the big nuclear plant will still have half hourly services, with the trains running through it on the other services. Bache was also rumoured to be skipped at one point, but fortunately for students of the Mandy Richardson University of Chester, that hasn't happened. Good news all round!

Of course I'd have been a lot happier if they'd brought these extra services in eight years ago when I worked in Chester, but apparently Merseyrail don't do their timetables just for my convenience.

Even more excitingly, you can win a weekend break to celebrate it. Whoo-hooo indeed.

2) No More Christmas Crackers

They giveth, and they taketh away. This year there won't be a Christmas Cracker promotion - the £1 fare on Thursday nights and Sundays. The reason, according to Bart Schmeink, is that the promotion was introduced to encourage people to use the network. Now apparently, everyone's using the network, so the £1 fare just causes overcrowding and a lot of hassle.

I can see their point. There was many a time when I forgot the promotion was on and ended up with my head rammed in someone's armpit on my way into town (and not in a good way). Liverpool's changed, as well; Liverpool ONE's given us late night shopping every night, not just Thursdays.

But I bet there's an awful lot of people who won't use Merseyrail, and will instead drive into the dozens of new parking spaces in the city to do their shopping instead. Shame.

3) Central Station

This isn't strictly news, because it's been planned for yonks, but a video has surfaced on the net for the new Central Village development. This is the plan for new shops and leisure facilities to be built on what was the railway lands behind the old Central Station, rendered defunct with the opening of the Link and Loop in the Seventies.

I can't quite get my head around the fact that there's a whole load of prime real estate sitting behind Bold Street that's untouched, but there you are: it exists, and it's slowly coming to life with a multi-storey car park under construction at the top of the development even as we speak.

The next part to be built will take in the old Lewis' building and will incorporate Central itself, with escalators up to the development. It's right at the start of the video:

Exciting, innit? And I like that the new M to Go building has taken into account the positioning of the escalators, to hopefully minimise inconvenience and stop the whole thing from having to be reconstructed again (though there's bound to be some hassle).

Apparently funding is in place so construction could start very soon. Fingers crossed.

4) Electricity

This has been covered elsewhere by railway writers far cleverer than me, so I'll just say: electrification, yay! Quicker services to Manchester, Preston and, er, Blackpool, yay! Higher train fares, ya- oh shit. Still at least we'll get lots of new trains for our services. Hmmm.

THAT WAS THE NEWS. I should do this full time. I'd teach Bill Turnbull a few tricks.

Night Train

I'd been to see my friend Jennie, which doesn't happen often enough. She works at Edge Hill University, my old alma mater in Ormskirk, so visiting her is doubly pleasurable: I get to see her, and what condition her pregnant belly is in at the moment, and I also get to do a nostalgia trip round the campus. Not that there's much left from my day (fifteen years - erk). I used to have Writing Fiction classes in a white hut that was probably leftover from the war; that's been replaced by a huge silver building that looks like a stormtrooper's helmet. Everywhere you look there are steel and glass monoliths that dwarf the old landmarks I used to love.

So anyway, Jennie and I met up and went into Ormskirk for a meal. After walking out of Echelon because the staff couldn't seem to be bothered serving people, we headed for the Left Bank Brasserie. A very good decision, as it turned out, as the food and service were light years ahead of anything Echelon had to offer: highly recommended.

Jennie dropped me off at the station around nine o'clock. The train at that time on a Friday night is a funny thing. The serious clubbers have already headed into town, to get tanked up before they start. The last minute dashes into town won't happen until the pubs close around eleven, and drunks head for the final train to chance their luck.

I sat in the still-gleaming station building to wait the twenty minutes for my train. There was only one other person in there, a man in his fifties who shifted from seat to seat uncomfortably, as though he was sizing them all up. I wanted to interrupt and tell him that they were all equally unpleasant.

Behind the counter, the bored station master was staring at his smartphone. I'm not sure what he had on there - judging by the levels of scrutiny he was giving it, I'm guessing he'll be going blind soon - but it entirely captured his attention while I sat there. Who can blame him? Nobody came through wanting a ticket.

There were a few people on the platform who'd forgone the warm waiting room - probably because of the man playing musical chairs - and when the train came we spread ourselves along its length.

The amount of times I have taken this journey! Travelling through cold, dark nights headed for assignations in Liverpool. My first boyfriend would pick me up from Moorfields, and I'd travel in to meet him slightly sick with excitement. The trains were always empty and slightly melancholic. Of course, that was in the days before the carriages were refurbished, when there was a musty smell to the seats, and they usually showed the ravages of the Saturday crowds in their roughed up seat cushions and litter. Later, after I met the current Bf, I'd head to his for the weekend, usually with a bag of washing so I could skip having to use the launderette on campus.

I leaned against the glass and watched the dark. The route back from Ormskirk travels through countryside for the first part, then a lot of deep, impenetrable cuttings, so at night all you see is blackness. Then you burst into the hot white glow of a station and one or two people shuffle on board. There was thick fog that night too - as Jennie and I concluded, weather to be raped in - so even the lights of the houses were obscured. I may as well have been underground.

My fellow passengers were the same people I used to travel with when I was a student: the buttoned up young girl, slightly anxious at being alone in the train. A guy in his twenties with earphones rammed deep in his ears. Through the glass of the interlinking doors, I could see two rude boys restlessly wandering the carriage, baseball caps tucked on the back of their head, swinging idly off the poles. I used to be terrified of having to share the car with people like them, waiting for them to get bored and pick on me for some imaginary slight. Never happened.

At Old Roan, noise and excitement came aboard in the form of four drunken women, mid forties, partying hard. Slightly tipsy and talking loudly about what a good time they were going to have, though they weren't going to get too drunk. One turned to her friend and asked about her shoes, "Are they ok, Jackie? Because they really hurted you?". I resisted the urge to lean over and correct her grammar, but only just. They lost some of their fizz as we continued; the Christmas ban on alcohol on Merseyrail meant they didn't have anything to keep them topped up all the way.

I was the only person to get off at Moorfields; I usually am. It's always my preferred station, so much better than the hustle and fuss of Central. I can't deny it was a bit eerie wandering the empty corridors, the only sound being the rhythmic grind of the escalators.

There's something beautiful about a quiet train, something that slices into you and makes you run back over your mind. My journey had been a strange mix of memories and the present, as though I was viewing everything through a filter. Fifteen years since I'd done that journey for the first time, and even though there was a new Ormskirk station, and the trains turned purple, weirdly, I felt eighteen again.

Vibrating Bum-Faced Goats

From this month's Viz:

My local travel firm, Merseyrail, bears the motto 'Merseyrail - more than just a journey'. Well after being mugged on their Wirral line service recently, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them for their honesty.

S Porter, Merseyside

All publicity is good publicity... I guess?