Matron!

I stood on the platform.  Staring.

I know advertising execs operate on a different plain to us mere mortals, one where they think "Chocolate = a gorilla playing Phil Collins!" and "Outrageously unaffordable loans = puppets of old people!", but really.  Sign up for our new smartcard - as used by zombies!  I can only assume someone in the office said the words "dead handy" and they followed a train of thought.  A train that probably should have been derailed.

I was back in Huddersfield to complete some unfinished business.  Regular readers (hello you!) might recall an incident a couple of months ago where I had a small... moment.  I abandoned a planned trip to the Penistone Line and instead spent the day in bed feeling low and miserable.  The line remained unfinished.

So even though I was only in Huddersfield a couple of weeks ago, I'd returned to the station to polish it off.  I wasn't going to be defeated, dammit.

Besides, it's the Penistone Line: a gift to smut lovers like me.  It's got the word Penis in it.  I was barely on the train before I started yuk-yukking like Finbar Saunders.

We zoomed through white hillsides, over the county border into South Yorkshire, and stopped at Penistone.  It was a busy station, with a horde of passengers ready for their trip into Barnsley or Sheffield.  Two workmen were shoveling the snow off the platform, stacking it up at the end while their supervisor took pictures with his phone.  I assume it was for some sort of evaluation purposes, and he wasn't just admiring the fragile beauty of the wintry scene.

I do know it's pronounced Pennystun, by the way.  It's a shame.  I feel they should embrace the smuttiness of their name.  IT'S PENIS-TOWN.  Sell t-shirts and postcards and key rings.  This is Britain, home of the Carry On films: go with the fact that everyone is going to snicker when they see it written down.

Penistone used to be a junction, with a further two platforms the other side of the now closed station building.  The second line headed off to Manchester through a tunnel under the Pennines on famous Woodhead Line.  This was the first line in the country to be electrified using overhead lines, but, in a typically British fudge, the system used wasn't adopted for the rest of the country.  The Woodhead Line remained as a strange blip until British Rail decided in the early Eighties that people really wouldn't want a fast electric train route between Manchester and Sheffield and closed the whole thing.  It's part of the Trans-Pennine Trail now, though there are periodic calls for it to be rebuilt.

I'd be visiting the other end of the Woodhead Tunnels at Hadfield later on, so I headed down the slippery road outside the station into town, pausing at the bottom for a smirky sign picture.

I had an hour until the next train south so I decided to go on a walk round the town centre in search of filth.  I'd decided that Penistone must be filled with all sorts of smut and I wanted to laugh and point at every double entendre I could find, because basically I'm a twelve year old boy.

Initial signs weren't good.  Penistone seemed like a perfectly reasonable small market town.  There were chippies and dog grooming parlours (dog groomers seem to be the new tanning salon; every town has one) and a home interiors store.  They had a sign in the window advertising Bill Beaumont Textiles, and I had a quiet giggle to myself at the thought of the former rugby player squatting over a knitting machine.  I felt quite foolish when I got home and found that, yes, it is that Bill Beaumont; the former Question of Sport team captain has a family history in the world of soft furnishings.  Live and learn.

 
I struggled to get a decent eyebrow raise out of the Penistone Paramount, not least because it's lovely to see a small local cinema still functioning in the era of multiplexes and Netflix.  They were showing The Theory of Everything and the latest Hobbit, two films I'd only see at gunpoint, but good on them anyway.

Past the parish church, into the main street.  There was a pub called The Spread Eagle, which is sort of rude, but it looked far too classy to indulge in that sort of undignified filth.  A small cafe with gingham curtains had windows obscured by steam, while a man sat in Greggs and ate a sausage roll with calm deliberation, each mouthful carefully considered.

My attention was grabbed by the Market Hall.  Looking like an old barn, it was attractive and impressive, but I couldn't help noticing there were hardly any stalls in it, and even fewer patrons.  A glance further down the street revealed the reason: the car park of an enormous Tesco.  It was clear the timber-framed Market Hall had been built as a sweetener for the town, a deal with the devil to allow the construction of the huge superstore.  The town council had agreed, and now it found that no-one actually wanted to use the Market any more because the Tesco over the way was cheaper and you could buy a DVD and drop off your dry cleaning while you was there.

Back on the High Street a woman cowered when she saw my camera - "I don't want to be in your photos!".  I continued past a beauty salon that offered "HD Brows" - real life is High Definition; you can't do anything to your eyebrows to change that - then turned into the residential Victoria Street.  The pavements were slick with ice, so I walked slightly bow legged, each step like the start of an episode of Casualty.  When the way ahead curved down a hill I gave up and walked in the road.

I was starting to feel guilty for laughing at Penistone.  It seemed like a perfectly nice little town.  I mean, I wouldn't want to live in a town with that name.  I imagined phoning up a gas company or a credit card and giving my address.

"Town?"

"Pennystun."

"Can you spell that for me?" they'd say, and you'd sigh and go through it.  After the fifth letter you'd hear a little snort down the phone, or they'd get annoyed with you for wasting their time, and you'd wonder why you hadn't just bought that house in Denby Dale instead.

After twenty minutes I was back at the entrance to the station again.  It was too cold for me to just sit on the platform so I went back into town, taking a different route.  I paused at a noticeboard which informed me that the local horticultural society has a website at http://growpenistone.org.uk/, a website that is probably blocked by a lot of workplaces.

Yeah, ok, I didn't feel that guilty about laughing.

Walking up the hill I got a bit of a shock when a skinhead emerged from a side passage.  He didn't come at me with a Stanley knife, nothing like that; it was just that he was 100% skinhead: bald, checked shirt with braces under a bomber jacket, jeans that were turned up just above his boots.  He was straight out of the 1970s, or rather, straight out of my family album: much to the amusement of my brother and I my mum used to be a skinhead.  Like everything that happened to your parents before you was born, this has provided hours of laughter for us.

(In the interests of tonsorial equality, I will point out that my dad spent much of the seventies with a white man afro, my brother once dyed his hair the colour of marmalade by mistake, and this very blog is an ongoing catalogue of my battles with a whole series of hairstyles that don't suit me in the slightest.)

At the top of the hill, eureka!  A smutty sign!

COCKPIT.  As in COCK.  As in PENIS.  ROFL.

I'd have laughed louder except there was a funeral just arriving at the church over the way.

I figured that was as good as it would get for Kenneth Williams-esque blinders so I headed back to the station.  The workmen were still there, now shoveling the snow on the other platform, chatting about their girlfriends all the while.  To hide from the cold, I went into the waiting room, but it smelt like my rabbit's cage when it needed mucking out so instead I sat on the platform and waited for my next train.

I hoped the train would be a nice smooth modern one, not a rickety Pacer.  There's nothing worse than climbing on board for a ride then bouncing around so much you end up with a sore backside.

OOER!  FNAR!  YUK-YUK!

Room at the Top

Bad news for Merseyrail: the House of Orange has fallen.  On January 1st Maarten Spaargaren gave up his position as MD of the railway company, bringing an end to the Dutch rule over Liverpool's railways.

Before Maarten, there was of course Bart Schmeink, who I ACTUALLY MET at a Christmas party Merseyrail generously invited me to once.  They didn't invite me again - hopefully nothing to do with all those JD and Cokes I knocked back, or me telling the man behind the Merseyrail map that the city centre square was "fucking shit" (I should say he agreed with me) - but I did attend Bart Schmeink's leaving do.  I arrived too early, skulked around at the edges eating vol-au-vents because that was easier than talking to people, and left without managing to speak to the great man himself.

I was happy when Bart was replaced by Maarten, because having a Netherlander ruling over Merseyrail seemed to work.  Customer satisfaction went up, punctuality went up, the trains and the stations all started looking a bit lovely.  They imported the M to Go concept from the Low Country, which worked, and the Bike and Go concept as well, which didn't quite as much.  Maarten has left Merseyrail for the sake of his children's education, which is appallingly selfish of him.  What about ME?

Now there's a man called Alan Chaplin running the company.  What sort of a name is that?  There's the correct number of vowels in it.  There's no satisfying "sch" sound.  It's far too English.  Alan is on a secondment from Northern, where he's more usually the Deputy MD, and I'm sure he's a lovely and very capable man.  I'm sure Merseyrail won't plunge into an abyss of horror but, just to be safe, I think Alan should attend work in an Ajax shirt and waving some tulips about.  While smoking a joint.

So instead I'm transferring my loyalties to Northern Rail in the "FavouriteManaging Director" category.  They don't have a Dutchman in charge there, either, but I'm willing to overlook that because they have Alex Hynes instead.  Alex is actually northern, which I like; admittedly, listening to him speak, he's not full on "ey up, down t'pit with me whippet" northern, but that's ok.  I like the idea of the rail operating company being run by someone who's actually got experience using it.  I bet some of the southern franchises are run by men who haven't left their air conditioned Jaguar since 1986.

Also, if I can be unashamedly shallow for a moment, Alex is a little bit sweet.  I like his teeth, and his ears: my fondness for Russell Tovey must have given you a hint that I have an inclination that way.  And now Tim seems to have left the Northern Twitter feed, Alex has moved to top spot in the Northern Rail Totty Stakes (apart from that guard on the Yorkshire Coast Line who was built like a small house and who caused me to have minor heart flutters).

I mean, GOOD LORD.

Another fact in Alex's favour: he is always travelling around the network.  I don't think he even has an office.  I think he just installs himself on the first train he sees and goes out and about.  Northern is such a weird franchise, and I'd hate to think he was just commuting in and out of Leeds on the frequently served, well maintained lines and thinking that was all his franchise was about.  I recently spent a couple of hours trying to work out how I was going to visit the stations between Pontefract and Goole, which get only three trains a day, one in the morning and two in the evening; a good MD knows about the backwaters and has seen them for himself.

But Alex's greatest asset?  He's as nerdy about travelling over Northern Rail as me, as evidenced by this from his Twitter feed:

We're clearly kindred spirits, Alex.  Give me a ring.  I'll buy you a pint.

Off Centre

Birkenhead Park is my local Merseyrail station, and I'm sneakily proud of it.  It's nice that my "home" station has a bit of history and prestige to it, rather than being just another tedious halt.  The ticket hall is a bit of a disaster, but that's not their fault: blame the Germans for that.  There's a little row of shops outside, as there should be by all urban railway stations, and it's got a fair amount of special treatment over the years.  Birkenhead Park has not one, but two ALFs, and some artwork by Stephen Hitchin.

Plus, and I realise this may be something only I appreciate, it's symmetrical.  Come down the ramp from the ticket hall and the island platform is neatly mirrored on both sides.  Utterly pleasing.

Or at least it was.  As part of the "upgrading" of the station, Birkenhead Park lost its distinctive shelter, built in the Eighties, and instead received one of those off the shelf ones that are springing up all over the network.  Fair enough; the new one is a sealed unit, so it's a lot warmer on windy February mornings than its open predecessor (though I note that one of the doors is broken already).  Behind it, there's a secure cycle storage unit.  I have yet to see any of these cycle cages occupied by more than one bike at a time, but never mind that.  The important fact is, the two new additions are not centred on the platform.

The fault lies with the new passenger shelter.  It's been aligned with the bricks on the West Kirby-bound platform, rather than centred properly.  They might have got away with it if the rest of the platform were not so regimented in its symmetry; the noticeboards give you a plumb line that means you can spot a deviation.

The cycle storage - which is wider than the shelter - compounds the error.  It pokes out from behind, but only on one side.  On the other it's flush with the edge of the shelter.

It is absolutely infuriating.  Every time I walk down onto the platform I see it.  It makes my teeth ache.  It makes me angry.  If I was the Hulk I'd rip that shelter out of its footings and slam it back into the concrete about four inches to the right.  Sadly, I'm not the Hulk.  I'm just a slightly mentally ill idiot who might have to start using Birkenhead North instead.

Divorce Day

Apparently the 5th of January is "Divorce Day"; the first working Monday after the New Year when people rush to the lawyers to get rid of the spouse who's been driving them mad all through the holidays.  I'm normally cynical of these supposed "event dates" (BLACK FRIDAY ISN'T A REAL THING IN THIS COUNTRY) but I got a bit of experience of this back when I worked for the Council.  We'd get an awful lot of people phoning up to let us know that they were now single - "and the date your circumstances changed?"

"Boxing Day."

Awkward pause.

The BF and I decided to take no risks.  Our relationship wasn't under any strain - it helped that I spent the entire Christmas period at my mum's - but best not to tempt fate, eh?  One tug and those gossamer thin threads holding everything together fall away.  We decided to spend the day apart.  He'd drive us to Huddersfield, then he'd go and see his friend Peter and I'd get to collect a couple of stations.  Our actual time together would be minimised and we wouldn't have to find a solicitor.

The advantage of this idea was that I'd get to start my journey in the wonderful surroundings of Huddersfield station.  It's a massive Classical temple of a building, with an attractive square laid out in front and pubs either side.  The station building is completely out of proportion for the town around it - and if I'm honest, the stuff behind the portico isn't anywhere near as impressive - but it's always a joy to pass through that grand entrance.

My actual schedule consisted of only two stations - Slaithwaite and Marsden, mill towns tucked in amongst the Pennines.  They were the only two remaining halts I hadn't visited on the Manchester-Huddersfield line, so it would be a nice way to close the line off and would give me a bit of a walk to get rid of those holiday pounds.

The platforms at Slaithwaite are splayed either side of a road bridge, the local Passenger Transport Executive's best way to get round a bad lot.  There was a Slaithwaite station here for decades, but it was closed in 1968 and the site was largely built on.  Only fourteen years later, there was enough passenger need for the station to be reopened, so the new platforms had to be wedged in where they could - one on the site of the old station, one on the site of the goods yard.  In other words, more money was probably spent rebuilding the station than if they'd just left the damn thing open for those fourteen years.

Now I'm all for community engagement with local transport, but what the eggy fig is going on with this plant holder?  "Moo Poo"?  "Steel Dreams", under a picture of a smug dolphin?  I stood staring at it for far too long, trying to work out its true meaning.  I'm guessing it's something to do with "the environment", but I'm open to any explanations.

The road plunged steeply down from the station to the centre of the village, a drop I had to lean against to try and stay straight.  Poking through the trees was the hefty bulk of the old mill building, its yellow lettering still advertising Globe Worsted Co Limited, but surrounded by empty windows.  I could see right through it to the hills on the other side.  A vast, unused hulk in the very centre of Slaithwaite.

The town seemed busy, a mix of people working and looking furious and people still on holiday looking smug.  A father corralled two lively children across the road with a facial expression that said "when do they go back to school?".  I turned onto a side road, past the Dri-n-Wash Washeteria with its slightly wonky "T", and onto a spit of land between the Huddersfield Narrow Canal and the River Colne.  The two bodies of water run parallel through the valley, feeding and challenging one another, the wild river counterpointed by the stillness of the canal.

There was another mill along here, converted into an indoor playground for children and an ice cream shop and furniture makers, and then Slaithwaite just seemed to stop, and I was in the countryside.  The yellow brick of the mill was suddenly replaced by low walls, furred with moss, and the towpath became a slick of mud and puddles.

I had a couple of other walkers accompanying me, two stout ginger women who marched through the mud in well-used wellies.  They radiated bluster and self-reliance, making me afraid to overtake them.  There wasn't much room on the towpath, and they looked like the kind of ladies who would attack a potential sexual predator with a swift knee to the kidneys and then a forceful shove into the canal.  I made as much noise as possible as I approached and swung past with an apologetic smile, before putting on a decent lick of speed to take me away from them before they karate chopped my shoulder and rendered me unconscious.

January sludge splattered against the backs of my jeans.  It really is the most miserable of months, isn't it?  At least February - which shares a lot of the same characteristics - is only 28 days long.  January just clings on, a hangover we feel the need to repeat every year, where everything is grey and dead and damp.  Winter, but not the good kind, the kind with snow you watch fall from inside country pubs.  January is drizzle and low sun in the afternoon and dark clouds that threaten but never come through.

The sleeping trees rolled back to reveal undulating hills.  Above me, threadbare grassy slopes rose to ash coloured skies.  To my left, the Colne gurgled and churned, heavy with the last few days' rain, occasionally supplemented by overflow from the canal.

I passed lock after lock after lock.  No wonder there weren't any boats in sight; it must be incredibly tedious working your way up and over the Pennines.  Rise up into one lock and you can see the next in the distance.  This is before you've reached the Standedge Tunnel, just beyond Marsden, a 16,000 foot long passage that's so dark and narrow you can only pass through it with a specially booked guide.  No wonder railways were embraced so heartily.

There hadn't been much sign of habitation around.  The occasional farm house, a barn or two.  The distant noise of traffic coming from somewhere in the distance.  A TransPennine Express train would occasionally burn through on its way to Piccadilly, the only reminder that there was a railway somewhere in amongst the folds of the landscape.  It was a surprise to come across the hulk of yet another mill, this one in the worst condition yet.  Windows were smashed, with those on the lower levels bricked up altogether.  Outbuildings had been knocked down.  Razor wire had been erected over the top of the wall to the canal, though I doubt that's where the vandals were coming from.  I fantasised about buying the mill and turning it into a vast home for myself.  Smashing through the floors to make colossal, triple height living rooms, an eyrie in the tower, a garden running down to the river.  Then I thought of how isolated I'd be and how it would be the perfect venue for a slasher movie and I huddled swiftly on.

The Sparth Reservoir opened up the landscape for a bit, with a little expanse of water to fill the canal, and then the woods returned.  There were houses too, backing onto the canal with rough fences and brambles, as I moved into the edge of Marsden.  They had big oil tanks propped up on bricks; we were out of the way of gas central heating here.  The crazy, up and down nature of the terrain sent streets shooting into the air above me while access roads seemed to have suffered terrible landslips.  Horses had come through here and churned up the towpath into a kind of thick porridge.

I re-emerged onto tarmac at a bridge over the canal.  Across the way, a couple of pensioners were blithely stood in the road, catching up without regard for the lack of pavement or the cars trying to get by.  I walked by a couple of small industrial units, including a musical instrument maker who advertised themselves as "the first FSC certified wind instrument manufacturer in the world".  Is that really a problem that needs dealing with?  Are entire swathes of rainforest being cut down for oboes?  Are clarinets responsible for global warming?  It seemed an overreaction to me, but that's probably because I'm utterly selfish and hate the Earth.

I reached the centre of Marsden and was immediately filled with a powerful, overwhelming emotion.  Disappointment.

I must say this wasn't Marsden's fault.  Marsden is a perfectly charming Yorkshire village.  It's set in amongst beautiful hills, it has lovely buildings, there's a real sense of community.  No, my disappointment was down to the fact that I'd been here before and I hadn't realised.  It was back in July 2012, when I'd finished off a day visiting the stations on the Penistone Line with a meal with the BF and Peter.  We'd driven out of Huddersfield and ended up at a charming little pub/restaurant overlooking the river, where we'd had a lovely meal.  It was only slightly spoiled by the fact that I had a panic attack near the end, and I had to go and stand by the river and breathe in deep lungfuls of air to recover.

Well, there was the pub/restaurant.  There was the river.  There was the little bridge I'd stood on for ten minutes trying to get my breath.  It was all as pretty as I remembered it, but the point was, I'd already seen it.

This isn't a blog about grand discoveries and epic journeys: it's about little bits of England.  But it's about finding those bits of England with new eyes each time, so coming across somewhere I should, by all the signs, have adored, only to realise it was old hat, left me with a deflated feeling.

I wandered up the scenic high street.  Marsden seemed to be a thriving place, with plenty of small tea rooms and bric a brac shops to distract you and any passing tourists.  There wasn't much to it - one street leading up to a main road through the valley - but what was there was interesting.  One downside: the public toilet was locked up, and I was dying for a pee.  I had to find somewhere to go.

What?  I needed the loo and it would have been rude to just use a pub toilet without buying anything.  Besides, I knew for a fact that the Riverhead Brewery Tap was a good pub so I may as well take advantage of it.  I settled down in the corner with a pint of Yorkshire Blonde (£2.60, just to make all you London types jealous) and listened to the chatter of the regulars and the quiet parade of music in the background.  After Benny and the Jets then Billy Don't Be A Hero then Brown Eyed Girl I realised that someone was tracking alphabetically through their AOR playlist on their phone, and I put my headphones in before By The Time I Get To Phoenix turned up.  That sort of ordered list trips directly into my OCD, and I'd have spent the rest of the day sat there trying to guess what the next song would be.

I finished my pint and headed out of the pub, past the Millennium Project model of the village outside, and over the river to the old market place.  I knew from my last visit that there was a set of stocks over there, now slightly incongruously in the grounds of a retirement home.  The plaque underneath alleged that they were medieval, but I wasn't convinced.  They seemed in far too good a condition to be six hundred years old, and Marsden wasn't a real community of note until the 19th century.  I can't seem to find anything on the web to back up the claim, either.

Still, it's a nice little feature for the tourists, if you go with the image of stocks as a hilarious way to punish miscreants by pelting them with rotten fruit.  I read an article once that said it was a horrible punishment, and that people often took advantage of your prone state to do all sorts to you - up to and including raping your unable to move rear end.  Think of that next time you watch a Robin Hood film.

The station's high above the village, so I trudged up the hill to reach it, passing a pub called the Railway en route.  Idly, I thought: I wonder how many pubs there are called the Railway?  I wonder if anyone's visited all of them?  Hey, I'll need something to occupy myself when I've visited all these stations.  It's either that or lie in bed crying.

Marsden has a curious layout - three platforms (it used to be four) and each one accessed separately by its own entrance.  I'd wandered up to platform 3, only to find I needed number 1 and I had to turn round and go back the way I came.  As I crossed the road bridge the voice of a demon burst into the silent air and chilled my blood.  Oh, wait: it wasn't the voice of a demon, it was one of those "be careful on the platform" warnings which, for some reason, Northern have read out by small children.  It's like having a Midwich Cuckoo whisper in your ear, and is quite terrifying; the lispy voice of a young girl turns an innocuous safety announcement into a threat (be careful near the platform edge, because I'M HIDING NEARBY).  I don't know whose idea this was but they need to be shot.  Or left on a country platform in the dark listening to the announcements over and over.

I boarded the train back into Huddersfield, and had another pint in the pub at the station there while I waited for the BF to finish with his friend.  He picked me up outside the station and we headed home.  I'm happy to report that Divorce Day didn't result in the irreparable destruction of our relationship, but hey: there's always next year.