Rose Tinted Windows

Making things better on Merseyrail doesn't have to mean stripping out Hamilton Square and rebuilding it from scratch.  It can be small, happy, relatively cheap improvements that make you smile.

There's one of these at Bidston.  The station was refurbished last year, and a new, warm glass shelter was constructed.  That was already a great improvement on what was there before.  It's been knocked up a notch, however, as black and white photographs of the station in its past have been added.

They're opaque, so the waiting room is as bright as it was before, but now there's a little bit of history to look at while you sit there.

It's not much.  A tiny gesture.  But it's lovely, and the passengers I saw at Bidston on Monday seemed to appreciate it too.

A small plaque records that the photos are from the collection of a Dr B W L Brocklebank.  Thank you, Dr Brocklebank, and thank you Merseyrail and Merseytravel,

Swiss Movement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jump Back In Time

"Wombwell?"

"How dare you!  That's none of your business!"

Still, I suppose after my adventures in Penistone, it was only fair I paid the reproductive organs of the ladies some attention as well.

I'd risen up the social scale at Wombwell.  The houses stood well back, with long drives and grass verges at the roadside.  The verges were unsullied by car tracks, the way they are in some places; the people here had double garages they could store their second car in, so they didn't need to churn up the public highway.  Behind the homes the trees of Wombwell Woods swayed in the wind, giving the homes a vaguely fairy tale air.

It was exactly the kind of street you could picture children being snatched from and taken off to be murdered in the woods.  If you have a twisted imagination like me.

While the road turned right, I turned left.  I immediately regretted not being in my walking boots.

The ground had been sodden and had frozen and then had melted again, leaving the mud sticky and moist.  The surface was like walking on wet clay.  I skidded and slipped, trying to follow the places where it had been churned up - the cycle tracks, the dog paw prints - but most of the time I just minced.  Tiny, delicate steps, quickly placed so I didn't sink, tapping over the field.  I imagined a farmer turning up on a tractor and just watching me with bemusement.

A concrete footbridge over a dual carriageway gave me a moment of firm land - and also a fine view of the local hills - but then it was back to the sludge for a last dash across a field.  Finally I was able to stagger up a slope behind some new houses, where I kicked off the worst of the mud.

The path continued as an alleyway, before opening up into Jump Park.  That's not a local council trying to get its citizens healthy and active with an exercise yard; I was actually in the village of Jump.  Obviously that goes straight into my top ten of placenames.  How lovely it must be to say "I live in Jump."  The only way it would be better would be if there was an exclamation mark at the end: Jump!  Why should Westward Ho! get all the plaudits for having punctuation in its name.  The residents should start a petition.

Walking around, though, I soon realised that the residents of Jump had more important things on their mind.  It was a sad, downtrodden place.  Terraces of old houses with broken windows.  The remnants of a bus stop, reduced to its footings.  A relatively new row of townhouses had patches of grass out front that were little more than rubbish tips.  Some of it came from the houses themselves - boxes for a new stereo, the remnants of Christmas decorations - but most of it was litter kicked into the yards from the street.  I couldn't help noticing the high number of cheap beer cans.

I headed down the hill by the Flying Dutchman pub, its chalkboard still wishing us Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and past a brand new Sure Start Centre.  It was surrounded by high razor wire, giving the impression that the children inside were in some way feral.

It brought to mind the great Yorkshire poet, Jarvis Cocker.  As I left Jump, heading into the countryside that separates it from its neighbour at Elsecar, the words of Common People popped into my head:

You'll never watch your life slide out of view 

And dance, and drink, and screw 

Because there's nothing else to do

What else was there to do for a teenager in Jump besides sit at a bus stop necking budget lager?  There wasn't an easy way out.  I imagined it could be a horribly lonely and isolated place.

I headed further into the valley, then under the viaduct and into Elsecar.  I had nearly an hour until my next train so I decided to take a circuitous route instead of heading straight to the station.  I walked through some of the quietest streets I have ever known.  There were no cars, no people, no sound.  The only noise was me (my trainers had developed an irritating squeak).  I didn't see a soul.  It was eerie.

I was almost deliriously happy to reach the main road and see actual traffic.  Elsecar was, like most places in this part of the world, a mining village, and down by the River Dearne there were Victorian terraces and workshops.  Now they were extremely desirable, despite the busy road outside; the gardens here were well tended to and neat, unlike their Jump counterparts.  The only objects scattered over their lawns were garden ornaments.

There were larger homes, plus a pub that had been converted into flats: it still had the Saloon stained glass over the door.  A woman came out of the building to get into her Land Rover and, even though I was a good six feet away, I could smell her incredibly strong perfume.  The inside of her car must have been like a gas chamber.

Elsecar's sexy and it knows it.  The industry has been replaced with tourism because it's such a pretty example of a Yorkshire mining village.  It's the cleaned up, polite version of course; no-one wants to see filth in the streets or children with rickets, but it's the sort of place that would turn up in an inspiring Sunday afternoon film.  One where the grumpy but old-fashioned mine worker - with a moustache and a flat cap - finally acknowledges his son's desire to move to That London and get a fancy university education with a hard-pressed smile.  Then they sing a Lionel Bart song, and the people in the street outside do a dance with their thumbs jammed in their braces.  Or something.

I walked past the church, which featured some frankly terrifying Victorian angel statues (damn you Moffat!) and down towards the Elsecar Heritage Centre.  The former ironworks have been turned into a visitor attraction.  Note that I say "visitor attraction" rather than actually describing what it is, because to be honest, I couldn't quite work it out.  There was a courtyard with a little cafe, as you'd expect, but then there were a load of shops.  They were artsy, crafty shops, yes - interior designers and antique dealers and places selling charming little tchotchkes - but they weren't exactly destination stores.

It was, basically, somewhere to go of a Sunday afternoon.  It didn't really have any reason to exist rather than there were some nice old buildings no-one wanted to see go to waste and there are a lot of desperate parents out there looking for something to do with their kids at the weekend.  On a weekday it was deserted.

Its main selling point is the Elsecar Heritage Railway, a preserved steam line that runs from the centre.  I walked round to the back and found a lovely clapboard station, with preserved engines and carriages waiting alongside.  Someone, somewhere, was working on an engine, and I could smell the smoke.

 
At the moment, the line is a cul-de-sac.  Trains can run as far as the Hemingfield basin, then they have to reverse and come back again without passengers getting the chance to alight.  They've recently raised enough money to construct an extension and a new halt, to make it into more of an experience.

There was a museum carriage, too, but I didn't have time to visit it.  My leisurely strolls meant that I now had only fifteen minutes until my train left, and I still had to get up the hill to reach it.  I had just enough time to do one thing:

I did also have time to stop outside the pub by the heritage centre and take a photo of one of the most wonderfully naff pub signs I have ever seen:

I sincerely hope the landlady was pregnant when they painted that, otherwise I'd want my money back.

I passed an old garage, still advertising Austin Morris cars and flying a tattered Union Jack, then pushed up the hill towards the station.  This part of the village was less scenic, but still seemed like a good place to live.  There was a tiny cafe, the Cottage Kitchen, with a poster saying Pea and pies served TONIGHT!, and a couple of solid pubs named after dignitaries.

Elsecar station used to have a ticket office, but it was closed a long time ago.  The building remains, decaying, the goods yard turned into a builder's merchant.  Decisions about what is and isn't worth preserving on the railway sometimes seem so unfair.

At the platform level the station had been refurbished and modernised, with plenty of ramps for the disabled and bike racks and electronic notice boards.  The tannoy system was in full flow.  Someone at Northern - and if I ever find out who it is, I'll kick them to death while wearing football boots - has decided that just having safety announcements isn't enough.  That's boring.  There are the terrifying children making announcements that I recoiled from at Marsden a few weeks ago, but even when it's a grown up it's no less irritating.

Earlier, at Barnsley, I'd heard "Any unattended items will be removed and possibly destroyed - no matter how nice they are!"  Now I got "Ooh, smile!" - the oooh pronounced in a way Barbara Windsor would have deemed over the top - "You're on camera!" , followed by the actual legally mandated notification about CCTV.  Worse was "Mind the gap between the platform and the train.  This is not a place you'd want to visit!"  That one doesn't even work.

Stop it now.  This comes under the same category as smoothies that describe their ingredients as "yummy strawberries" and comedy menus.  Treat us like adults.  If you want to write a sitcom, go off and do it; Carla Lane's had loads on telly, so it can't be that difficult.  Leave our safety announcements and our information boards unvarnished and ordinary.  I was ecstatic when the train arrived and I no longer had to listen to the endless mithering.

Chapeltown was my final stop for the day, and it felt like I'd reached the city.  Though it's technically a town in its own right, separated from Sheffield by countryside, it seemed like I'd hit the suburbs.  There was an Asda superstore and semi-detached homes stretching into the distance.  Down at street level, I found a small shopping precinct and a busy roundabout.  I also found this sign on the railway bridge, which I loved:

It's the "fast" that really sold it for me.  It's a deliberate two fingers to the drivers trapped in a jam underneath it.

I should have had a proper walk round the town, appreciated its sights, its ambiance.  I had an hour until the train back to Huddersfield after all.  Unfortunately, right outside the entrance to the station was a Wetherspoon's, and I am weak.

I'm very sorry.  Actually I'm not.  That Newkie Brown was gorgeous.

Ice Station Yorkshire

I didn't actually see a Common in Silkstone Common.  I did look.  It made me think that perhaps it was a nickname that had somehow become official; that it was the place where Silkstone residents sent the working classes to live.  I pictured Victorian parlour maids and chimney sweeps trudging up the hill to go and work in the Downton-esque kitchens of the proper Silkstonians.

Still, the commoners got the last laugh, because that railway station is a lot more valuable in the 21st century.  It was only built in 1984, explaining its single platform and slightly cheap furnishings - the Eighties in South Yorkshire were not a time of great riches.  There had been a station here before, which closed at the end of the fifties when local services were withdrawn.  It's funny how, in 2015, we're told that closing railway stations is far too expensive and difficult to get through the legal processes, when fifty years ago they seemed to close entire swathes of the network without anyone really giving a monkeys.

Silkstone Common seems to be a thriving little community, judging by the notice board outside the Station Inn.  The British Legion, a Parish Council, a call to arms to fight the withdrawal of the mobile library.  There was a schedule for the "Good Companions", an organisation that provides entertainment for the elderly: it included "Tony and Heather entertain us with songs we know" and "The Maria Penrose School of Dance come to entertain us".  I dread being infirm and trapped in an old people's home already; don't make it worse by making half a dozen Shirley Temples do the dying swan to Bad Romance when I'm too old to run away.

The village was arranged along the edge of a hill, the railway line above us, then a steep drop below.  Large detached homes were built as high up as possible so they could get a good view over the valley.  Most of them were charming, but here and there they'd been augmented by tacky extensions and grandiose features to try and make them more impressive than their neighbours.  One home had added fibreglass columns to try and impart a bit of classical grace onto their 1950s residence.  Now that was common.

A little development of new, identical houses signaled the end of the village.  The only thing separating the homes was the colour of the front doors - one green, one blue, one cream.  I wondered if they'd had a conference about who got what colour.  A fraught discussion in one of the front rooms, hissed claims for each shade being made over the rich teas.  A red rejected as too outre; yellow simply out of the question.

The cleared paths stopped at the edge of the village as well.  Beyond habitable lands you were on your own; walk at your own risk.  I trod gingerly, wearing only a pair of trainers.  The lace on my walking boots had snapped that morning, so I'd just grabbed the first shoes I saw.  A mistake as they had no grip at all on the icy pavements.

(It has literally just occurred to me, as I typed this up, that I have a perfectly good pair of Dr Martens boots that I could have worn instead.  Fool).

The view was fantastic though.  Fields stripped with white filtered through bare trees; a soft violet sun breaking through swirling clouds.  I had to keep stopping just to take it in.

Over a rise in the road and then there were farmhouses.  Cows huddled inside their sheds, close together to keep warm.  The farmer kicked his way through the yard, followed by his dog, an Irish Wolfhound that looked bigger than the cattle.  At the next farm, I couldn't see the livestock, but I could hear them, wails rising up out of the buildings.

I was surprised by the whinney of a horse from across the road.  The steep slope meant that it was hidden from view, just a head poking up over the top.

The noise and smell of the dairy farm reminded my of my Great Uncle Ted and Charlie's farm when I was growing up; Charlie had died the week before so he was on my mind.  He'd worked on the farm all his life, right up until the end, even though he was in his 80s.  Visiting the farm as a child was always a thrill, the huge cows looking down at us through gentle eyes, the piles of straw to leap on.  Ted and Charlie came as a pair - two brothers who lived together and worked together, at least until Ted passed away a few years ago and Charlie carried on alone.  They never married; had no need to with a battalion of sisters willing to take care of them.  My nan would cook their dinner for them, and Auntie Elsie would come up from London at the weekends to keep house.  We'd be visiting on a Sunday and suddenly the living room door would open and one of them would appear.  I never got straight in my head which was Ted and which was Charlie.  Both were stout blocks of men, faces permanently darkened through hours outdoors, a flat cap squat on top of their head.  Ted or Charlie would always press a coin into my little hand with thick black fingers, unmovable dirt embedded beneath the fingernails.  Gone now.

The little trip into my past had carried me into the fringes of Dodworth.  I reached the village centre, a crossroads marked by a Budgens, a bookie, and a war memorial of a proud soldier.

I passed the Dodworth Central Social Club, which was advertising an upcoming performance by "Sophie's Choice".  Seriously, just do a little Googling before you name your band.  Not much, just enough to find out where that phrase stuck in your head originated.  Naming yourself after a gut wrenching Holocaust drama starring Meryl Streep and her latest Amazing Accent is not really suitable.  Unless I'm completely wrong, and Sophie's Choice are an anti-Semitic punk band whose name is a deliberate slight on the death of millions at the hands of the Nazis, in which case, have at you.  Either way, I won't be buying a ticket.

I walked up to the station, trying to ignore a sinister looking cat with a moustache who watched me out of the front window of one of the houses.  Two doors down, a pug did the same thing; that's a hilarious sitcom just waiting to be written, isn't it?  I found a seat on the platform at Dodworth station to wait for my train south.

I got out my lunch.  It was about that time and I'd been on the go since seven.  I'm trying to be healthy at the moment; cutting out alcohol and carbs, doing more walking.  It's a bit of a strain.  Fortunately the BF is doing the same thing, so there's an element of competition to it.  Never underestimate the power of being able to feel superior to someone else because you only had a celery stick for lunch and they had celery and some peppers.

That day I had a healthy salad with the barest glimpse of vinaigrette.  It was clean living, gluten free, paleo friendly, and utterly tedious.  I crunched through the leaves with a complete lack of enthusiasm until I was too bored to eat any more.  Then I pulled out the mini packet of pretzels I'd got from the First Class attendant on the train that morning and ate those.  Pretzels are sort of healthy, aren't they?

The next stop was Barnsley.  Sorry, no: the next stop was Barnsley Interchange.  The Council went to great efforts to rebuild the railway station and the bus station next to one another, and they renamed the resulting building.

The station didn't seem anything remarkable to me.  It was good to see a town with modern transport facilities, with a well cared for platform area and a ticket hall with members of staff.  There was even a public toilet (20p to use it, but at least it was there).

Climbing up and over the tracks it became clear that the railway station was very much the junior partner in the interchange.  While the Northern part had the vague air of a leisure centre, the bus station was grandiose and loud.

I ended up on a sort of floating balcony above a multicoloured barrage of noise and flash.  Escalators carried you down to a shopping mezzanine - the smell of Subway sandwiches filled the hall - and then onto glass fronted gates for bus services.

There was something of the Millennium Dome to it all; the high roof, the bright incursions into the space, the feeling that it was just that little bit too big for its purpose.  If there had been a giant pink model of the human body and befuddled Japanese people trying to work out what it was for I wouldn't have been surprised.

I left through the grand main entrance and entered Barnsley town centre.  I was immediately greeted by some lipstick on a pig.

I understand that a giant empty office block, particularly one whose best days are long behind it, is not the best first impression to give new arrivals to the town.  Those coloured windows though... They didn't work for me.  They were so bright, they made the concrete building look even dowdier.  It also smacked of a temporary fix, like the council were just killing time until they could demolish the building.  Embrace it!  Put your arms round its ugliness and love it!

There was, it has to be said, a fair amount of ugliness in Barnsley town centre.  At some point in the past they'd tried to improve life for the residents by covering it with a huge concrete roof and pushing the market hall and shops inside.  There were footbridges linking the buildings, footbridges that served no purpose any more other than acting as a place to hang Christmas decorations and Happy Diwali signs (even though it's January).  The markets had hung a sign outside, "STILL over 200 stalls inside!" which made it sound like they were dwindling all the time.

It was ugly and unfashionable, and yet, further up the road, was a 1990s version of exactly the same building - the Alhambra Shopping Centre, another soulless mall that sucked shoppers off the main street and sealed them inside.

I followed the hill round, up to the town hall.  An open space had been laid out at one corner, complete with a piece of rusting metal modern art and flower beds that hadn't quite taken yet.  A sign urged me to "Experience Barnsley"; it turns out "Experience Barnsley" was actually the name of the town museum and art gallery.  I think that name promises more than it could possibly deliver.

I rounded back to the Interchange for the sign picture.  There were grand signs on the front of the bus portion but it wasn't quite what I was after.  I headed over to Schwabish Gmund Way (named after the twin town; there's a Barnsleyer Strasse in Germany) and found the more traditional sign by the level crossing.

Inside the bus terminal I bought a cup of tea to insulate me against the Yorkshire chill.  And a steak bake.  Steak bakes are healthy, right?

Back over the footbridge to the railway station, past a terrifying Orwellian poster from the South Yorkshire police about CCTV ("MY EYES NEVER BLINK") and then down to the platform to eat my pastie and drink my tea.  Three more stations done on the Penistone Line.  Three more to go.