The Varsity Line In The Sand

It's a question that's torn British society asunder for literally centuries: which is better, Oxford or Cambridge?  There has never been a definitive answer to this question... UNTIL NOW.  Yes, thanks to a couple of mini breaks I took this year, I am able to once and for all settle this question, through the twin powers of science and railway stations.  These are the only true metrics that should be used to decide anything.  I will run you through my workings before I reach a conclusion, breaking it down into a series of extremely valid categorisations:

1. NEWISH RAILWAY STATION THAT IS ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF TOWN

Oxford Parkway station opened in 2013, though weirdly, it didn't have services to Oxford itself until three years later.  This was part of Chiltern Railways' scheme to improve the line from the city into London Marylebone and it's a very Parkway station.  There's an absolutely enormous car park, tied into the local park and ride bus service, while there's a lot of silver cladding and glass on the building itself.

One feature it does have that I thoroughly approve of is tilework.  Ceramic tiles used to be all over railway stations - they're easy to clean, they add colour, they're charming.  It seems to have been lost over the decades however, replaced by plain walls or plasticky cladding.  Oxford Parkway brings back the tiles with a lovely blue colour throughout the ticket office and public areas.

Delightful.  There is one minus however, and that's the lack of a ticket office.  There's an "information desk", but if you want to buy a ticket, you have to use the machines.  Why they couldn't combine these two services into the one desk, I don't know.

Meanwhile there's another grey box over at Cambridge North, opening in 2017.  This one isn't a Parkway station, but was instead built to serve both the burgeoning Cambridge Science Park and the redevelopment of the area.  It's a bold, show off-y building, the kind of building that gets called "iconic" by the developers before they've even laid a single brick.

There is also quite possibly the largest cycling storage facility I've ever seen in the UK.  Imagine a warehouse, without walls, and filled with row after row of racks.  It looks like something from Amsterdam.

Cambridge North has been decorated with an intricate design cut into its steel fascia.  It looks lovely, and is apparently based on some incredibly complex mathematical something.  I don't really understand it.  Head over to The Beauty of Transport for the full explanation, and also, the story of how they got the wrong design and the one they used was actually by someone from Oxford, which is quite funny really.

Final verdict: Cambridge North should win this.  It's newer, it's funkier, it's got artwork.  But I'm going to give it to Oxford Parkway because... I liked the tilework.  I mean, I really liked it.  Also that family you can see in the picture above were really annoying, bouncing all over the station like it was a playground, and that put me off North.

WINNER: OXFORD

2. THE CITY

I spent one day in each city, being a tourist, clattering around pretty wildly without much of a scheme.  As such I almost certainly didn't go to wherever you thought I should've gone.  Yes, there probably is a fantastic café tucked away at the back of an alleyway that's only open for twenty minutes a day, but sorry, I'm being basic and hitting the sights.

My impression was that Oxford felt more like a city: by which I mean, a functioning, modern place where people lived and worked.  It had buses and noise and bustle in a way that Cambridge didn't.  Cambridge felt more historic, more preserved, as though it had settled on its form sometime in the 15th century and hadn't bothered updating it.  Oxford was a bit more modern, although since we're talking about Oxbridge, I'm using "modern" in the sense of "felt like the Victorians might have actually been here."

Normally I'd go with the city that feels more modern because that's who I am.  I dislike cities that are fossilised.  But Cambridge had a charm woven through it that was absent from Oxford.  Wandering the narrow streets of Cambridge felt like a delight, a pleasurable experience in itself, while in Oxford, ducking down a tiny street was a means to get somewhere else.  It didn't bewitch me in the same way.

Final verdict: Oxford should win this on paper, but I simply found Cambridge much more fun to be in.  It made me smile.

WINNER: CAMBRIDGE

3. UNIVERSITIES

Obviously I didn't go to Oxbridge (Edge Hill massive, represent).  I did actually get invited to my Sixth Form College's Oxbridge preparation class; a teacher took me aside and advised me to attend it at lunchtime, because he thought I had the potential.  I went to one session and I was terrified.  It wasn't about simply being clever - you also had to be a certain kind of person, act a certain way in interviews, have a varied and interesting life outside of your studies.  I fled the class and put any thought of attending out of my head, which was lucky considering (a) I then comprehensively cocked up my A-Levels and (b) I wouldn't have been able to afford a single term there.  And this was when you still got grants!

I wandered the precincts and imagined how it would be to attend here and suddenly I got it.  I got that Oxbridge attitude, the slight sniffiness, the superiority.  It wasn't pure snobbery.  Walking among those buildings I could see how you had history pushed into you.  These were thousand year old colleges, places that produced kings and prime ministers and the finest scientists and artists and mathematicians of their age.  You weren't simply studying here, you were being added to their ranks.  You were being imbued with importance.

How can you wander through exquisitely designed ancient corridors and not feel like a prince?  I felt like that and I was only using it as a shortcut between one bit of town and another.  If I'd been wearing a gown and clutching a pile of books I'd have felt like the greatest person on earth.

FINAL VERDICT: Both universities seem like astonishing, inspiring places to study, places that have changed the course of the entire human race.  So it's a tie there.  I'll have to bring it down to alumni.  Cambridge has the Footlights, which has been home to some of my most favourite people on earth.  Oxford has the Bullingdon Club.

WINNER: CAMBRIDGE

4. RIVERS

Oxford is on the Thames, which seems like cheating.  The Thames is London's, and you can't muscle in on it, I don't care what "geography" says.  It's like Stockport having a Merseyway Shopping Centre, laying claim to a river that quite clearly belongs to Liverpool.  

Meanwhile, Cambridge is on the Cam, quite obviously.  That's more like it.  As the name implies, the Cam goes right through the centre of the city, while in Oxford it sort of bends round the edge - by the time you reach it you are most definitely on your way out of town.  

What Oxford does have is a disused railway bridge to let you cross the river.  This is the Gasworks Bridge, which used to carry a small spur off the mainline to a long demolished gasworks.  

Cambridge, on the other hand, has footbridges that belong to the colleges and are fenced off to the plebs.  In fact, at one of them, the BF paused in the shadow to check his phone, and a porter appeared behind him and eyed him suspiciously in case he tried to open the gate.  Unfriendly.

FINAL VERDICT: I almost gave this to the Cam based on the fact that the trousers of the punters are extremely tight and make their backsides look amazing, but at the end of the day, I can't fully condone private bridges.  

WINNER: OXFORD

5. JOHN LEWIS TOILETS

If you need the loo in a strange city, head for the John Lewis, because they'll be clean and easily accessible.  I visited the department stores in both cities and while they were both nice enough, Oxford's mall was a bit better and more interesting, so they get the win.

WINNER: OXFORD

6.  HARRY POTTER TAT

Harry Potter still means a lot to people, of course, even though its author has turned out to be a thoroughly awful person.  I enjoyed the books myself.  And even though it's literally more than a decade since they last released a Harry Potter film, lots of people still want to visit the locations.  Fair enough - I visited Matera while I was in Italy, not because of its stunning architecture and proud history, but because James Bond shot a significant portion of it to pieces.  Oxford, however, has really embraced its legacy as a filming location, to the extent that you can't go more than ten yards without someone in a striped scarf lurching out of a side alley talking about their patreon.  There are Harry Potter shops and Harry Potter cafes and Harry Potter walking tours and I will remind you that this is the oldest university in the English speaking world and a city that existed for more than a thousand years before JK Rowling put aside her rampant transphobia for a couple of minutes to write a book.  There was something quite depressing about standing behind a tour guide talking about the Bodleian Library, one of the finest academic centres on earth, and have them reveal that it was used for a scene in one of the Harry Potters to gasps from the assembled tourists.  Cambridge, on the other hand, wasn't used for a single scene in the films, and so can't make any spurious claims to fame; it sells itself on being Cambridge rather than Gryffindor adjacent.  Perhaps if Hogwarts' dining hall had been in Peterhouse College instead of Leavesden Studios it'd be a very different story but for the time being Cambridge comes off as a lot classier. 

WINNER: CAMBRIDGE

7.  CENTRAL STATIONS

I'm going to tell you the winner before we even start here, because I'm sorry, it has to be said: Oxford station is a dump.  I expected a historic, beautiful building, something with a bit of class.  Instead I got a load of red and blue metalwork chucked up during the fag end of British Railways.

Who hurt you, Oxford?  Who told you this was acceptable?  Aren't you embarrassed?  I suppose they have the Oxford Tube, that famous coach line that runs direct to London, so the trains are an afterthought.  Still, I expected better.  I thought of the thousands of people who must pass through here every year and get this as their first view of a legendary city.

I must also point out that directly outside the station is the entrance to the Thatcher Business Education Centre, named after That Bloody Woman.  Welcome to Oxford, indeed.

Cambridge on the other hand - now that's what you want from a railway station.  An epic frontage, a station square, some artwork.  Admittedly Cambridge has a slight advantage in that it's clearly in the middle of a big regeneration project; the station is surrounded by a serious of large bland boxes that house apartments, hotels, offices.  It's a bit like Canary Wharf has crashed into the Fens.  

Still, it's better than the bloody Thatcher Institute.  The interior suffers slightly from being a through station - it's more of a long corridor stretched along the platforms - but it carries itself well, and has some lovely heritage features.  It also has some funky LED next train indicators with animations and colours.  I'm easily impressed.  It is, however, lacking a proper totem with the station name on it.  Sort it out, please.

FINAL VERDICT: Duh.

WINNER: CAMBRIDGE

AND THE OVERALL WINNER IS:

Cambridge!

Both cities are beautiful and elegant and totally worth visiting, but Cambridge nudges ahead.  Cambridge was the one that I could see myself revisiting someday, for a longer period, whereas I feel like I've "done" Oxford.  Still, it's good to finally solve the eternal question of which one is better.  You can argue with my decision in the comments if you want, but know this: I am right and will not be persuaded otherwise.  Next week, I definitively prove which is better - Cats or Dogs.  

(Spoiler: it's dogs).

Going Round The Back

For reasons far too dull to go into here, I nipped over to Liverpool today.  Heading for the lift at James Street I noticed there was only one in use; not ideal, but not unusual.  The lifts at James Street are large and aging and get a hell of a hammering - it's rare to see all four functioning.  Going back to the Wirral, I passed through the ticket barriers, and was waiting for the lift when a man appeared behind me and the small group waiting.  "Do you want to come this way instead?"

We were lead across the ticket hall and into the goods lift, a lift I had never before noticed even existed.  It was a little grimier than the usual ones, not quite so well kept, but larger, and comfortably took the dozen or so passengers and suitcases and pushchairs that squeezed in with it.  The Merseyrail man pulled the cage doors closed, pushed the button, and we descended.

Then, much like a theme park, we got the chat.  It seems the Merseyrail man had a spiel, a little monologue he'd prepped, and for the entire descent into the bowels of the earth he talked merrily.  They'd opened up this lift because three were out of action to accommodate the passengers, it's all perfectly safe, couple of little gags for the kids, a whole one man show.  Bless him, he loved his moment in the sun.  And he fell the right side of charming too - not one of those excruciating speeches that make you die inside.  I did video it, but then it occurred to me that it's kind of rude to post someone on the internet without their knowledge (plus there were a load of kids in the video and parents don't like that) so you'll have to take my word for it.

We got down to the concourse below, welcomed by another member of staff, and directed off to our platforms ("Wirral to the right of me, Liverpool to the left").  I tottered off to my platform, pleased to see a side to a station I'd never seen before.

Hiatus

I hate it when people do posts about why they haven't been blogging.  Nobody cares.  You're not Charles Dickens.  People aren't gathering on the docks at New York to welcome your latest missive.  You're just a twat with a laptop.

However, it occurred to me that it's nearly two months since I posted on here, and I wanted to clarify why.  It comes down to a few things.

1) I went on holiday.  Italy, very nice ta, visited Matera where they filmed No Time To Die, didn't do anything train related so didn't bother writing about it.

2) I got Covid.  Probably from being on EasyJet.  Nothing bad, just a bit of weariness, but it did mean I was trapped inside for a fortnight.

3) The strikes.  I'd like to make it clear that I absolutely support the right of the railway workers - and any other workers - to withdraw their labour in search of better pay and conditions.  It's the only recourse some employees have to achieve action and we'd be well to remember that before we start getting in scabs or banning strikes or sacking people for attending picket lines.  However, it does mean that I've been loath to book a train because I'm afraid it's all going to get cancelled and I'll lose my money.

4) The Commonwealth Games.  I really don't fancy heading to the West Midlands while they're at the centre of an international sporting celebration.  There will be too many people, too many events, New Street will be a nightmare, and there will be loads of railway amateurs standing vacantly around the concourses and platforms not knowing how stuff works.  

5) The Skelmersdale extension being cancelled by the Government.  I was going to write a bit about that but it was so fucking depressing I couldn't bring myself to bother.

So basically I'm probably taking the summer off, unless something exciting happens, or I get a mad urge to dash out.  This does happen now and then.  All being well, I'll be back being annoying in September.  After all, Birmingham's got some glam new stations for the Games, and I'd like to check them out when they're free of tourists.

P.S. Thank you to the people who have continued to contribute to my Ko-Fi even though I haven't written anything.  You are treasures.

Second Time Lucky

 

Regular readers (hello you!) will remember that a couple of months ago I had a whole day out planned but it was waylaid by a lineside fire.  I didn't want to put all that effort and spreadsheet work to waste - sometimes co-ordinating timetables is complex, folks - so I decided to have another stab at visiting Wilnecote.  I left home around nine am and by lunchtime I finally got there.  This is one of the problems with visiting the West Midlands Railway map; there's an awful lot of travelling you have to do before you ever actually get anywhere.

I got off to a Royal welcome; a lady in a wheelchair excitedly greeted the train with a wave of a Union Jack flag.  I got an insight into what it must be like to be Prince William - a little bit embarrassing.  I made my way up to the street as a boy and girl sauntered down.  They had the studied, lethargic cool of teenagers, totally relaxed, totally unbothered - until they realised they had actually missed their train, and there wouldn't be another one for an hour, at which point they looked panicky and confused.  I passed them with the smugness of age and took the sign pic.

Wilnecote station is on Watling Street, the actual Roman road from London to Wales, and as such is surrounded by a confusing mix of buildings.  This has been a main road for 2000 years so life has gravitated towards it.  There were tiny industrial units, cottages, a chip shop that looked like it had once been a transport café; a world of people strung along the highway.  Further out it gave way to a bland new build estate - my first destination.

Even though my next station was Tamworth to the north, I wanted to make a little detour to a network of cul-de-sacs built in the 90s.  This had once been a factory - a car factory in fact, the home of Reliant cars, the legendary three-wheelers.  Now the BF's family were the proud owners of Reliant cars when he was growing up, so he's instructed me to be very nice about them, and not recourse to lazy gags about Del Boy.  I will say that they are what we shall call an acquired taste and that personally I don't understand why you'd buy a car with three wheels when millions of years of human innovation have taught us that four wheels are the perfect number to use.

The Reliant motor company was founded in Tamworth and built the cars for seventy years before finally dying in the early 21st century.  The factory here had closed before that, but it's still marked by the streetnames; the main route through the estate is Tom Williams Way, after the founder, and the closes off to the side are named after Reliant models - Regal Close, Fox Close, and, of course, most famously, Robin Close.

Normally I'd walk right through and out the other end, but this is one of those paranoid, designed to drive out crime developments, so it's a dead end.  I'd walked into it and the only way out was to go back the way I came, enabling all the curtain twitchers and paranoid types to make a note of my general appearance so they could grass me up on NextDoor.  Fat middle aged man spotted taking photographs, lunchtime Friday - probably a pervert - keep your kids indoors.

I walked back to the turn into town and was somewhat surprised to see Melvyn Hayes smirking at me over the top of a double glazing showroom.  It seemed that the firm on the corner were deeply respectful of British history and particularly Our Brave Lads and commemorated this was a mural on the side of the building; it wasn't Melvyn Hayes in It Ain't Half Hot Mum at all, simply a Brave Tommy.  The mural continued on the side wall, with a stretch of local landmarks - a Reliant Robin, the local church, a pair of Tamworth pigs - then a stretch with the Queen and a particularly emaciated looking Churchill.  I couldn't work out why he'd turned up looking so bad, but checking out the same location on Google Streetview from last October, it appears it used to be Captain Sir Tom.  They've painted out the "Thank you NHS" - rude - and made it black and white and removed the caption saying who it is, presumably because the Captain Tom Foundation slapped a claim on them for stealing their copyrighted image.  (Also that Queen has a vague air of Eric Idle, but it's still better than anything I could draw).

The Tamworth Road was much as you'd expect - worker's cottages, the odd takeaway, a school.  I crossed over at a pelican and got a bit of a shock as I spotted a newsagent with a canopy sponsored by The Sun.  You know you've gone full native on Merseyside when you're shocked to see people admitting to reading The Scum.  It was like seeing the owner stick his gross sexual predilections on the front of his shop - James's Newsagent In Association With Dog Fucker Magazine.  

After a roundabout the main road turned away and I was left in a leafier, more suburban route, the houses screened from the traffic by a length of trees and a grass verge.  A van did a three point turn, en route to laying a new driveway, while there was the gentle hum of a lawnmower somewhere in the distance.  The road ended abruptly with a footbridge.

The M42 passes to the east of Tamworth, while the A38 between Birmingham and Derby - and later, the M6 Toll - pass to the west.  Watling Street used to connect the two but that was inadequate for the traffic so a bypass was built in the 90s, effectively severing Tamworth proper from its southern suburbs.  To get people across the dual carriageway they built a footbridge.  I suppose they thought it would help.  They failed to take into account that some of us - i.e. me - do not like footbridges one bit.

I steeled myself.  I took off my glasses, in case the wind ripped them off and hurled them into the traffic (this is a strange paranoia I have which is not based on any actual experience).  Squinting, I mounted the ramps, walking well within the centre of the footpath, trying not to think about the absolute certain death just metres below my feet.  I pushed across the middle, moaning with terror slightly, and finally, blessedly, reaching the other side where I could descend a set of stairs.  It was there that I noticed the old lady who'd crossed ahead of me without any trouble or hesitation.  Bitch.

Back on safe ground I passed the Tamworth Cruising Club, proudly flying its union flag and its purple platinum jubilee flag, and then crossed the canal by a footbridge.  A boat chugged along towards me, and the driver raised his hand in a friendly wave.

The Kettlebrook Road had been turned into a cul-de-sac by the bypass and now it carried a slight air of desolation.  The units here were grimier, dustier; there were adverts for Champion sparkplugs and Ferodo brakes, two companies that used to have posters everywhere but seem to have vanished completely from sight.  Across the road, two young men on bikes hovered on a street corner, watching me walk by with dark eyes.  I'm sure they were training for a triathlon or something.  I passed a blue plaque commemorating the building where they'd built the first Reliant car then reached The Egg.

The Egg is the nickname for a complex of roads to the south of the town centre.  In effect, it's a circular dual carriageway, with roundabouts where other roads meet it - basically one huge two-way roundabout with smaller roundabouts on it.  It's raised on bridges at some points, it has the river Anker passing underneath it, and it has a railway slicing across to one side; it's a marvel of engineering.

Unless you're a pedestrian, in which case it's a massive pain to get across.  The designers put in underpasses to get you from one side of the road to the other.  I mean, at least it's not a footbridge, right?  Unfortunately, underpasses beneath dual carriageways generally look like this:

Then, when you get to the other side, there's a lot of green space and fields and reeds.  It's lovely, really; you can convince yourself you're in countryside rather than basically at the centre of a big roundabout.  I would not, however, use it after about eight o'clock at night, and probably never if I was a woman on my own.  It felt unsafe.  Even in the early afternoon, there were two men sat on the back of a bench, their feet on the seat, working their way through cans of cider from a plastic bag.  Humans are fragile, and cars are not.  Put the cars in the underpasses and tunnels and let the people see sky and safety.

Still, on a warm May day, it was undeniably pleasant to walk alongside a river with the sun beating down on you.  I passed under another dual carriageway and the island grasses merged into parkland.  A funfair had set up there ahead of the four day Jubilee weekend, already advertising its special rates, and a little further on was an adventure playground absolutely heaving with excited children.  I could hear their laughter and excited screams even from a distance.  The benches around the park café were filled with walkers and pensioners, while across the water, Tamworth castle appeared from behind the trees.

I knew absolutely nothing about Tamworth before I knew I was headed there.  It was a railway station, that was all.  I was fascinated to learn - admittedly mainly from Wikipedia so if this is all bollocks, I'm very sorry, I'm a terrible researcher - that the town was once astonishingly important to this island.  The Anglo-Saxons settled here first, and then it became a royal town for the kings of Mercia.  As time went on, they became more settled, and Tamworth approached capital status for the ancient nation.  A few kings and queens who all seemed to have names beginning with Æ ruled from here until the Vikings turned up and plundered the town.  After that, it became less relevant, though the Normans built a castle here after they invaded, and it was captured during the Civil War, but to a large extent it was a market town that turned industrial in the 19th century.

I threaded my way through a school trip in high-vis jackets assembling under the castle, and wondered whether to book a ticket for the Here and Now: Best of the 80s concert in August (Belinda Carlisle, The Fizz, and Katrina "of the Waves").  I passed through over the castle moat and through a well-preserved gateway into the town's market square.  

The town is unsurprisingly proud to have been the home of Robert Peel, who lived at Drayton Manor nearby (now better known as a theme park of course).  They've put up a nice statue to him and there were a couple of pubs named after him.  The White Lion, on the other hand, was not named after him, but it did have a banner hanging advertising that it was a proud sponsor of Tamworth Pride, a nice little reminder that even in small towns things can get better.  (It's July 16th, by the way, if you're passing).  

I wandered down another back street and by the time I stumbled on the church of St Editha I was smitten.  Look, I know Tamworth will never be the location for a romantic mini-break, or a big tourist draw.  But I spent a perfectly pleasant couple of hours wandering around a pretty town centre.  It was a lot more charming to me than some places with a much better reputation.

I took a moment to pause in an old churchyard for a drink of Coke, then headed out along Albert Road, which seems to be some kind of medical row.  There were so many dental surgeries here, making me wonder if Tamworth has refused to fluoridate its water or something.  Every other building was a dentist's.  I'd not noticed the residents had particularly rotten teeth but maybe that's because they have such easy access to oral hygiene.  At the end of the road was a roundabout with a statue of Queen Æthelflæd (see what I mean about those Æs?) and beyond that, the station.

As the spot where the Birmingham to Derby Line crosses the West Coast Main Line, Tamworth is an important passenger interchange, though that's not translated into especially memorable architecture.  Electrification in the 1960s saw the old Victorian buildings demolished and a more practical building constructed, one that boils down to a set of staircases and lifts to get you from one platform to the other.  It's not doing anything ambitious.  It's also been horribly blighted by a big cheap multi-storey car park to one side.

A train had just come in as I arrived so I loitered on the forecourt to wait for the crowds to thin out a little.  It seemed like a young crowd, boisterous teenagers probably returning from college in Birmingham or Derby.  Some of them were younger, fresh from their last day of school, their white shirts covered in signatures.  

I do not fit in with this youthful vibe.

There are two pluses to Tamworth's important railway position.  The first is that it's got some great passenger facilities.  I easily found a seat in a comfortable waiting room that had a vending machine and plenty of information.  

Secondly, Tamworth is an absolute mecca for Gentlemen Who Like Trains.  I'd spotted a somewhat anxious man while I sat in the waiting room, constantly walking in and out, checking a tiny book.  I'd thought he was perhaps a tourist who was lost, but then I saw him come to life as a train came in.  Suddenly he was scratching away in his notepad, while further down the platform, a gaggle of older men took photographs and wrote in books of their own.  The train was the one you can see above and, once again, I like the stations, not the trains, so I can't tell you why this train was so exciting.  They hovered some more, but when my CrossCountry train came in, they barely looked up; clearly it didn't meet their exacting standards.

Willington doesn't get much of a service.  It's a village that has the misfortune to be between Burton-on-Trent and Derby on a major rail line; as such it gets a train every couple of hours so it doesn't slow the main route down too much.  Indeed, for a time they took the station away entirely, closing it in 1968, only to have to open it again in 1994 when someone at British Rail realised that serving a town of a few thousand people is kind of a good idea.  A sign on the platform welcomed me on behalf of Willington's Women's Institute, who it seemed had adopted the station, and which had a vague air of "if you muck this place up, we'll come for you."

The sign was perhaps aimed at Willington's most famous neighbours, the pupils of Repton School, a grammar and boarding school that's existed since the 16th century; indeed, for a long time it was called Repton & Willington, with a sign advising you to alight here for the school.  Repton's alumni include Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Clarkson, Roald Dahl and Christopher Isherwood, though it should be noted that not many of them seem to have enjoyed it (Clarkson was in fact expelled) and since the Wikipedia page has an entire section for Controversies I perhaps wouldn't put your kid's name down yet.  

Unsurprisingly, given its somewhat grand surroundings, Willington was going all in on the Jubilee, another thing that was alien to an adopted Scouser.  The event was marked up here on Merseyside with a grand total of sod all, with even some of the posher bits of the Wirral being entirely bunting-free; I saw more red Liverpool flags in one street in the run up to the Champions League Final than I saw Union Jacks over that whole weekend.  Here in Willington though, the notice board plugged tea parties, picnics, and a "sports extravaganza" (football, tennis, tug-of-war and bowls - nothing too vulgar).  There were prizes for "Best Dressed House" and "Best Dressed Street" and the lampposts were covered in purple flags.  I ducked down to the canal, away from the pretty centre, and watched the boats for a bit.

I had a couple of hours to kill until the train south so I wandered round the block for a bit.  Willington seemed perfectly nice but a bit boring.  I felt like I'd seen every interesting element of it in just a brief stroll.  What could I do?

Reader, I'm going to ask you to take a breath before I tell you this next part.  That pint of lager cost me five British pounds and forty pence.  That's right.  More than a fiver for a pint of fizzy wee.  Ok, it was nice fizzy wee, not Carling rubbish, but still: five pounds forty.  I know Londoners are dying to swarm the comments with "WE PAY £5.40 FOR TAP WATER DOWN HERE!!!" but I'm used to Northern prices.  Although I did once pay £5.65 for a pint in the All Bar One in Derby Square, Liverpool, I think; I can't quite remember because I blacked out.  Yes, it was a nice pint, and yes, it was a nice pub (there was a very strident lesbian informing her wet Tory friends that actually Boris Johnson's lockdown parties were a very big deal) but have a word with yourself.  

I reeled out onto the street, simultaneously punch- and actual-drunk, and waited for a train back into Birmingham.  Of course there were delays which meant I'd miss my connection back to Liverpool, but after the last time I'd tried to visit this part of the world, I'd learned my lesson and bought an open return.  But I didn't mind, because I had more important things to think about.  Five pounds forty.