An Outing: The Ending

You will have to excuse me, it's been a while since I wrote for my blog, a while since I updated you on my brief weekend away, and even longer since I actually experienced it - my memory is somewhat fuzzy. The only reason I am writing tonight is because I promised myself I would. Let me tell you, if you're looking to practice your writing, and perhaps make a career out of it, forcing yourself to write is never a wise approach. Much like me you'll find yourself sat in an old chair, mind wandering and aching as you churn out words. Not even good words. Certainly not your best words. Much like I'm doing, you'll sit there, run your hand through your hair and rest your head in your palm for a few seconds. You'll consider your options:

1) Write another night, when you feel inspired
2) Suck it up, get working
3) Nobody reads this anyway, forget the series. Write about other things

So I consider my options. I refuse to put it off and put it off - option the first is no good. '2)' could be a winner. Then again, after every sentence I get a sinking feeling that this isn't my best work. I want to delete every sentence after scrawling it. Eradicate and remove it and pretend it never happened. Despite this, I'm plodding on. I plod on because, though I may not be a very good writer, I am, at least, an honest writer. I would rather explore my feelings of fatigue and frustration than bottle them up and pretend they don't exist. It's all about experience. I have very little experience. Perhaps people will read this and think "what a drivelling idiot, this rambling is pathetic" or perhaps they will think "actually, I can really relate to that dejected, frustrated feeling. I've been there, I empathise." I won't know until I bite the bullet and post what I write. Option 3 is somewhat true. However, I happen to be something of a collector, I like neat, tidy order. Abandoning my write-up of a weekend long-since passed would niggle at me. "Why didn't you finish Sam?" "Why not post a little entry? Wrap everything up? Won't that look neat and complete?" So, I am in two minds. The OCD-angel on one shoulder encourages me to finish. The anarchistic devil opposite wants to move on and explore and do as he pleases. Let me try to satisfy both by briefly summarising what you missed.

• We board a York to Edinburgh train on Saturday Morning.
• We board an Edinburgh to Glasgow train on Saturday Afternoon
• A young girl called Ella, seated a few rows ahead, constantly interrupts the journey with incessant moaning.
• Never teach your children a second language, especially if you don't speak it.
• Riding the Glaswegian subway is how I imagine demons commute to work in Hell.
• We saw Bill Bailey on the Saturday night. We sat so high up I was making eye-contact with the rafters. I felt a nosebleed coming on. At one point I attempted to burp before realising there was little atmosphere left for it to emerge into, so the bubble of irn bru gas sat idly in my gullet.
• We rounded off the trip by rock-climbing in an abandoned church.
• We board a Glasgow to Edinburgh train on Sunday Afternoon.
• We board an Edinburgh to York train on Sunday Afternoon.
• I board a York to Accrington train on Sunday Evening.
• I get bored of boarding somewhere along the way.

Now, perhaps I can put that whole weekend to bed. We will resume normal programming shortly

Thank you and goodnight

Image Owner: Donna St. Pierre

An Outing: Entry Two.

After volunteering my seat and retiring to a fold-down chair opposite a toilet with a broken door we stopped in Leeds for a gaggle of Yorkshiremen to board the train. I'm not sure what the collective noun for several Yorkshire folk is. Perhaps not a gaggle, they were all very quiet and evasive when it came to eye contact and conversation. You might think this would suit someone as chronically unsociable as me - and it did. It did until a cyclist showed up and wanted to demote me further, from sitting outside a broken W.C. to standing outside a broken W.C., so he could stow his bicycle. Trying to find some space in a crowded compartment is made all the more difficult when the stuffy Yorkshirefolk don't acknowledge your existence. Perhaps they had finally cottoned on that I was from Lancashire. I'm not sure how though - it wasn't my accent, I hadn't said a word. I must have had a 'west-of-the-Pennines' vibe about me. Thankfully, after an imbroglio of a train journey, our arrival in York was uneventful.

im.bro.glio
Noun
An extremely confused, complicated, or embarrassing situation: "the Watergate imbroglio"

I found Alex waiting for me on a bench in York. We did that involuntary thing friends do when they haven't seen each other for months - I believe it's called smiling, before burying any emotions (like men!) and heading out into York. We got about fifty metres out of the station before being accosted by some charity worker or nightclub rep. I hate those people. Actually, that's not strictly fair, I hate the job they do - paid to cram flyers into my hand or to guilt me in to donating 'just £2 a month'. I'm not sure which I detest more, a stranger engaging me in conversation or a stranger engaging me in conversation for their own selfish gains. As luck would have it, I was following Alex into York and Alex was following me. He soon realised I had no idea where we were going and therefore was the worst person to follow. We did a U-turn to catch a bus and did our best to evade the nightclub charity rep girl as we passed her again.

There's not much to say after getting on the bus. We drove through York and out the other side, got off, crossed a field, I threw stickyweed at Alex because I'm childish. He tried to explain, as we approached his student house, that he lived out in the 'rough' part of York, where most students don't like to live. Saying 'the rough part of York' is quite oxymoronic - especially when you say it to someone who grew up in a dilapidated industrial town where knife crime and knock-a-door-run are regional sports. My point was made as we passed two girls walking a dog. One stopped us and complimented me on my shoes - I'll be honest, they were good shoes. Now if it had really been a rough area, like the ones I'm accustomed to, saying "Hey, nice shoes" would be followed with "They're mine now" and I would have been knocked to the floor and mugged for my clogs. Instead the girls smiled and walked off and that was the end of it.

Image Owner: Xerones

An Outing, Entry One.

This weekend I decided upon an adventure. If you have followed my posts for the last few months, you will know I have devoted a lot of time to working. Truth by told, I have been going stir-crazy, trapped by the same four walls. My walk to work, my greatest outing, has been a flight of stairs at the rear of the building.

How best to present my weekend galavanting? I could type up the whole experience in one fell swoop, though you would get bored reading and I would get bored writing. Instead, I suppose I'll copy out my notebook entries, originally written as I travelled.

Friday, May 10th
One redeemable feature of living in the north is the undulating landscape. I have caught the train from Accrington to York. Between tunnels and dilapidated industrial towns I catch a glimpse of how the north used to be. Stone cottages sit in narrow valleys; the hills climbing hundreds of feet behind them. Here, ancient walls have outlasted the towns they once protected. Herons and foxes occupy this narrow window of wilderness.

Everything here seems to flow in unison. Rivers and walls, canals and train-tracks all carve a parallel path through Old Lancashire. I am approaching Hebden Bridge. A small station with organised walls, and  roofing that could have been stripped right off a greenhouse. Black signs fixed with pristine, white lettering denote the locations of general rooms and parcel offices. Wooden buckets in the centres of the two platforms play host to freshly planted flowers. They bring a little colour and chaos, interrupting the OCD-signage and alphabetised brickwork.

Finding a seat on a minorly-crowded train is a nightmare for the chronically unsociable. There should be a checklist provided to us for safe seating arrangements. Seating arrangements that will see us suffering as few interruptions and embarrassing back-and-forths as possible.

• Where possible, find a window-seat facing forward - with no neighbour
• If unavailable, resort to a similar, backward-facing seat
• Avoid areas for bikes, prams and wheelchairs
• Avoid tables - three potential neighbours are worse than one

Unfortunately, I settled for the third option. Now sat at the rear of a carriage where there is space for prams and wheelchairs. Making the best of a bad situation, I took the window seat in order to scout upcoming platforms for pesky disabled children and single mothers who might usurp me.

Bradford Interchange is where it happened. One of the few stations whose platform I could not recce, as it's at the opposite side of the train. A 20-something mother boards with a bright pink buggy, which she crams against my legs. I hesitate for a moment, a shy rabbit destined for the pie. Not wishing to be squashed against a window, shins covered in pram-bruises, I offered my chair to the mother. "Here, you take these seats, I'll find another." I would say more but already the cogs in her head are turning - "that's not a local accent" she's thinking, "'e's not from 'round 'ere" she will inevitably conclude, at which point the Yorkshire hivemind will activate and two tweed-clad moustachioed Yorkshiremen will hoist me up and eject me from the train. We were over an hour into the journey and nobody suspected I was an imposter. I had gained their trust and was not about to jeopardise it. Instead I wandered off to the next carriage, found no seat that met my new list of criteria and ended up sat in a fold-down chair between two carriages, where the bikes are meant to live. I'm not sure what was worse, the awkward fear of encountering an errant cyclist, or the smell of piss coming from the adjacent W.C.

Image Owner: Ingy the Wingy