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
