Dom Davis (The Blog)

In what now seems like the dim and distant past I used to spend my weekends in Cromer, work in London and live in Colchester. This setup meant that my life features trains. A lot of trains. A lot of trains that I spent a long time on. Least favourite of these was of 05:58 Cromer to Norwich because it not only meant it was Monday, but also that it was incredibly early in a Monday, I now had a 3.5 hour commute and I wouldn’t see The Zozo again until 6:30pm on Friday (assuming I didn’t miss my connection).

The 05:58 Norwich train would come in attached to the 06:03 Sherringham train. At Cromer they would divide and I would get on to what was invariably either a single carriage train or a manky two carriage one that smelt of damp carpet. I, and perhaps 2 other people, would then head to Norwich, joined by a handful of others on the way.

Today I find myself once again catching the 05:58 although circumstances have somewhat improved. For starters it’s not Monday, I have my usual commute ahead of my, albeit time shifted slightly, I get to see the The Zozo again tonight and we appear to have the swanky 3 carriage train with comfy seats and LED indicators near the doors that is usually reserved for busier lines than ours. The handful of people using the service get to take full advantage of the fact there’s table seats for all (the regular seats simply acting as a filler between the tables so as not to make the place look too empty) and I get to spread out more than I usually can. Sadly I suspect this train will now be sent off to Yarmouth or Lowestoft and my journey home will be on one of the two regular two carriage trains, or worse, the manky one that still gets pressed into service from time to time. I console myself with the fact that these days I always get a seat. Not something I could say a few years ago.

Yesterday we were doing an upgrade of one of our servers. The upgrade was scheduled to start at 10 and, what with my usual arrival time, gave me over an hour to gracefully shut some things down, grab backups and do all the things people like to do when shutting down servers.

Monday, it would seem, had other ideas about this. Arriving at my normal time was not something it had in store for me. Oh no. Instead Monday decided to put 2 horses on the line causing the train to stop rather abruptly.

As plans go this one was quite ingenious. The line I travel on is single track and narrow. Horses are, it turns out, spooked by trains, even little two carriage ones. Thus the next hour was spent with the train creeping forward at a brisk walking pace with two horses trotting along in front of it. Eventually some Notwork Rail people turned up and got the horses off the track allowing us to return to more usual speeds. Didn’t stop me being an hour late and having to talk people through aspects of the shutdown over the phone though.

Last night at Norwich station was a farce. Arrive, discover there’s an intercity on platform 4, check the board, told it’s platform 6. Two trains on platform 6, so I get on the last one given it’s got the usual 2 carriages and the doors open. 5 minutes later we’re told over the intercom that this isn’t our train, so we all decamp and look at the boards. Platform 5. Great. 30 seconds later and a train arrives, at the same time we’re told over the tannoy that we want platform 6. Boards are still showing platform 5 and the guard that told us we weren’t going on the train on platform 6 was also waiting for this train. The guard on the arriving train, however, was adamant that we were supposed to be on the train on platform 6, although that’s only because that’s what he’d heard on the tannoy as they pulled in. So we head back to our original train to discover that, yes, this is the one we’re supposed to be on… we think. Cue many announcements to try and quell the confusion and many comments from annoyed passengers. It’s little wonder I get paranoid about if I’m on the right train these days.

Tomorrow I’m off to London to wonder round Camden (I love browsing through Camden Market), catch up with some friends I have not seen in a while and go see [X]-Rx at Slimelight.

To allow me to cope with crap weekend trains, dump things and not have epic all nighters to content with I have me a cheap hotel room. As a result I’ll be heading to London earlier than I normally do (no getting kicked off the last train at Ingatestone due to fatalities at Shenfield for me this weekend), and heading out later than I normally do after having some actual sleep! Should be a fun weekend. Just wish The Zozo could come too (although she’d probably hate Slimelight )

The Zozo has her birthday very close to mine which means that celebrations tend to get all mixed together. this year we’ve got some of my family coming up and the plan was to go out for a few drinks. The Zozo had then asked if she could go off with her girlie friends and have a girlie night. Not a problem, thinks I. I can head off into London and go clubbing. Job done.

But no. You see, to get to and from London I need a train. There’s no way I’m driving as I can’t drive back with no sleep, it’s simply not safe. While there are trains they are, thanks to engineering works, infrequent and beset with changes onto buses and then back onto trains. If I didn’t mind turning up a bit late I could leave Cromer at 8 rather than the more usual 9 but then I’ve got a huge problem coming back. My options are:

1. Leave Slimelight at 6am, walk to Kings Cross, get a train to Cambridge, train somewhere else, bus to Norwich, train to Cromer and arrive 5 hours later paying £48 for the privilege. That’s £10/hour.
2. Leave Slimelight at 7:30 (kickout time), kick about London for 2 hours (bearing in mind I’ll have been awake all night and really just wanting to get home to bed), then get the train, bus, train, train home for 1:30.
3. Leave Slimelight at 7:30, go to a hotel, crash and die, get a later train home.

The first option is a pain, expensive and morally reprehensive. The section option is doable, but real faff. The third option is expensive since I’m to early to check-in for Sunday and I’ll want to make use of the room for longer than most checkout times allow so I’ll need to book for two nights. I’ll need to mull over whether I can be arsed to deal with the faff and if I can get away with ditching the family early, and if I can occupy myself for 2 hours in London on a Sunday morning since, lets face it, that’s what I’m going to have to do.

In the mean time I’m also wanting to go down on the 18th of June to see [X]-RX. This is too far in advance for me to book at the moment and I’ve no idea if there are even going to be trains. Between now and me being able to book train tickets for that I shall be getting some extra toys for my pram because, believe me, if it’s not a case of normal service and easily getting to and from London on that night I’ll be throwing all my toys out of the pram.

Great. I’ve just been sent a document by a friend who has access to these things that would suggest there are going to be buses from Marks Tey to Ipswich that weekend. The London to Norwich line is just a joke.

The barriers at Norwich station annoy me. Not so much their presence¹ or the fact they’re ugly and slow², it’s that they’re never bloody in use, and when they are no one can ever use them.

Here’s the thing. Arrive at Norwich and I, plus an (admittedly small) trainload of people, want to get out of the station. So they throw open the disabled gate and let us funnel through. We’re just waved through. No ticket check, nothing.

The other way is even worse. I invariably arrive at the station when a ruddy great big intercity disgorges it’s passengers onto the platform. They throw open all the ticket barriers (all 4 of them) and everyone piles through. Meanwhile I’m trying to get through in the opposite direction and I can’t go use the other set of gates because they’re blocked off due to their being not enough staff to monitor them.

And boy do they need monitoring. On the days when the barriers are actually working you’ve now got a bunch of people getting off an intercity who, judging by their reactions, have never seen a ticket barrier in their life, a bunch of people trying to get onto the platform who are so used to just walking through that they’ve now got to stop and start rummaging round for their tickets and the usual handful of clueless travellers. No one steps to the side when they’re blocking the gates and it’s panda-bloody-monium. Something that’s usually solved by just flinging the gates open again.

In my view they should just get rid of the gates entirely. All the trains have guards on them checking tickets anyway and you’d reduce congestion immensely. Alternatively install an express gate; block it for more than 1 second³ and you’re shot. Everyone else can fight it out at the normal gates.

¹Having lived and commuted in London for over a decade the ticket barrier has practically been a way of life. In fact, on more than one occasion it’s made me realise I’ve forgotten my ticket, which lives in a holder along with my work pass. Something I’d rather find out 5 minutes from home than in the centre on London looking at a £10 fine and the faff of signing in at work.

²If you can’t feed your ticket into the slot, retrieve it and walk through the barrier without breaking a brisk pace it’s too slow. TFL have got their barriers very right, especially with Oyster.

³Plenty of time for the prepared commuter to insert ticket, retrieve ticket and walk through a TFL style gate, or to realise you need to step to one side to find your ticket.

The iPhone is a remarkable bit of kit. With it I can check what station the Sheringham train is currently at (Wroxham at the time of checking) thus confirming that Attleborough (being the station I was currently pulling out of) hadn’t been added as a surprise new stop on my journey home. It is then able to ascertain which train you’re really on (Cambridge) and where the next stop is for a hasty decamp, turn round and head back the way you came (Eccles road). It’s also able to tell you when the next train to Norwich is, something I should have done before getting off the train since it transpired that wasn’t until tomorrow (Eccles road quite literally having 2 trains each direction stopping a day).

Once stranded at the station it’s able to pinpoint your location and plan a route home. When that proves to be too far it can be used to summon a taxi to take you back to Attleborough to get a train back to Norwich to get a train home. It can then tell you that you won’t be getting home until nearly 9 and allow you to convey this to the wife. Meanwhile you’re able to update your status and location on Facebook so everyone can follow your plight in near real time.

What it can’t do is tell you that between looking at the departure board and the train pulling in (about 2 minutes) they’d switched platforms on you and you’re on the wrong train. Normally I listen for the announcements on the train, but for some reason didn’t bother today. The ticket inspector can’t have been looking too hard either as he never raised an eyebrow over my having a ticket for another train. The who escapade has cost me £15 and 2 hours of my life. Not happy.

One of the many problems associated with being a hardened commuter is that I take very little notice of anything. All I care about is platform alterations and departures. It would seem that, since moving to the country, my Spidey Sense is off.

Now, to be fair, both Colchester and London Liverpool Street stations did have a habit on putting the posters advertising engineering works somewhere where you were going to trip over them so it was kind of hard not to notice that, yet again, busses will replace trains on at least some part of the journey between Norwich and London. When I lived in Colchester you could be forgiven for thinking it was a bus station at weekends, not a train station.

I’m dimly aware that travel on a train direct from Norwich to London on a weekend is still an impossibility, due in part to the signs at Norwich station, the special announcement screens on the monitors but mostly due to the fact I’ve spent two very cold Sunday mornings in various parts of Essex having been dumped there by a bus. That they seemed to have started at the London end again makes me think maintaining that line is a bit like painting the Forth Road Bridge.

The board in London was one of those maps of the rail routes with the ones that would be messed about with over the coming month (most of them) picked out in red. The dates of your misery were next to the lines. Mercifully these were mostly weekends. Little footnotes then expanded on if your line or station was picked out for some extended torture.

The equivalent board in Norwich shows exactly the same thing. It’s location means I can avoid it 5 times out of 6, but it’s there. There’s also ‘special notices’ screens detailing, in the main, just exactly how difficult they’re making travel to London this weekend so I tend to ignore them.

In Colchester the sign would be at the bottom of the steps in the subway and would announce, in large letters, just exactly what was being messed about and when. These would be displayed up to a month in advance. They knew their target audience and didn’t mess about. It worked well.

I’m guessing theres a sign at Cromer. There’s a board with the timetable which I’ve not looked at since 2008 that probably houses something. It’s entirely possible to enter the station (which is little more than a platform with a terminating line either side) without even noticing it’s there which isn’t helpful.

You’ll forgive me, therefore, for not noticing, in the seething morass of red that is the NXEA December ‘service alterations’ map, that my line was picked out. And not just for weekends, oooh no. This is for at least a week. A fact that I discovered due to some fortuitous earwigging on Friday. Busses replace trains between Sheringham and North Walsham for 9 days. I haven’t checked yet, but I’m guessing that once that’s done they’re going to pick on the line from North Walsham to Norwich. Going to be a fun month.

Had I not overheard that things were going to be completely pear shaped this morning I would have pitched up at the station to discover the bus left without me 20 minutes ago and that I would be an hour late into work. Annoying to say the least. As it was I was prepared and waiting patiently when the bus arrived. Thankfully I’m also only in the office for 6 more days (including today) this year. I need to get up 20 minutes earlier for 3 days this week, and I get home 15 minutes later but the disruption isn’t overly hideous. That said, I may see if I can’t drive in tomorrow and Wednesday.

I lost a glove yesterday. This is probably a deep and meaningful metaphor for something which, hopefully, will have a profound twist when I locate it tonight in the Lost Property at Morissons. I’m not interested in whatever fable not finding my glove has to say.

No doubt today’s single carriage train is also an allegory for something, although I suspect it’s simply trying to say that, no matter where you live, or how much you pay, the train companies will stiff you. They’ve made up for it though with two conductors¹. No idea why, they’re going to give up checking tickets in two stations time due to an inability to walk down the carriage as it’s having to hold enough people to fill a train with twice as many seats. The fact that I would usually have my ticket checked already by a single conductor working a two carriage train tells you something about ease of movement at the moment. At least I’m not stood up, or worse, sat on the floor in the vestibule like I had to do from Colchester. At six times the cost of my current season ticket for only an extra 10 minutes travel time (albeit on much longer, faster and more frequent trains) there was a definite lesson to be learned there.

So what does all this mean? Well for me it means I get to bitch at you lot. If you want anything more deep, meaningful or profound then you’re looking in the wrong place. I could suggest turning to the lyrics² of songs which, currently, are informing me that “No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world” and that “Even the smallest person can change the course of the future”, however, be warned, they could have just have easily informed you that “I am not your dad! I am: Electric Man!”. You makes your choice and you takes your chances.

Footnote

I’m not even sure where to begin with just receiving an email saying @diabetesfacts³ is now following me on Twitter and what that is trying to say. Dealing with lifes troubles by consuming vast quantities of refined sugar is, as far as I’m concerned, a key tenant in my life philosophy and not something that should be questioned. To them I would counter with one of musics most profound statements: I’m a firestarter, twisted firestarter⁴.

¹ I think one may be in training. There seems to be a lot more in the way of detailed announcements which serve little point and I’ve never seen the second conductor before. I suspect today’s lesson is “how to deal with a rammed train full of annoyed people wanting to know where the extra carriage is”. You kind of have to feel sorry for him.

² So technically samples in this case rather than lyrics, but that’s just the nature of the particular genre of music I like. The point, such that there is one, remains valid. If we were going to wait for actual sung lyrics (bearing in mind we’re on random here) I’d be advocating “Just one fix” which is probably not a good life strategy.

³ Link withheld because, deep down, if we search our souls, we know said person is just fishing for follows, a spammer, phishing, trying to peddle something or all of the above.

⁴ Still on random, what can I say? Although if we’d waited 30 seconds or so it could have been something very profound⁵

⁵ Suicide Commando, God Is In The Rain. Google it if you’re interested but be warned it’s not quite as pro religion as the title might at first suggest. We are, after all, talking about a man that wrote the album Bind Torture and Kill which is inspired by Dennis Rader (also see the film BTK), to which we can only ask: Annie, are you OK? Are you OK? Are you OK Annie? (Alien Ant Farm version)

Cromer sur Mer has finally been hit with an appreciable volume of snow, although by appreciable I mean about 1 inch has settled. It’s enough to make everything white (excepts the roads which are now slush brown) but not enough to, say, stop the trains from running.

It’s also warmer than it has been recently, due, in no small part, to the lack of biting wind. This is A Good Thing™, especially for The Zozo who has to work outside in the cold, snow and ice. It’s also a good thing for our office which has heating that can be described as ‘temperamental’ at best.

My current fear is that we will get a load more snow during the day leading to the total collapse of public transport. Being stuck in Norwich on a Friday afternoon will annoy me considerably. Expect long, shouty, sweary blogs if that happens.