Dom Davis (The Blog)

The Zozo has her work Christmas do tonight which involves a meal at the zoo followed by heading out and getting raucous in Cromer, in so far as it’s possible to get raucous in Cromer. I understand karaoke may be involved. Knowing the people involved there will be much giggling and laughing involved too. I’d be willing to put money on the phrase “fwiend” being used once a few drinks are had. I will not be going. Instead The Zozo suggested I head into London for a night out there. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my wife very much and I love spending as much time as possible with her but she’s going out tonight, is working tomorrow and has handed me a late pass for free. Not something I, or indeed any sane man, is going to turn down

So I’m going to London. Train to Norwich, train to London, tube to destination, dance, tube to Liverpool Street, train to Norwich, train home. Simple, right? Wrong. This is England. At the weekend. On NXEA trains. No, we have to do the following:

Get the train an hour early to Norwich. Change at Norwich for a train to Ingatestone. Get off the train at Ingatestone where I get on a bus that takes me to Newbury Park where I then ‘transfer’ to London Liverpool Street. Transfer in this context means getting a central line tube which gets me to Liverpool Street, according to the TFL website, 1 minute later that NXEA said it would. Personally I trust (for a given value of trust) TFL more than I do NXEA so I’m going to go with thier estimate. What time I arrive, give or take a few minutes, isn’t so much of an issue as it’s a walk to Moorgate, tube to Angel and done and it doesn’t really matter what time I arrive.

Getting home, on the other hand, is going to be a laugh. It’s going to be early on a Sunday and NXEA tell me that I need to ‘transfer’ from Liverpool Street Station at 07:23 to arrive at 07:55 whereupon I get a bus that leaves at… 07:55. I’m thinking giving myself 0 minutes to get out of a tube station, find a bus, get on bus and head onwards is not exactly a sensible proposition.

So what time do I need to leave Liverpool Street? According to the TFL website I need to depart at 07:20 to get to Newbury Park at 07:44. So either NXEA are lying about the departure time, journey time or arrival time. Or all three. So I realistically need to arrive at Liverpool Street at 07:15 so I can get to the Central Line platform. This isn’t going to happen on a tube, there being no Northern Line trains at this time in the morning. It could happen by bus, but I tend to avoid those where possible in London given, historically, the timetable has been more of a serving suggestion than anything they’ve stuck to. No, I’m going to take the only form of transport that’s reliable, available to me and cheap. I’m walking. Leave at 06:45, should get to Liverpool Street for before 07:15 allowing me to get the tube to arrive at Newbury Park in time to get my bus.

The bus then arrives at Ingatestone with a good 11 minutes to spare so I’m hoping that, this time, I won’t be getting to the station to watch the train pull off and strand me there for an hour making me late and buggering up my connections. Spending an hour at Colchester station last time was dull enough. An hour at Ingatestone will be torture.

Assuming all is well I get on the train to Norwich which has to arrive on time as I have 7 minutes to transfer to my train to Cromer. NXEA do not have a good track record of making tight connections to Cromer, although my experience is generally on a Friday evening with the train having come all the way from London not further down the line and a Sunday morning. It’s this bit that is causing me the most stress. If I miss that train I am stuck in Norwich for two (2) hours. Bearing in mind that, at this stage, I will have been awake for well over 24 hours my mood will not be such that I will accept this with good grace, or indeed any grace at all. I will be using those two hours to prize whatever compensation I can out NXEA for the grief and inconvenience caused.

So there you go. A simple 6 hour round trip is going to take over 8 hours, involve many transfers and much stress and could take over 10 hours and much shouting. It should be so simple and yet it isn’t. And this, this is why I hate the trains. Still going though

The 17:45 to Sheringham usually departs from platform 4. On occasion it goes from platform 5 and, rarely, it goes from 6. Yesterday initially claimed to be a normal day. The departure screen said 4, the usual suspects were stood at 4, so I went and stood in my usual spot.

At this juncture it helps to understand that I have the type of headphone you screw into your ears. It means I can play my music at half the volume and hear it well as it blocks out the outside world. It also means I can’t hear a thing except my music so I’m oblivious to announcements. This in itself is not a huge problem, I just keep an eye on others.

Yesterday I noted people suddenly looking confused, a little bit of wondering about and some checking of the departure screens. Sensing trouble I pulled one earphone out and went to go investigate the departure boards myself. They said 4. A man walking up the platform said 6a. He looked like a rail employee (or more likely subcontractor) so I figured he may know. I headed to platform 6.

As I wondered round a ruddy great big intercity parked at platform 4. This confirmed that we wouldn’t be leaving from there and the presence of a train on platform 6 made me think I’d been told correctly. The indicator board still said 4, but what did it know?

I, and many others piled on the train with much “Is this the Sheringham train?”. This was met with answers ranging from the positive “yes”, the worried “I hope so” and the contradictory “No, this is the Yarmouth train”. Oh.

Given more than one person believed it was the Yarmouth train we adopted the commuter trait of standing in the door. This allows us to see the boards (Sheringham platform 4, Yarmouth platform 6) and listen to announcements, which took that moment to proclaim that the 17:45 Sheringham service was now leaving from platform 6.

Yarmouth people off, Sheringham people on, Yarmouth people now looking very confused.

Finally the train driver piped up, this wasn’t the Sheringham train, it was the Yarmouth train, the Sheringham train would leave from platform 6a. He also helpfully pointed out that despite the fact that we were next to platform 5a this was platform 6b and we should get on the train that would pull up in front of this one.

Right, Sheringham people off, Yarmouth people on, Sheringham people up the the further extremities of platform 6. Given we were beyond the roofed area of the platform there were no more indicator screens to look at, but we were regularly told over the tannoy that the 17:45 train for Sheringham would leave from platform 6. Not 6a, 6. No mention of the Yarmouth train.

In the end it fell to the train drivers who, when both trains were in, clearly stated which train the one you were on was and directed wayward and lost people to the other train. If it weren’t for them I suspect there would be a lot of angry people heading back into Norwich to start their journey again, this time on the correct train.

So after a fun day shopping and a rather top notch steak at Gouchos a tired Zozo and I headed home. We arrived on platform 11 at 18:55 and about 45 seconds for the 19:00 train, got as far as the rear engine car and had people blowing ‘the train is about to leave’ whistles. That’s right, if you’re 2 minutes early for a train you’re late and they won’t let you on, whereas they can be 10 minutes late and that still counts as on time.

Not to worry, we had reserved seats and it’s not like it’s a rush hour train from London on a weekday with no seat reservations printed… OK, so maybe it was. Not wishing to have them shut the doors on us and declare us not early enough not to be late we hoped on in the first class section, walked through a packed train to the carriage where are seats were supposed to be, sighed and sat on the floor in the vestibule outside the toilets. I’d forgotten how miserable my old commute could be.

We pulled into Colchester 4 minutes late (on time), allowed a bunch of people off and nabbed their seats. Since NXEA are running rolling stock from the dawn of rail travel (window down, lean out, open door) there are no plugs so my phone, which was already on low power mode and down to 10% battery (my iPhone is my life, running out of battery is not an option), couldn’t be charged which reduced me to reading The Zozos celebrity magazines over her shoulder for the first half of the journey. Seat secured I was able to pull out the laptop and sacrifice it’s battery to charge the phone, a job that it’s performing admirably.

This whole lack of plugs thing is going to be a big issue over the weekend. Bringing my laptop just to serve as a spare battery and mobile charging station seems a bit extreme (I was kind of hoping to just shove smalls and travel toiletries into a pocket and not bother with a bag at all). NXEA trains don’t even offer power in first class (or free tea and coffee, or indeed anything other than a wider seat that’s broken so it won’t move from the fully reclined position making it uncomfortable to use the table) so stumping up for weekend first isn’t going to help. I may see how much a battery pack for the phone will cost me, or maybe try and get a trip down in a cattle truck. I bet they’ve got plugs. I’m just glad I didn’t pay full whack for these tickets.

The Zozo and I are off to the big smoke tonight for a day in London tomorrow. For me this involves a trip round the market in Camden, lunch at Canary Wharf and dinner at Gauchos. No such luck for The Zozo. I’ll be dropping her off tomorrow morning so she can’t sit some exams and offering what moral support I can before galavanting off and doing much less stressful things.

It’s not all bad for The Zozo as the trip to Gouchos was her request as a reward for making it through an otherwise crappy day (there’s something about exams that automatically make the day crappy). She’s also not seen the room we’re staying in tonight.

Now I’m a daft sod who likes making big gestures and I thought what better way to make sure you arrive at the exam refreshed and relaxed than to have a good nights sleep before hand. And how better to get a good nights sleep than in a penthouse suite overlooking Camden Lock. OK, so it’s a Holiday Inn (we needed to be close to where The Zozos exams are, and I’m not working in The City any more to be affording hugely flash hotels), but it looks nice from the pictures and I’m expecting a better than average view from our balcony. Hopefully The Zozo likes the surprise.

After the incident yesterday I was faced with a conductor this morning who looked at my ticket, looked confused, then went “ah!”, smiled and moved on. I checked my ticket, I’d put it back in upside down yesterday. So it’s acceptable and readable upside down.

To avoid any future problems though I riddled to the ticket office and got my replacement. While she was filling out the required forms (by hand, love this modern age we’re in) I mused about the plastic tickets.

“Our machines won’t print on plastic” was the reply.

“Yes, but you could print a temporary one and send a nice plastic one by post later”, I suggested.

“Our machines only print on plastic.”

Giving up I waited for the form filling to be complete and then enquired about a refund for yesterdays ticket.

“Oh dear, you leave your ticket at home yesterday?” was the slightly condescending reply.

“No, I’d have a return then”, I said, “The conductor wouldn’t accept it. Made me buy a ticket.”

“Really? Why?”

“Claimed he couldn’t read it.”

The lady actually got the ticket out from the drawer looked at it and said “Well I can see it’s faded, but you can still read the date.”

“Exactly!” I replied, “But I was told that if you can’t read the station names it’s not valid.”

“Really?” she said.

“Apparently so.”

And so we started filling in the refund forms. By hand. Joy.

Still, I got my new ticket, got my refund and was only 15 minutes late for work. God I hate NXEA.

My commute into work involves the use of a very rural railway line. Two trains ply the route, much of which is single track, pass at North Walsham where there is a handy bit of doubled up track for precisely that, get to the end of the line, turn round, come back. Lather, rinse, repeat. This setup has some advantages; except for a tiny bit at the Norwich end, there is only ever one other train that can get in your way (and they can and do turf everyone off to wait for the next train and send the empty train back if things get too out of whack); similarly signal failures aren’t a massive problem as there are only 2 trains to co-ordinate; also it’s a quiet line so I always get a seat, often by myself. The downside is when things go wrong you can easily get delayed an hour waiting for the next train and if a train goes out of service all he’ll breaks loose. Especially if it breaks down on a bit of single track, unable to move so nothing can get past.

This morning the train glided [glode?] into the station without the usual rumble of it’s diesel/electric engine. This is never good. 10 seconds later there is a roar, the engine restarts, all appears to be well. 5 minutes later the engine cuts out again, we glide into Roughton Road station, I start to wonder if we’ll leave. Lo and behold the engine restarts, big roar, we pull off…

200 meters outside of Gunton engine dies. Coast in. Restart…

And so on at every station. Most disconcerting. So the question is was this a defective train which limped from Cromer to Norwhich; a novice driver who kept stalling the engine; or some new operating procedure to save money?

It was with some trepidation I left the office this afternoon and checked the train times. I had visions of a failed train blocking the line, or one train out of service meaning chaos and me getting home late. Thankfully all appears to be working fine. The train has arrived, the engine is running and (touch wood) in 45 minutes or so it’ll disgorge me onto Cromer station, platform 1.

Since my records began (over 3 years ago) I have handed over somewhere in the region of £15,000 to the rail companies, mostly National Express East Anglia, formerly One. At the end of my London career I was handing over £361 per month for the privelidge of sitting on the floor in the foyer of London bound intercities and a further £40 a week to get to and from Cromer and my Tai Chi classes. Tot that lot up and it comes to over 6 grand a year. Even when I was working from home it was costing me £80+ every time I went to London (thankfully only a few times a month).

Between stopping work and now I must have spent £50 on the trains tops (which actually equates to quite a few trips as it’s only £6.20 return to Norwich off peak) which is a much better state of affairs. This changed yesterday when I handed over £1436 for an annual season ticket. It’s the cheapest season ticket I’ve had since I lived in Zone 2, something I was quite pleased about… which just goes to show how numb I’ve become the cost of rail travel.

The last few months I’ve been working The Zozos shift patterns and working from home, with the last couple of months being self employed. Weekends, as a concept, dissapeared and there were just days working and days off. Days working were 8-3:30 with zero commute. Mondays were a thing of the past.

All that came to an end this morning when a Monday suddenly hoved into view and I had to go rejoin the commuterate.

Thankfully I’m being eased into it. 3 day week this week with a nice 4 day weekend… although there’s a Monday lurking behind that. I can tell.

It’s going to be odd. I’m used to being able to potter about, nip to the shops, do my shopping on a daily basis and cook for The Zozo when she gets home to a warm house with a lit fire. Poor old Zo is now going to be comming back to a cold house where she’ll have to build and light her own fire and then either eat alone or starve until I come home. At least with this job I’m not being woken up at 5:45, I’m getting home well before 19:45 and I don’t have to fight for a seat

So today I went hunting for the most mythical of beasts: The cheapest advance fare National Express East Anglia ticket. For those not familiar with this operator (although I suspect all UK train operators are the same), when you log onto the website to buy advance fare tickets it helpfully tells you that you can get the tickets from ‘as low as £6′. This is a special online only price which is never available. Whenever I’ve booked tickets the cheapest has often been £9, but sometimes they’re even more depending what time you want to travel*.

Today, however, I managed to get that very beast. The cheapest of the cheap tickets, and all I had to do was book a ticket 3 months in advance on an off peak service. No doubt I got the only two tickets for that price so everyone else will have to pay the higher price (with the price getting higher and higher the closer you get to the day).

*there is the lunacy of the Monday morning Cromer to Colchester advance fare ticket which is more expensive than a first class ticket bought on the day, and more restrictive since you can only use it on the train you’ve booked it on