An Unexpected Adventure
After saying goodbye to my family late this afternoon, I set off for the train station with just the backpack on my back. I'm only away for two nights, so only really need a couple of shirts, underwear, and a wash bag. Experience of travelling with work has taught me all sorts of tricks to do with packing light. You quickly learn the difference between “need”, and “would be nice to have”.
So. I arrive at the local station, and people are muttering about delayed trains. I do a double take of the information board, and everything appears to be correct – train arriving in a few minutes – on time. A train did arrive in a few minutes. It appeared to have no staff on board though, which presented something of a challenge in terms of buying a ticket. Luckily he first change of trains happens at a station with a ticket machine – first hurdle overcome.
Feeling particularly smug about having the ticket in my pocket, I got on the next train, then changed again, and everything was going perfectly. You know how when things go perfectly, you're just waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under you? Well that's exactly what happened next. Somebody in central London jumped under a train at a perfect location to pretty much wreck the entire network throughout south-east England.
I suspect the problem wasn't the crime-scene – it was more crews, trains, and carriages being out-of-place in the rail network. Given the ridiculous levels of cost savings that go on in commercial train operators train-sets, I image drivers all over the network were hitting their operational limits, and having to stand down – with trains stranded in stations, and no way to get relief drivers out to them.
Fun times. Angry passengers were told by a station controller that there would be no trains for at least the next 90 minutes – that's when I started thinking laterally. I ran into the station, bought a ticket to London on a different line, and jumped on the first train. 90 minutes later I had travelled to Paddington in Central London, traversed the Underground, bought another ticket at Waterloo Station, and jumped on the first train heading to my destination (a feat in itself, that required a full-on sprint the length of Waterloo Station to get on the train – two thirds of the departures board was in disarray, with notices about the suicide flashing up everywhere.
The hotel is clean, tidy, and very basic indeed. There is a TV in the room, a kettle, drinks, a bed, and the weirdest wardrobe I've ever seen (kind of a shelf and rail combined – pretty ingenious really). There are no plug sockets near the bed – when on earth are hotels going to figure that one out ? We ALL have smartphones, and we ALL charge them on bedside tables. Oh yes – there's no bedside tables either.
After checking in, unpacking my clothes (such as they are), and throwing my wash bag in the bathroom, I turned tail, and wandered down the road to grab something to eat. The magical Google Maps told me I had walked straight past a late night store when I left the station – so I re-traced my steps, and bought all manner of rubbish. I've already eaten it all.
While wandering back from the shop in the dark, I started to notice that this part of London isn't perhaps the safest. I get it – it was late, and the only people wandering around once the shops close will be teenagers and twenty-somethings. When you see two huge black guys in smart clothes standing outside a pub, looking closely at anybody walking past though, you start to wonder. When you then see several gangs in baseball caps walk past, cursing profusely non-stop, you start to wonder some more. I passed a beautiful blonde girl at a bus stop who appeared to be crying – I was about to ask if she was ok, when she started talking quickly – in Russian – into a cellphone I hadn't spotted under her hair. A Polish family passed by, looking similarly as out-of-place as me, with their children dressed up to go somewhere (or on their way home, perhaps).
As with so many cities, I imagine the morning will paint the surrounding area with an entirely different, safer atmosphere. I'm already wondering what breakfast at McDonalds might be like – I've never had one before.