About A Week: King's Cross Water Crisis
Peter Hinchliffe takes a speedy rail trip from London to Yorkshire while reading Parallel Lines, a book which made him guffaw while encouraging deep thought about Britain's transport problems.
Our rail journey from London to Yorkshire began with a crisis. The toilets were closed at King’s Cross Station.
Anxiously I paced the length of one platform, then another. No relief. Only “Closed’’ signs.
We ducked into a pub on one of the platforms. Yes, there was a toilet sign.
Wife Joyce and I drank a pint each of orange-and-soda. London was gently crisping in the baking-tin of an August afternoon.
At last. Head for the Gents sign. Only to notice for the first time that a chair had been strategically placed to block the entrance.
Only then did we discover that the water supply to the station had been turned off.
Panic measures. A quick dash to a MacDonald’s outside the station. A blissful visit to an upstairs loo. Then the moral conundrum.
Should I buy something, having used the facilities? A milk shake? A Coke, at least?
What the heck? There was a queue at the counter. I snuck out like a little boy who had just raided a neighbour’s apple orchard.
At last we’re on the train. Due to leave at 2.35 pm. We leave at 2.35 - and five seconds. Even the Japanese, with their enthusiasm for metronomic efficiency, wouldn’t pull a face at that.
One stop at Stevenage, and in next to no time we were disembarking at Wakefield. A nine-mile taxi ride - and we were back in our Huddersfield home at 4.46 pm.
Full marks Great North Eastern Railway! I still find it astonishing that we travelled from central London to our house in the Yorkshire Pennines in 131 minutes.
During that high-speed journey I was reading a book about Britain’s railways - Parallel Lines by Ian Marchant. There could be no better accompaniment to the high-speed hum of an inter-city rail journey.
Come to that, there could be no better accompaniment to a slow-time trip on a steam-powered branch line.
And if you are sitting in a lonely cot on a Scottish isle where trains have never run, and never will run, Parallel Lines will still be a good companion, because Mr Marchant is a funny guy who writes laugh-out-loud prose.
He loves railways. He loves the history of them. He loves travelling on them, even when he finds himself in the company of 21st Century cretins who smoke too much and converse so boringly as to make the clucking of a hen sound like a Reith lecture.
He loves planning rail journeys. He loves writing about rail journeys - even a day-long scuttle round the London Underground system, in the company of passengers who gaze at their shoes and would sooner suffer a stroke than talk to a stranger.
He also hates. Most of all he hates the politicians and planners who have allowed our rail system to decline.
Do read Mr Marchant’s Parallel Lines if you wish to be tickled into frequent laughter. Besides exercising your chuckle muscles, radical thoughts about Britain’s future transport policy may also be provoked.
Our recent King’s Cross to Yorkshire rail journey was a thoroughly pleasant experience ¾ once we left the platform. Besides Mr Marchant’s book to keep me abundantly entertained, there was an excellent cup of coffee at a reasonable price from the trolley.
I’ll say Mr Marchant stirs up revolutionary thoughts!
I’m beginning to think that all rail travel should be free in Britain’s overcrowded, shoulder-to-shoulder island. That’s the only way to persuade folk to slide out from behind the wheel of a car.
In the meantime, maybe Mr Marchant could tackle another book. Bus-hopping from Kent to Cape Wrath, bringing us a first-hand report of the Hell of journeying on our metal-clogged roads.
And maybe he will join me in campaigning for a we-never-close policy for railway station loos - even if that means installing an emergency water supply.
