Rail Today

You will be delighted to know there are no more pictures of water.  Instead, with the temperature now lowered in this grubby room to a mere 79% from a height on Saturday night of 85, I consider the railways on which I travelled.

  
Running a railway has always featured one major problem, disruption!  That disruption might come from heat bending the rails as it did recently, points not working properly, signals failing, copper wire being stolen, doors jamming or some such technical problem, let alone the sole passenger taken seriously ill or the one jumping in front of the train, all these hinder the smooth running of the railways.
Last Monday as I arrived I noted the people gathered around the station, something was up.  Far away near Clacton the points had failed leading to an upset railway.  The trains could not get through, they thus blocked the main line hindering all services.  Too alleviate this the 9am from our station was turned around six miles away and left our people fuming in the heat awaiting the train at ten, my train. As I bought my ticket from the stressed sole representative of the railway all around me people gnashed teeth and muttered under their breath.  I smiled and stood back...

My journey was smooth enough, the carriage was not busy even by Stratford where I changed.  This marvellous new complex offered me the chance to spare my knees by using the lift, this I did and found myself totally lost!  I used the wrong lift!  The one I wanted was further down but nobody told me so I ended up wandering around, up stairs and down with no lift, until I eventually found my place here at the underground.  Sensible people would have checked where they were going and followed the signs before they came out!

 
This Jubilee Line is very busy but I planted myself near the front of the coach and with the window open it was not too bad.  The train is fast but the variety of passengers is amazing.  Many were passing through from one station to another, tourists transported fat cases full of her clothes, other tourists were set on sightseeing and paying for it also, locals, surly and ignoring the world around them, put their heads into the technology and lived apart.  
Checking the timetable I raced slowly for the train, it beat me.  Two or three of us were halfway up the platform when the first five coaches moved off, as did the rail operative... 
This was good as thirty minutes later, on the same platform, I took the remaining five coaches and found a decent seat.  Here I also found a guard who done her job well and with a slight degree of humour.  I asked when we would arrive and she said "Not soon enough" and giggled.  She had just had a run in with  man carrying the wrong ticket and demanded £140 from him for the real fare.  This had not gone down well.  We shared a few joke comments along with another passenger and the women selling coffee, she could not get the trolley to move, and settled down to half read my book and watch the greenery, where crops were actually green, pass by.  The hot weather has ruined many crops and while some can be gathered the size is much reduced. Prices will rise.

Coming back I cleverly let the fast train depart and waited ten minutes for the slow train.  This ensured a seat, even though it contained only four coaches and not five, and a relaxed atmosphere was around me.  Not everyone felt this, not the woman who had not paid and was forced to pay full price by the guard.  He however was good to me informing me of faster trains when he saw the details of my long journey.  I preferred the seat without crowds rather than speed and he understood.  However by journeys end I was changing my mind.  
Some railways are doing away with guards, now often called 'conductors.'  This I see as a foolish idea as many questions are asked on a train and the sight of a guard eases some peoples apprehension re travel.  It is funny how folks are more likely to converse on long distance travel, possibly because of nerves, than in local travel.  Maybe the excitement of the change brings this on.  Personally while I am happy to be pleasant (yes I am) I prefer folks to shut it and look out the window and enjoy the sights which are many.  The place of the guard however remains important on any train as he represents the company, gives reassurance, collects fares from dodgers, answers questions ("No idea love") and is a requirement railways cannot do without.  Yet to save money some wish to drop them.

 
In between trains!
A sweltering day and a constant flow of hundreds of passengers is it any surprise to see staff exhausted in such circumstances.  he has just answered the thousandth stupid question of the day and awaits a thousand more before rushing home, can you blame him...?

   
The Jubilee Line takes no chances with folks falling in front of the trains underground.  These panels open only when the train stops and always at the doors, so far, and facilitate passenger movement.  I must cease from using 'passenger' as they are all 'customers' in today's rail world.  What nonsense!

 
With the ever present danger of hold ups late in the afternoon I jumped on the first train at platform ten, once I had gone the wrong way in the wrong lift for the second time, this one being a four coach vehicle for Ipswich.  This appears wrong to me as there were five coaches of people aboard and standing was the only option, no guard appeared unsurprisingly.  Surely such trains require five or six coaches?  Later I discovered a train for Norwich was cancelled, all this because someone along the line had gone in front of a train!  Deliberately or what?  Who knows and I never found out.  This is at once tragic and annoying, for a variety of reasons people kill themselves but why do it on the railways?  Someone has to clean up the mess, pick up the bits, reassure the driver it was not his fault, why put others out while you are depressed or worried?  Trains could be held up for over an hour as I was two years ago when someone done that on the southern part of the route.  Is it cruel to say 'Kill yourself at home?

I had time to ponder this, but not set up this picture properly, while waiting for the connection.  Also cogitating on what was being transported in the long trains that come from Felixstowe docks where containers full mostly of Chinese tat race past.  Longer trains return the other way charging through at 90 miles and hour leaving a slipstream upsetting for girls in summer frocks.  Brexit will however end all this.  Long lines of lorries at Dover unable to cross without proper paperwork alongside container ports stuffed with goods we cannot get to Europe because Boris wishes to be Prime Minister.  A disaster waiting to happen and they continue with this farce in spite of it all.  Today's news of David Davies resigning is good, but will things change?

  
While waiting in cold wet weather can be irritating the chance to ponder and watch life go by in a rail station is quite enjoyable I say, the more so if it is a busy station.   Not only can you 'people watch' as some enjoy but a selection of trains from various regions passing through I find interesting, yet I am not an anorak!  Some I note know everything about every train, two such on the trip home got off at Eastleigh as they were train hunting there in the big depot, but I just like watching them.  This is like having your own toy train set yet on a large table.
I got home tired and weary, I ought to have stuffed my face while in Waterloo's rip-off shopping precinct, but instead I relied on my watered down now warm water bottle.  This was insufficient I say now.
Today I sit here planning my next rain journey, Studying the timetable and looking for inspiration, and the cash to pay for it, long live the senior rail card!   

The Train Now Departing

"We Apologise for the Delay..."

The sun is shining, it's everywhere, don't have no worries, don't have no care so I trooped off to the bus stop for what the internet told me was the 10:29 bus.  Naturally the Bus station indicator read 10:33.  I waited, he waited, then she also waited but nothing happened.  We stared at the bus station entrance but that did not work until I got fed up of warming myself amongst this lot and headed down to the railway station where I changed my tentative plans and reached for my old man 30% off card.  Colchester it was then and he comes my train as I changed at Witham running on time to take me to my destination.
My knees were not too keen however.

This was not my real intention today as I had t come here many times a few years ago and did not find much enthusiasm for the place.  I had less enthusiasm for the adolescents from the collage wandering about like 16 year old's.

 
The Mill here on the Colne River has been in use at least since the 1100's and possibly from before that.  Most of the time it dealt with 'corn,' that is wheat to you and me, but occasionally had other uses.  Colchester of course goes back to the Romans and before them possibly the site was used early after the last ice age 8000 years BC.

You can see from this how effective the hillside offered a defensive perimeter.  After the Romans rather stupidly did not organise such defences Boudica destroyed the place and Mr Emperor ensured such a mistake did not happen again.  Much altered since it shows just how difficult an attack from ground level would have been.  

Being one not renowned for intellectual stimulus I continued to walk very slowly in heat reaching some say 29%.  The walk around the castle park is indeed long and while my body ached I found I just had to see what was around the corner.  I knew a pill box stood nearby having found it 20 years ago and here it remains.  Blocked off now and impossible to enter it was part of the UK's defences against that nice Mr Hitler who did not bother to visit. 

Situated here on a bend of the Colne it offered the defenders a good view of the river, and I suspect most of the trees had been removed then to give a clear sight to them, it also offered a very good chance of death if attacked as not other pill box stands nearby to cover, unless it stood on the other bank among the new housing estates.

 

If indeed the trees were scrubbed in 1940 they have returned well in the years since.  All around the trees tower overhead and these men in particular impressed me with their height.  That may have had something to do with the blue sky and burning sun behind them of course.

Now remember I just wanted a dawdle in the sun not a twenty mile hike and here I was, at two miles an hour, hurpling along further and further from the railway station and knowing full well that I had miles to go back to get home.  It was however the old desire to see what was round the corner once again that made me limp on.  How stupid can an individual be?  I was aware of many things forgotten since the last sunshine many moons ago.  I ought to have worn the sunglasses glasses not these ones, I ought to have a hankie to wipe away the perspiration that flowed so easily, and I ought to have ensured I had bought a lighter jacket from a charity shop for the summer.
The only bright spot was buying a 59p bottle of fizzy water to carry in my pocket, usually I forget that.

 
This huge building was working when I last passed this way 20 years ago.  The water, with a tidal reach of about 20 feet from what I could guess, was full of suitable working boats.  It is of course now flats!

Next door the building, called 'The Mill' was an interesting sight, also flats and possibly some other noisy use.  I did not venture round to look.

Camulodunum was built on the hill and here at the bottom near the quay stood a variety of aged houses.  The river has been in use for thousands of years and the Romans made good use of it at this point to bring in goods from Gaul and troops from wherever.  This house appears to have been quite substantial in itself and had another 'front' added on to the side facing the road at a point later in time. 

This is more typical Essex substantial house, one that began with a 'hall' and added things as they prospered over time.  I suspect it goes back to the 16th century at least.  

It looks like some rich man has benefited the poor by providing 'almshouses' here.

In the days before Thatcher, sorry the benefits system people often stuck their hands in their pockets to aid the poor, a system that does not exist today because the media through constant propaganda have convinced the nation at large that those on benefits are all scroungers, even if their legs have been blown off and an arrow sticks out of their head, they are fit to work!  Much more of that after Brexit!

The main building supplied all their needs although i suspect this is now accommodation of some sort and the whole place may no longer be for the poor but for the very rich!   It is important when wandering about to look up as above the road there are always signs from the distant past to see.

By now I was aware of how far I still had to travel and my muscles were informing me of my stupidity in a manner worthy of a medical student.  I ached and ahead of me lay 'East Hill' and like most hills this one went upwards.  Not the names, nothing fancy here, 'East Hill,' 'North Hill,' I suspect that is the military influence, still strong as until recently a huge army complex, now housing, lay in the middle of town.  I think I am right in saying the Para's still have places here though this time I saw no army vehicles whatever.

This building intrigued me, a small 'church' looking style of housing with unreadable words above the window.  However my bleary eyes made out the word 'Orphanage' in time, yet another example of church people doing the work the state now does, possibly better!  It was also used as a girls school and was paid for by a Mr A. Diss and cost him £700 to erect!

No charitable person appeared offering to carry me up this hill past the run down aged housing come shops that have stood there for hundreds of years.  They were not built to withstand such traffic rumbling past though the ones on the other side of the road were better built and mostly of a Georgian or Victorian time.

Foolishly I watched as a bus stopped at the bus stop and the driver remained there in an attempt to fit into his timetable.  Foolishly I ought to have whipped out the bus pass and got myself up the hill.  I didn't!  He drove on.
However on the other side sat a large once glorious building now refurbished and possibly an office complex featuring this fine bird high above the road making it obvious what the original company stood for, well not to me!   
In fact the area here is the 'Eagle Gate' one part of the towns defences.  The building was built by the 'Colchester Brewing Company' in 1888 indicating a flow of cash had arrived since 1828. 

Beer was beginning to lodge itself into my temperance mind as I ploughed on uphill.  The I noticed this Georgian (?) building squashed alongside two more showy offerings.

Above the door we see yet another image of Jesus tending his sheep.  The image of the shepherd not really working too well in this concrete jungle in which many live but the fact remains true.  This also must have been an offering towards improving or teaching people, probably young folks.  Do similar works exist today?

Almost at the top of the hill I found St James the Great standing ready to welcome me with open arms, which it didn't last time I passed as it was closed.  This church like so many others would open daily but folks do tend to wander in and pinch things so it was open this time for a small service in the side chapel.  A very nice chap at the entrance encouraged me to enter even though the service was almost finished and so I did and thankfully sat in a pew at the back and discovered my body preferred sitting to walking uphill.

As you might expect this cavernous church has stood here from around the 1200's and most likely a wooden Saxon building stood here before that.   I sat and listened at a distance unwilling to wander about as the wee service continued in the corner.

  
I was hesitant about photos also in this high church anglo-catholic church but I managed one or two.
These long poles carried by the verger during parades in such churches are often delicate artistic items.  However reading about the local church in the 1600's we see the verger/beadles often using their staffs to ensure unruly youths ((forced into church by law and uninterested in what was taking place) paid attention and kept the noise down.  Such churches often have graffiti on pillars as the crowd stood through the service and often found ways to keep themselves occupied.

 
 I left the friendly Beadle and made my way into the edge of town for lunch which comprised one £3:90 worth of Colchester No1 in the rather trendy 'Three Wise Monkeys' 'Tap House.'   Here I was served by an attractive friendly young woman who along with her friend helped lift me out of the soft clinging chairs used to trap folks into staying all night.  At that price right enough I could have bought food!

Staring out the pub window I cogitated on my return to the railway station.  Either through the crowded hot town (always a 'town' here not a 'city' as they wish to keep the dubious accolade of 'England's Oldest Town.'  I decided again my aches crying out to get the bus to wander through the castle grounds, a mistake by the way as it was downhill and I could hardly walk properly as I went down the slope.  Fool that I am!  

After a slog through the uninteresting boring hot streets full of decent houses I took what I considered a short cut and got to the station as quick as if I had gone the other way.  Here announcements informed me as I drank my £2:50 Americana coffee provided by the busy yet friendly lass in the 'Pumpkin' cafe on the platform, that the train was late, very late as it happens, because of signalling problems.  Surely I thought others would also be late until I realised this one came from a different starting point.  'Slow' is a word many of my teachers often used, one or two used other words.  However my carriage arrived as we see here and happily the crowd climbed aboard and I found myself sitting in a suitable seat to get the full benefit of the sun shining through my window, jolly!

 
I have to change trains as on the outward journey and was greatly cheered to find I had arrived seven minutes after my hourly train had departed!  Once again I sat in the sun watching the girls trains go by, once again near to the arrival of my train the repeated announcement that the '15:29 for Colchester Town is running late de to technical difficulties.'  This was running also in front of mine which meant my 15:35 was going to be late as indeed it was becoming the '15: sometime or other' when it arrived.  
I entertained myself by taking pictures of the rabbit in the distance chewing away at the abundance of vegetation on the remains of the one time Maldon line.  No trains here since Beeching and few before that.

The train speedily made it to home arriving at the time he ought to be departing.  I was home by 16:12 aching, hot and bothered, and desperate for food, rest and a massage from an attractive young woman.  One of these has not arrived.
I ache, I was daft in walking so far in the sun, my head is like a beetroot and as hot as an oven, and I am not planning going anywhere tomorrow, bar Tesco that is.  However the change in plans was enjoyable, I love the train!  I met good people, saw interesting things and got out of myself for a while, much needed at that.  So I am pleased but the pictures are snapshots as I was too weary to compose properly and just snapped things I liked.  I missed a great deal.  However it was a good day in the sun.

Space Filling Post

On Thursday morning I will head down to this glorious station in London while making my way towards my brothers funeral on Friday.  This means travelling via underground to Kings Cross, walking through to St Pancras where I will entrain for the Midlands.  What a roundabout route to get there and this could be avoided if I was rich enough to own a car and drive up in a couple of hours.
How lucky the rich can be!  Of course if the roads are busy it could take a lot longer to get there an the possibility of an accident, much, much less likely on the railways, will always pose a hazard that can take hours to bypass.  I suppose rail has its advantages.
While my niece has the job of arranging things I also have to arrange myself for this.  For this reason I spent yesterday rushing here and there for this and that and I am left flat by evening when I would much rather have spent my day lying about the house in a manner to which I have become accustomed.

Today was a mostly quiet day in the museum where I noted how the bug that left me weary last week was still hanging around, I hope it goes soon, I don't want to travel like this!  Work however was quit today, a couple of visitors a couple of shoppers and one or two queries but not much else.  In spite of this workload I managed to read the 'Friends of the Museum'  magazine which was interesting, unlike this bile.  
Now I am sitting here unwilling to answer all those emails that sit awaiting reply.  This involves thinking, writing, amending the spelling and wondering why did I say what I did?  Email is without a doubt the greatest boon to communication.  Not only is there almost instant contact but you can put in writing what takes ages on the phone and costs a lot of money.   It certainly takes longer to write some things but on the phone dealing with a woman takes even longer!  A ten minute email against a twenty minute call in which she asks at the end for written confirmation is a joy to behold.  Much better to send email and let her call to ask you to explain slowly.  
Ah wimmin, what trouble they cause.  One chap today has a cleaning job in a school in a town not far away.  He was off today to see a lawyer re the treatment he gets there.  Clearly they don't like him and it is probably his sense of humour that is responsible.  Women do not take kindly to humour men participate in daily, their poor wee feelings get upset and we are supposed to run after them, I never do.  They demand equality and then demand we do everything their way, this is not what I would call democracy.   Putting them back in my kitchen might be a good use for them mind...

Wanderlust

Young men like a bit of adventure.  Some simply walk out the door and keep walking travelling far and wide over large acres of the world, often with little forethought.  Others are forced by the call of King and Country to adventure in places they would rather avoid.  In days of yore young lads often as young as twelve or thirteen years of age would wander through the docks finding work on ships travelling to foreign fields, the better educated grabbing what contacts they could might find a trail across Europe making the most of the smattering of French and German forced down their throats at school.  The attraction  was the same, to go out there,  over the horizon to places untouched and unknown always hoping for adventure, well adventure that didn't hurt at any rate, and finding excitement that cannot be obtained by staying at home.

My limited adventurous streak showed during the close season, that once upon a time situation when the football season closed in May and did not reappear until August, then I would travel.  Bored as I was I went to the Bus station on St Andrews Square and got the bus to North Berwick.  This is not a long journey but I was only eleven or twelve at the time and my money was limited.  After this I went further, Kirkaldy in Fife or Leven a wee bit further over, just to see what was there.
As I got older football's close season got shorter and by then we played football during the spare time rather than wander about.  Of course when fifteen I also had a job that the grace of God and inept management meant I kept, I would have fired me, and with good reason, several times before I jumped ship.  The travel bug was satisfied I realised by the bus trips to football matches in Dundee and Glasgow.  While we went for the game I just enjoyed the trips outside of Edinburgh and being somewhere different, even if cold and wet as it often was.

Great West Railway

I did of course take a very badly thought out journey in 1974 when working at the Royal Infirmary.  This was the year I bought a bike for £18, the owner had 'Gone to Australia') and then a few weeks later set off on an epic journey to London.  This is not something I would do today.
However when based in a Swiss Cottage slum during 1976, though I may have moved to exciting Willesden Lane by then, I took it into my head to go to Cardiff.  Why?  I have no idea but there again I had always wished to go abroad.  So off I traps to Paddington Station, pay through the nose for a ticket and clamber aboard the 125, only used on that line then, and sat back.  
One notable aspect of the trip was my questioning mind. We entered a tunnel and while this is to be expected after a while, a long while I thought, we were still in the tunnel.  It took me a while to realise we were in Box Tunnel (either than the Severn I canny say which both looked dark to me) and I was surprised as I had forgotten the difficulties encountered when creating the railway back in the 1840's.  Isambard Kingdom Brunel constructed this tunnel and it appears like me many think that on one day a year the light shines straight through the tunnel and that day happens to be Brunel's birthday.  It appears we are wrong in this, it occurs a day or so earlier on his sisters birthday.  That is what I call a present, what she called it is not known.  

 Avraham Graicer

In spite of the overnight stay in Cardiff, where nothing happened, and my desire never to go abroad again I did in fact make an interesting trip to Jerusalem just before the 1st Gulf War, the one in which everybody was scared of Saddam, and with the weapons the USA had given him they ought to have been scared!  That was interesting and provided plenty of photos even though most were taken on slide film, still sitting there waiting to be shown but no good on here!  One day I will transfer them to digital and bore you as I bored others in 1990.  The one inescapable incident of that trip was visiting Megiddo, the ancient city that goes back several thousand years.  From the name we get the term 'Armageddon' and it was in 'Armageddon' that I got locked in as the lack of visitors (the Yanks were scared to visit in case of war) meant the caretaker locked up and went home.  I eventually found an unlocked gate before I had to climb over the wall. 
These days I find it difficult to go anywhere.  This year has been a bummer physically and while I wish to wander about have been unable to, local transport has not helped either, road works, and rail works have closed things on weekends.  Age also means I lack the adventure to see over the hill as I once wished to.  Having been over the hill for some time I have a degree of cynicism that youth does not possess and this limits adventure to some extent.  However a free gift of a car and the money to run it will I'm sure change my opinion.  Hmmm looks like my opinion will not be changing any time soon.   

Laugh or Weep?

The 7:40 is heading for Waterloo and as it Passes Parsons Green a man stands up and begins to read from the bible and speak to the packed commuters on the train.  He mentions, so we are told repeatedly, 'homosexuality as a sin,' and 'Death is not the end.'  
At this the brave Londoners began to panic. 
A woman screamed and several began to prize open the doors and jump out onto the trackside.  The driver realising the danger called in and the power on the line, all electric on this line, was turned off ensuring the passengers (sorry 'customers') were safe and the entire line brought to a halt and hours of delays ensued.
As panic grew a man asked the preacher to stop and the guard arrived to speak to the man.  As the train continued, some power must have been returned, into Wimbledon he was spoken to calmly by the police.  No charges were brought, the guard congratulated on his approach and the many users of the railways out of the UK's busiest commuter station inconvenienced.

  
Well MR Khan I think you mistook the attitudes of those commuters hurtling in at 80 miles an hour yesterday morning.  They have not given the impression that they are 'Not broken' but have offered a glimpse of people either naive, ignorant or plain stupid!  
I accept that for most the bible is not a book they have read, nor have most been forced to attend a Sunday School of some kind when young and as such the nation is clearly bible ignorant.  However most understand the basics of Christian teaching, most in London have come across a 'preacher' in the streets, on a bus or train or in a large complex at one time or another, how come this lot failed to understand?  The pictures on offer do not show uneducated people leaving the train, a common lot of commuters only, yet they open the doors and flee!  A brief read of the good book will often force fear into people when the truth about judgement appears, many refuse to accept this and prefer the safety of the life we keep in our heads rather than allow eternity to break in however that was not happening here.  This was a confusion between the bible and the Koran.  These people could not understand that this man was not going to blow them up, his words spoke to them like ISIS had appeared in front of them!  The ignorance displayed takes some beating in my view.  

  
There is another reason for the panic and this can be traced back to Tony Blair and the deliberate attempt to increase awareness of Islamic terrorism.  During the years of the IRA Provos and their bombing campaign many bombs were left in stations and other public places yet the government propaganda never encouraged panic, indeed the opposite was the case but not now.
Blair even had 'Ferret tanks,' totally useless against terrorist attacks, placed outside Heathrow Airport just for a publicity stunt, what a waste of an army that was!  Today the fear has been raised both by government offerings and screaming headlines in the 'yellow press.'  
Of course there is a need to be wary of individual or organised ISIS type attacks at the moment but hysteria is not an answer.  This generation is not the one that either lived through a war or grew up in the years after one, no this generation has no concept of 'Getting on with it as there is no other choice' nor do they have the ability to be calm in difficult situations.  I would be far from calm in a bomb situation myself but I suggest most of us would react without panic if a preacher, even one with a koran stood up and spoke.  Two world wars, a couple of depressions and Margaret Thatcher yet let someone quote scripture and panic sets in.  What a world.