Some weeks ago it seemed like a great idea when Emma suggested that our planned trip to Preston should take place aboard public transport. I tried to appeal to her better senses but as this was to be a potentially stressful visit to an elderly relative then I caved in with the promise that I could take a fully charged hip-flask. I should have seen the warning signs early on when the route we agreed on was to be via Reading to rendezvous with Liza, Emma's twin sister. My experiences and memories of Reading station were not great, when I was stationed in Portland I would travel back from Carlisle to Weymouth on weekends and invariably miss my connection at Reading and end up spending some time haranguing and negotiating with the station staff in order to get to my destination on time so I wouldn't be fined by the Navy. To me Reading station will always remain, cold in heart and climate, difficult and 'kin dull. But I didn't take the hint and dutifully booked the tickets and seats.
The day arrived and we began our journey from Fareham station. I ignored a sign that described the weekend working taking place, this will have an effect later, as I evidently 'knew better'. We changed at Southampton Parkway and boarded the X-Country train from Southampton to Manchester, quite a long way and an important arterial route. There were FOUR carriages on the train, there were four on the train from Fareham to Southampton for F***s sake. The four carriages were already full when we boarded, and were lucky yo find seats, we stopped at Winchester and Basingstoke taking on more passengers. We were relieved to disembark at Reading, thankful that we had seats booked for the remainder of the journey.
After hooking up with Liza and an awful Burger King breakfast we decamped to the appropriate platform to await our train to Birmingham New Street where we would change onwards to Preston. Predictably our train was a later service from Southampton to Manchester operated by none other than the ultra efficient and fore-sighted X-country. X-men yes, X-country a resounding NO!! Again FOUR coaches, unbelievable. A rather rough looking family, a couple and a young child were in our seats gnawing on chicken bones. I anticipated a Jeremy Kyle-esque argument but no, the bloke apologised, stood and ushered his family out into another carriage. Result!
Birmingham New Street was as I remembered, shit. Thirty pence to take a piss and a twenty minute queue to buy a bottle of water. I glanced into the bar briefly but any thoughts of a quick pint were swiftly eliminated when I saw the clientele, it was not unlike the bunch of mutants seen in the Mos Eisley bar in Star Wars. Instead we opted to await our train in waiting station on the platform, we didn't have long to wait. The final leg of our outbound journey was aboard a Virgin Trains carrier, who have a completely different approach to f***ing up things. Half of the six carriages were first class, which they put on presumably to entice as many passengers as possible to upgrade to this service. As the standard class were choked with humanity we upgraded and spent an hour and a half in relative comfort, free wi-fi, complimentary tea-coffee and biscuits etc. all at fifteen quid each, thanks HMRC.
We arrived at Preston to a city I first visited when England lost to Germany in the 1990 World cup. I watched the match in a friends student house and the bitter taste of defeat when they team was so close to a glorious victory has always coloured my perception of Preston. We found the hotel and checked in. A nice little guest house within easy walking distance of the station it was an inspired choice, well I thought so anyway. I will spin on a bit as the activities involving the intended purpose of our visit aren't relevant to this blog, for various reasons.
Our evening meal was taken at Tottos Italian/Mediterranean restaurant which I had come across on my trawl through the internet. Another mistake, the starters were above average, garlic bread with tomato, garlic-cheesy mushrooms and stuffed aubergines, all fantastic. The main course however was straight from the ready meals section of Asda, at least my Kleftiko was. So a massive thumbs down for that. After leaving the restaurant, unsatisfied with the value for money, we ended wandering aimlessly around a bizarre sculpture of a firing squad portrayed in a very cartoony fashion. Unsure of how to get back to our hotel I decided to fall back on the only method I was sure would give us the required information, I gave a Scottish beggar two quid and asked him. Sure enough he told me, and a few minutes later we were preparing for bed. The room next door was very noisy, it sounded like a small group of people were having a very fine time. I was disgusted and told the two attractive, blonde twins with whom I was sharing a room, that it shouldn't be allowed. And so to bed.
The morning saw Preston reveal itself as I will always remember, dank, dark and gloomy drenched in oily, greasy rain. After a very adequate half English (like a full English but without the effort of real sausages, black pudding and three types of eggs) I sat and gazed out of the first floor window at the intermittent traffic passing below as the girls packed and prepared for our early departure. We had booked seats on the 14:21 departure from Preston but we had all agreed that a journey in the future is best started sooner rather than later. We reached the station a little after nine-thirty and sat in cafe while I checked the route. Three changes were required, Wolverhampton, Banbury and Oxford; that would take us back to Reading where Emma and I would have to purchase our tickets to Fareham. So far so not so bad. The train to Wolverhampton was reasonably empty, we managed good seats together and discussed the previous evenings activities. There was a slight delay but our subsequent train as behind us and as such was also delayed, not too bad. As we stood on the platform at Wolverhampton and the X-country train to Banbury approached I knew what awaited us, four carriages and more people than there were seats. I was right, we struggled to get seats anywhere near each other but finally succeeded just before we disembarked at Banbury.
The station at Banbury was curiously quiet, no trains were evident and there was nothing on the departures board. I asked a short spotty man where there trains to Oxford were, his badge proclaimed him to be 'customer services' but when he told me that there were only buses I failed to see where the service element lay in this. Indeed the service level of X-Country trains this weekend had failed to impress to say the least. I boarded the bus and cracked open my hip-flask to dull the pain on our dull motorway trip to Oxford. Predictably we turned up at Oxford just in time to see our train pull away from the platform leaving us another twenty minutes to wait until the next rain. I had checked the timetables online and the results had prompted a massive gulp or three from my hip-flask. Train ran hourly from Reading to Southampton Central where we would have to wait for another 'kin bus to take us to Fareham and then a taxi. My blood was boiling when we reached Reading. The 14:53 had been missed because of our bus trip and gave us sufficient time to grab a burger. Liza had to leave almost immediately, back to Ealing Broadway and then home. Emma and I had some time to wait. An ice-cream cooled me somewhat but my calm state didn't last long.
Reading station has quite a few options to embark or disembark and as an extensive refurbishment project was underway some of these platforms were not obvious. We eventually found the platform allocated for our train to Southampton and joined the milling throng waiting for the train. The announcement came five minutes before the due departure time, a platform change, a platform we could see but due to the topology of the station was the furthest from us as it could possibly be. Reaching the train we were greeted by a multitude of faces pressed against rain streaked glass staring hopefully at the exterior and the wide open spaces of the platform. Emma and took our chances with the front carriage, success!!
We sat for the next forty-five minutes in our coats amongst crowds of passengers crammed in like goats in a Hi-lux. That was it, as the train pulled into Southampton Parkway, one stop before Central we got off. The taxi home was over fifty quid but at that point I had ceased caring, there was a curry with my name on it and the sooner we met the better.
As I say facing a plate of chicken rezwala, daal malsala and parathas I reflected on the past two days travel. Taking trains whilst travelling abroad to meet people and experience new things is one thing but an unnecessary journey taking three times longer than it should is something else. Emma agreed, we would never contemplate another train journey if we had any other alternative, including dog sled.
I realise that I'm slipping back into the habit of not writing, blogs, emails and even my book. That is not a great state of affairs and in fact was feeling somewhat down about the whole creative process. Then, out of the blue, well almost, I received a phone call from an ld buddy I had not seen for ten years, when I was in Kourou. Marko, still not really sure about his surname, was from Serbia and had joined the French Foreign Legion (Legion Entranger) as a very real career choice. His wish to learn and converse in English drew us together and we had some pretty good times in French Guiana (and if he's reading I do remember the time when you returned my company supplied car with a dent in rear). I even let him have a Newcastle United shirt, as you can see. I have been in contact, on and off with Marko since I returned from South America in 2002. He subsequently left the Legion and married a very lovely Australian lady, sorry I couldn't make it to the pre wedding piss up btw, and moved to our Antipodes. A few weeks ago, must be months now I guess, I contacted Marko for a quick update and mentioned that I was looking to visit his homeland to take part in the largest sausage festival in the country. He got back to me and said he would sort something out, I waited. Yesterday Marko rang me to tell me he is in the UK this weekend, it transpires that I am up in Preston with Emma sorting out some family affairs and won'e be around, ARSE!! However he is now back in Paris and is only a hop, skip and jump away. Better that that! His brother-in-law? is a journalist in Serbia who covers the sausage festival and I am to hook up with hime for the Serbian sausage experience of a lifetime, that always sounds dubious using the word sausage in that way.
Cheers Big JW, it was a great afternoon at the thoroughly underestimated Fishbourne Palace. I was surprised at the sheer scale of the construction, I knew it was a sizeable building but failed to grasp the colossal magnitude of the place. Today there is little to see apart from a few walls and floors, spectacular mosaics would be more a accurate description of the remaining floors. Even though only a portion of the West wing has been preserved you can still get a feeling of the majesty that was once evident at Fishbourne.