“It doesn’t seem too bad” I said down the telephone, “in
fact it sounds as if it might be raining…”
And so, ten minutes or so later, I headed out for what I
hoped would be, at worst, a twenty minute round trip to the station wearing my
YakTrax over my boots to cope with the settled ice, and a mere two jackets over
my jumper.
Which is why, ten minutes later, I was sitting shivering in
a car park in a hailstorm waiting for an indefinitely delayed train and finding
that to be really no fun at all as I pondered upon my inability to shift my
cold and whether this sort of thing was contributing to that…
Another message told me that a points failure at the train’s
ultimate destination meant that two trains were currently “blocking the line”
after the stop I was still waiting at. It was, coincidentally, waiting
“indefinitely” at a stop quite nearby to where my mother remains in hospital,
ironically on a day I’d decided not to visit but instead to have a quiet night
in.
I did wonder why they couldn’t let it come through and wait
at this stop seeing as that bit of track was currently clear, but that kind of
logic only really works if you’re sitting in a car moping and failing to see
the “bigger picture…”
I did wonder whether our early evening “special treat”
venture to the local curry house, which we’d tentatively planned, after my
beloved had endured a particularly busy and grotty week of extended working
days, was still on the cards… and presumed that it wasn’t…
I did also wonder about that argument that we should all get
rid of our cars and use public transport and how that works on a night like
this and where the transport system would be if it couldn’t rely upon us to
back it up every once in a while…
After failing to get a signal to tell the world how
miserable I was feeling (because that always helps), I briefly trotted out into the hailstones to see if
there was any further information on the screens.
The automated voice announced that “The next train to arrive
would be the delayed 19:25 service…” so I soggily returned to the car, shook
some of the ice from my hair and rang back to ask if the message was referring
to them…
It wasn’t. Their train hadn’t budged an inch.
After another shivery half an hour or so, another message
confirmed the worst, that the train had been officially “terminated” right
where it had been sitting for the past forty minutes and wasn’t likely to be
going anywhere.
I also suspected that the promised “later services” were likely
to be heading in anything like this direction any time soon either, and started
the car, set the demisters and the wipers to full, and set off to drive to
where I should have done earlier if I’d been able to see which way the wind was
blowing…
Well, it was quite
dark…
Of course, there had been the risk of setting off only to
arrive and find that the train had actually finally left, or to have missed a
message saying that it had now stopped again at one of the stations in between,
or all manner of other logistical possibilities which turn up when you’re alone
in a car and driving it through an ice storm and really not inclined to answer
a telephone even if it does ring.
It was gone nine o’clock when we finally arrived home,
soggy, cold, and clutching a hastily bought bag of chips…
This is our world, and welcome to it.
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