I’m walking around
Victoria station, waiting at Charing Cross, lingering at Waterloo, sprinting up
the causeway to London Bridge, drifting outside Euston, cursing my delayed
train at Hither Green, yearning for shelter in the snow covered and blustery
platform of Dulwich, I’m sodding bored, desperate, uninspired, emotionally
shattered, and want anything other than to be peering into the WV show rooms
that blight my view from Haywards Heath Railway station. One un-inspirational
station to the other, they’re all different, they all have their place, and
they’re all, frankly…rubbish!
There seems to be no
respite from the dull drudgery that has found undisputed sanctuary around our
stations. They stink of the same nothingness that is echoed in the Barrett home
developments from the tips of Scotland to the seas of our southerly shores, to
the…well, every Barrett home development seems to lack any sense of creativity.
The word ‘new’ only seems to be chanted in their HQ when there is demand for
fresh toilet rolls. As for charm in our stations, it is too few in our
remaining depots and mainly to be located in the countryside and far reaching
lines rather than our ringed suburbs and inner city stops which are frequented
most…frequently.
This is where I’m
quite confused…
Whilst I will heed and
bow to the delights of St Pancras, glammed up for its new status as
international stop point, a glitzy smooth and Sauvé entrance door to London central,
it is our other grisly beasts, that while don’t have ‘international’ on their
placards, play host to thousands of wide eyed travellers every day. For our
international guests, it is these stations that they first lay eyes upon, it is
the gateway to London and I couldn’t think of anything worse…well that’s a lie,
I could think of plenty worse. Margaret Thatcher for starters, being water
boarded for seconds, having your fingers chewed off by a starved mouse for
thirds, buying a packed of wine gums with just green ones in for fourths…actually,
maybe there are plenty more “worse” things…but then if I went on like this
there would be no point to this hopefully point full blog...just a thought,
loosing a company owned book on the train is pretty annoying.
Back on the stations,
there seems to be an overwhelming discouragement to have people waiting in a
place that by is nature, asks you to wait. You wait for your train to arrive,
wait for it leave, wait for you’re friends, your family, your colleagues, your
girlfriend. You’re waiting for the faster train, the next train. You’re waiting
more because a snow flake touched a near by stone…hundreds of people waiting.
So the logic of
removing every chair, stall, bench, any horizontal service from knee height up
that remains relatively clean, excluding coffee stained metros and old McDonalds’
cups, seems a little odd at first. But that’s just a small aggravation of an
irritating repetition of unimaginative design executed by the lords of these
grand warehouses.
Trains, the journeys
they took, the steam they bellowed into the roof tops, it used to be a place of
wonder. Harry Potter doesn’t use an electrical, or even a magical powered train
to transport him to Hogwarts, he jumps through a solid brick wall to take him
to a magical hall of grand archways, Victorian brickwork, rich red carriages,
and a gleaming, beastly, beautiful train that beats and shouts it’s way to its
destination. It was an event! The buzz of the people about to board for their
adventure away, luggage being hauled, people waving, crying, singing, falling,
hugging, shouting, kissing amongst a rabble of others doing pretty much the
same thing. It was a celebrated moment, and the magic shouldn’t be lost.
It’s a still a moment
to watch people arrive and depart. To see people leave forever, for a day, for
a couple of hours, for holidays, work days, wedding days. But our love affair
with the train, the station and the whole event has been ripped so unkindly
away and we’re left with consumerist crap, from the Upper Crust, Nero, Burger
King, Costa, everything that you can find every where else.
Shame…
These places are the kings of golden opportunities, and we
are most, and whole heartedly, steaming past them on our quest to be somewhere
faster. Victoria station is reamed with places to have people stop and stair,
to share a coffee, to linger with an old love affair, to delve into a book, to
have one last lunch with a distant living brother. They scream out to host the
tales you’ll one day bore your grandchildren with. Yet we allow them to host
the very worst of what’s on offer…another chain store that promotes the age of
the generic, and stamps in the face of the independent charm. I’m not one fore
living in the past, but most adamantly not wanting to cherish the current.
thomas the tank engine must have had a profound effect in your childhood
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