Merry Christmas

This should have been all brussel sprouts.  Instead, it's mostly trout.

With the flooding hitting so many people and so many travel plans, it’s clear to see that for many, the pre-Christmas periood is about getting home to see your family, because wherever you live , your home is where your family is.

This migration home was evident on the motorway at the weekend.

One of the best train journeys I ever had was on a Christmas Eve, the carriage looked like a scene from a seasonal Hallmark made for tee vee schmaltsfest, with the luggage rack silver and gold and green and red with wrapped presents poking out of plastic bags, and the travellers either glad to be going home, or glad to be going home for Christmas.  Possibly the general atmosphere of goodwill towards all men was assisted by the noble English tradition of opening the booze at twelve sharp on Christmas Eve, especially if intending to use public transport, but so what?

On the motorway, instead of the usual lone traveller in their car, one could peek into mobile bubbles of Christmas, making their way to relatives.  Back seats were crammed with kids and boots were crammed with presents.  The journey gave rise to an impromptu game of awarding the best presented back sill of a car.  If you are going to totally obscure your rear view, you may as well do so with some jolly packages.

And while a strong contender for most Christmassy car was the one where the lady in the passenger seat had a large, beautifully wrapped box on her lap, the winner without a doubt was the large car with the parents in the front, the kids in the back and the presents and a dog in the large rear boot space.  The dog was well out of sight and reach of any humans and was just beginning to realise this, as it started to carefully shred the wrapping on the box nearest to it.

Loaded cars are part of Chjristmas.  I have friends who make a journey between various family members, clocking up many miles and many hours of radio listening.  They call packing the boot ‘loading up the sleigh’.

With the floods and the rain and the weather stopping trains in the south and ferries in the north, it’s taking some people a lot of effort to get to their loved ones. But weather your present is beautifully wrapped, or in the dog, or just their presence, it’s worth it.

Here's to all the travelers - may they arrive safely to a warm welcome.

Merry Christmas!

Said it all

Right, so what does THIS mean? A single white plastic bag thrust unfolded through the message pipes of the station. Send for Robert Langdon, we need to decipher this.

The white plastic bag is like a ghostly remnant of the original colourful semaphore collection of sweet wrappers. The most likely meaning is that some lazy sod could not be bothered to walk the ten yards to the station rubbish bin, but at least they were contentious enough to stash the bag rather than toss it to the breeze. Indeed, with stores charging people for carrier bags, there has been a reduction in the amount of plastic bag litter. Plastic bags used to be a regular a feature of the hedgerow as birdsong. While an appeal to the public’s environmental sensibilities didn’t halt the spread of plastic across the countryside, charging folk a penny a bag has caused outrage, the re-use of plastic bags and a whole new ‘bag for life’ industry. I own several bags for life, not because I believe in reincarnation but because I repeatedly forget to take my bag to the shops and have to pick up a new one.

So possibly what this is is just a handy way of always having a plastic bag to hand. By stashing plastic bags at various strategic locations throughout the village, one would never be far from a plastic bag if needed, and would not, presumably, have a cupboard full of bags for life.

Say no more

They’re gone!

Is it a conscientious cleaner? Or is it a message. If so, what kind of message, a warning perhaps that this platform is no longer a safe place to trade cryptic confection communications?

Certainly some spook shuffling around in a wide brim hat and raincoat with the collar turned up, or a bummer, is a more likely bet than at railway employee with a rubbish bag and a spare half hour to beautify the station.

Or maybe I do the platform staff a disservice. The village station stop is by no means an inner city hub, where the litter consists mainly of sleeping tourists and tramps, so the errant crisp packet dancing in the breeze does rather stick out. I’m prepared to bet that the staff would leave the wrappers there as a temporary art installation until professional pride overcame art appreciation and they trashed the lot. At least they didn’t simply rearrange the lot to confuse the intended recipient.

I shall miss the colourful collection of wrappers. Not to the extent that I would want to add to them though, I am much more a folded fag packet sort of chap but I thought that in an age of communication saturation, where everyone is constantly communicating yet not really saying anything that it was interesting to see something that was public yet coded, highly visible yet narrowly understandable, and more letter than litter.

Say it one last time

The flight jacket. Timeless. Classic. I remember when I got my flight jacket. A birthday present, it was everything that was great about a garment, it had sheepskin lining to keep you toasty, and a leather exterior to show I have a grudge against cows. I still have it, even though it has been unworn for twenty years, after an evening where I was thoughtless enough to wear it while also wearing chinos and was greeted with the phrase ‘alright flight commander?’ when I strolled into my local pub.

Two things – at least it wasn’t a ‘Top Gun’ reference but…it’s WING COMMANDER you arsehole!

My plan is to wear it in my old age. I am preparing the mission patches that I will have sewn onto it. I am tempted to get some made up along the lines of ‘Iraq’, ‘Lybia’, ‘Syria’, China’, Syria again!’ and of course ‘Syria…can we bomb it any flatter?’ but there’s also the temptation to have mission patches along the lines of ‘Narnia’ or ‘Mordor’.

The moment, and I mean the moment, I walked out of the shop with my new jacket, I started noticing all the other f**kers with their sheepskin flight jackets. Where the hell had they come from? There had, surely, not been this number of fighter-pilot wannabes when I was walking into the shop.

Once you purchase something, you start to notice others with the same or similar product. Once you start to do something, you start to notice that others do it too. This aspect of human behaviour explains the success of social networking on the internet. And dogging.

Most of us are too busy putting in a dazzling performance in the lead role of the production that is our lives to sit back and scrutinise the background. Once you do though, it’s like the Matrix, you start to notice weird shit popping up everywhere. Actually, it’s totally mundane shit but because you’ve noticed it and because you are playing the lead role in the movie of your life it has to be significant right?

I have, of late, been fixating on chocolate bar wrappers jammed behind a pipe on the train station I commute from. By focusing on this I can distract myself from what others describe as ‘real life’ but what I consider to be ‘a series of situations, problems and experiences so complex and horrible that I feel they can only be solved using an magic abacus made of beer’.

The point is, once you start to notice something, you can’t stop. Take for instance the chocolate wrappers. It’s fairly unlikely that they are actually some sort of message (unless it’s ‘this is the shittest Dan Brown plot ever’) and they are more likely to be a lazy, but tidy, kid placing the wrappers there every morning when he has his 3,500 calorie breakfast shortly before he presents his hyperactive arse at school to be educated.

So, on the train, I notice that there’s a carefully folded wrapper jammed between the table and the carriage ‘wall’. Normally I’d just think litter lout but, lucky me, because I have fixated on the secret society of public transport confectionary communicators, I am now panicking that by sitting next to a folded choccie bar wrapper I am somehow sending a message. I have no problem sending a message, I’d just like to know what it is.

For instance…

Mars Bar - unimaganitive
Chrunchie – your mouth will feel dirty afterwards
Dairy Milk – Oh God, so good, I want more, more, more. Feeling a bit sick now. More!
Marathon – problems accepting change
Curlywurly – eight inches of pure pleasure…but didn’t they used to be longer?
Frit and nut – satisfaction and it’s one of your five
Finger of fudge – too delicious to be used as a sex aid…twice.

Say what?

I am, for the moment at least, currently commuting from a sleepy to the point of narcolepsy station that somehow escaped the Great Beeching Butchery, possibly because of it's very insignificance or possibly because he once has a bunk up in the Gents and formed a ramrod attachment to the place. The station could not be much smaller or simpler unless it was mounted on a board in an attic somewhere with OO scale trains running through it.

It does, however, retain a certain charm and the ability to spring a few surprises if you look carefully. Standing waiting for my train I noticed this collection of chocolate bar wrappers neatly folded and lodged behind a pipe on the platform. My first reaction was that it was a very neat litter lout, or a person too lazy to walk to the bin but with an obsessive compulsive disorder. (Why is it called an obsessive compulsive disorder, surely the condition of somebody who is compelled to have everything arranged just so or is a neatness freak should be an obsessive compulsive order?).

Or even a bored schoolboy.

Other explanations suggest themselves. The first is that it is as sort of message, either simply conveyed through folding the reports strategically to spell out a word on the vertical - this is a great idea but not secure and also limits you to the alphabet available at the confection counter. More probable is that the colours used are some of code, like signal flags.

As to what the message might be about, while international espionage or the doings of a secret order of the Knights Templar are possibilities, more likely is that it is a coded message used by the sort of gentlemen who wish to arrange clandestine meetings in railway stations ('Beechers’) and find simply recording the time and date of their next visit on the back of the loo door too risky, and that arranging assignations through txt, twitter or Facebook lacks romance.

Most likely it is a board schoolboy, but you just know that what started as an absent minded action has now developed into a challenge - how many wrappers can he lodge before they are removed or, worse, replaced in a different order?

Norfolk notes - Sheringham

Sheringham continues to get posher. This is the town that did the near impossible; in the sort of act of a hero overcoming a monster that one normally associates with Greek myth, Sheringham saw off Tesco and instead of getting a shop in the centre of their town that would bugger the economy of every surrounding shops forevermore, have decided to go with a Waitrose placed out of town. This protects the local economy because of its geographic placing, and also because no bugger can afford to shop there.

Having said that, I notice that Sainsbury's local has snuck onto the high street. Though if the one in Sheringham is anything like the one near me, deciding to price everything as if it had just been announced on telly that the apocalypse was imminent and now is the time to panic buy and hoard will ensure that the local shops keep going.

Sheringham has also connected to the rest of the world in rather a special way. Sheringham is home to the North Norfolk Railway, a railway run by enthusiasts that runs form Sheringham to Holt. This means that you can catch a steam train and ride in style for about twenty minutes, then turn round. Great fun and they do Santa specials, dinner specials and so on.


Essentially all any railway needs to make it great is to be steam powered and run by enthusiasts. And now, it's connected to the main line thanks to tracks that run across the main road. This is, without doubt, a great idea. More, it begs the question why more enthusiast run railroads are not connected to the national network, even those ones running little trains that chuff chuff you round parks or, in the case of nearby Wells-Next-The-Sea, from the town down to the beach. OK so there is the question of gauge to be considered but surely there has to be scope for improving the day of frequent rail travellers beyond measure by replacing their commuter service with a tiny tourist train where the carriages are like benches. One would turn up at one's destination covered in soot, bandy legged and terrified - but strangely exhilarated.

The town was busy, the good weather having brought out middle aged men who seem to think that having leathers that match the paint job on their motorbikes means that nobody will notice their paunch. Still managed to get a table at the pub on the seafront however and took on coffee to sustain us on the short walk back to the car where the picnic and more flask tea awaited.

Other, posher, sorts had gone for the pub lunch option and very nice it looked too. At the table next to us the obviously untrained visitors had left some of their chips (I know!) which attracted the attention of a jaunty little bird who hopped and frolicked on the table, pecking at the leftovers.


Amusing as it was to see a bird so apparently unafraid of humans, like some sort of Disney tramp bird scavenging leftovers, it did occur that while one bird hopping, tweeting and gobbling chips was interesting, a flock of the bloody things doing the same would have been a different proposition entirely. That's the things that one must never forget about nature; it outnumbers us.

Postcard from Paris - getting there

Once, travel was synonymous with glamour. As soon as commercial passenger ships stopped carrying plague and slaves, they turned into floating international villages where a fellow could conduct a shipboard romance knowing that as soon as he got into port, and went back to using his real name, there was little chance of the scandal he created on board reaching friends, colleagues or his wife. Ocean travel as luxury stopped as soon as they stuck golf courses and waterslides on the back of the ship, turning it into a floating Butlins.

Air travel used to be glamorous. First we had the 747 where the posh folk actually went on the upper deck, then we had Concorde where the chavs were not even allowed on board. Now BA has stopped commissioning new airplanes with first class cabins and the French not bothering to brush their runways buggered Concorde.

Rail travel just keeps getting better. What started with a steam engine hilariously just this side of incredibly dangerous that ushered in a new age of killing a lot of people very quickly turned into the best way to travel, although you had to get your carriage romance over in short order, or spend a lot on buns in tea shops as in ‘Brief Encounter’. It was even, thanks to Agatha Christie, by far the most fashionable mode of transport to be murdered in.

There may be luxury trains like the Orient Express and the Blue Train, there may be faster trains like the Bullet Train in Japan (but who the hell wants to get to work that quickly), but the apogee of train travel must be the Eurostar, simply because if the Brits and the French can work together, it’s the eight wonder of the world.

Best of all, is St Pancras International and the new high speed link out of London, a station so effortlessly cool that it has the longest champagne bar in the world and a collection of amateur artists sketching the canopy badly. The centre of the city to the Dartford crossing in twenty minutes is spectacular, only teleportation would be quicker. Buy the right ticket and you get food and drink served at your table. It’s civilized, which sounds as if that should be the least you can expect but, if you’ve traveled recently, you’ll know that in certain cases ‘civilized’ is setting the bar pretty high.

A word of warning though, you may find yourself sitting next to French people. Being offensively French. By which I mean the chap had the sort of facial hair that I thought was only now encountered in sit coms and French language school text books. And porn films. Bad ones. From eastern Europe.

And you can take a Swiss Army Knife on the Eurostar. Try getting away with that on an airplane, where they have a girly strop if you try and sneak on some hand lotion. This means that should some mad mullah try and take control of the dining car or similar outrage, not only would be shortly resemble a pincushion but it’s a certainty that some wag would wade in with the corkscrew or bottle opener as well as the knife blade.

Eurostar also meant that I could start the afternoon at the private view of the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. This means that the galleries are no less crowded, but they are at least crowded with the sort of people who have forked over money for annual membership as a friend of the RA. It also means there is a champagne bar, meaning that art appreciation is enhanced by a few glasses of fizz, enough to strip away enough of the higher intellectual functions to appreciate the works on an emotional level, and remove enough inhibition to either mutter ‘what a lot of tut’ when looking at the latest Emin or, God forbid, even speak to fellow gallery goers. Stand out works this year were a post-card sent from a sculptor who had his work refused and a fine impressionist style painting of Venice.

Surely the next step in the development of the train is the Euro sleeper. Fall into bed in London and wake up in Italy or some other far flung point, probably with a medium to high class hooker in your cabin, the choice is yours.