Boy on a Train

The scooter has had to go into the garage to get its malfunctioning speedometer seen to, with the result that I have to get to work on public transport for a few days. Which should present no problems, given that I live on the busiest bus route in south Manchester, and five minutes walk from an only slightly less busy train station.  Also I am an experienced and intrepid commuter and a child of the buses.  I didn't pass my driving test until I was nearly 35, for God's sake, until which time I assumed that Manchester was a very long, thin city, measuring eight miles North to South along Oxford Road to Didsbury, and maybe fifty yards across.  When I did finally pass my test (at the 5th time of asking, by which time the accumulated cost of all the lessons by far outweighed the value of our battered old Mitsubishi Colt), my first solo trip was to Northenden, where I got hopelessly wedged in a narrowing cul-de-sac which stretched my shaky three-point turn skills beyond their limit, and came very close to abandoning the hatchback right there and coming home on the 43 bus.

Anyway, you get the point.  I'm not really a natural with the cars (even if I did eventually get out of the cul-de-sac and begin to widen my horizons, eventually coming to terms with the existence of far-flung outposts such as Flixton and even Ashton-under-Lyne) but the buses, the Metros, the trains- PAH!  No problem at all.  So how come my first morning without the scooter saw me arriving for work at 10:40AM, sweating, bedraggled, disorientated, and a good twenty-five pounds worse off than when I stepped out of the house?  Well, it turns out that my command of the art of commuting had become a little rusty over the last two years, with the result that I had forgotten a few things.  Things like:

1. The Cross-Town thing

Levenshulme is splendidly well-served by public transport.  You can travel by train to Stoke, and by long-distance coach to Nottingham, and that's even before you start talking about the 192 bus, which runs approximately 1700 times an hour from Manchester to Stockport and back again.  So you're pretty well served, as long as you're travelling North to South.  If you want to be awkward and go cross-town, however, then you're pretty much talking about the 168 to Chorlton, or the 53 to Old Trafford, both of which run as and when they damn well please.  And I don't even want to go to Chorlton or Old Trafford, I want to go to the faraway leafy Westside, which if you try and follow an even vaguely straight line will take you three buses of assorted liveries and idiosyncracies, and the best part of a week. 

 

2.  The tram thing

So what you do is go into town and then shoot straight back out again, using the trams, which are swish and silent and supermodern, and about £85 one way, because it's not off-peak time yet (it's only £1.75 return during off-peak time, which runs from 1:30 to 4:30AM on alternate Thursdays).  So you think about 'forgetting' to buy a ticket, but then think better of it on account of the roving gangs of uniformed heavies who are employed by the Greater Manchester PTE to hide behind suburban platform vending machines and catch out runaway commuters in the style of the SS Guards in the Great Escape, in other words by casually addressing us in our native tongue, and then when it becomes apparent we haven't got the correct paperwork for our journeys, machine-gunning us in cold blood.  

So you decide discretion is the better part of valour, but then the machine won't accept your last 2p piece and you have to go to the newsagents to get change, only you somehow wander into the classical musical instrument shop next door.  Which means that your tram fare comes effectively to £6085, one way, and also that the SS Guards on the platfom across the Westside border shoot you down in cold blood, because the conveyance of grand pianos on the Metrolink is forbidden, except during the off-peak hours.  

 

3.  A few other things

Like that it was absolutely imperative, now that I wasn't going to get to my internet-connected desk by 9AM (or quite possibly by anything AM) that I broke my journey at Stretford in order to call into the library and buy tickets for the away end to see Newcastle at Manchester City, because they were coming on sale today and would sell out immediately (I can't really blame that one on the PTE, or indeed the SS, and it doesn't really fit into the story, but I am including it for the sake of historical record).  And like that the batteries had run out on my MP3 player, so I had to make a diversion to Superdrug, before which I had to go to the bank machine because I'd spent all my change on tram tickets and grand pianos.  And like that it was pretty much lunchtime by then and I hadn't even managed breakfast due to my rush to get out of the house and catch non-existent cross-town buses, which necessitated a further diversion, this time to Greggs the Bakers.  And like that...

 

Well anyway you get the point.  My first day back on the buses was not what you could call a marked success.  However, there is a happy ending, which is that it turns out you can temporarily mislay the fine arts of commuting, but never lose them entirely.  So- today I left the house very slightly earlier, picked up a weekly train and tram pass from the friendly man at the train station for next to nothing, put my new batteries in the walkman- and at 8:45AM, sauntered out onto the tram platform at my destination, where I afforded the waiting detachment of SS personnel with a cheery wave and an enthusiastic vocal rendition of the opening bars of  'David Cassidy' by Betty and the Werewolves.

 

On the way home, as I regaled travellers on the 18:06 Piccadilly to Crewe service with snatches of 'Back to Yesterday' by Strawberry Switchblade, a text came through from the garage.  'Your Scooter is ready for collection'.  I'm going to collect it, but not straight away.  After all, I've bought this weekly pass now.  It would be silly not to get the full value, don't you think?   

Comments

[Tim]

Boy On A Train has a familiar ring about it but I can't think what.

[looby]

I've had that one in Manchester quite a lot - to faredodge, or not to faredodge, that is the question. Money saved versus likelihood of being in an overlit room with big men in hi-vis ratio.

[abby]

I hope the bus tram combo wins and that dangerous scooter thingy stays in the garage -- you are free at last!

[Tired Dad]

Move back to Newcastle. Fare-dodging on the Metro is almost a recognized sport.

[Jonathan]

Tim, I think Boy on a Train may be the name of a popular music-hall song of the inter-war years, or maybe a little-regarded French New Wave movie. Something like that. It'll come to me in a flash.

Looby I am dissappointed to hear that an ex-rail man such as yourself would show such wanton disrespect for both the letter and spirit of the National Conditions of Carriage. To the Guards Van with you.

Abby- well, the scooter is back in action (although it took a while- I kept going to collect it from the garage on days when it was shut, perhaps because I was enjoying the trams so much I didn't really want to give them up). I may have to institute a regular public transport day, just so I can get wander the streets of the Westside alarming mid-morning shoppers with warbled snatches of old Darling Buds singles.

Tired Dad- congratulations! Your comment is... the 1000th one made on Crinklybee since we started in 2004 (and we're only including real comments here, the Typepad counter doesn't count the spam ones once I've deleted them). A historic moment I'm sure we all agree, and in recognition I am going to the fridge for one of the expensive Belgian lagers. Here's to the next 1000, folks...