To the delight of absolutely nobody, our occasional column of long rambling stories that don’t go anywhere is back with a vengeance as the task of getting from London to Plymouth to Hull and back turns into an interminable JRR Tolkien saga.
17.30 If you want a pint in Paddington station you must earn it. There’s a Fuller’s pub here, The Mad Bishop and Bear, but it’s located four storeys high into the sky and all the escalators leading to and from have expired. An elaborate set of stairs, more suitably employed as a climbing frame in a condemned adventure playground, can lead you there via a couple of laps of Wasabi. Once that’s scaled, we find a third of the seats are in a roped off area that is "closed” on a Friday in rush hour, while half the rest are reserved for a birthday party. I don’t know, I’m not one to comment, I spent my 18th going to Luton away, but the pub at Paddington station for your birthday party feels pretty bleak to me even if you could get into it without using a rope ladder. There’s a special code on the toilet door which you have to crack if you want to go for a slash. A man will approach and ask you three questions. We spend in excess of £14 on a round of two drinks, one of which is a bottle. Aaaaand it’s live.
17.53 Potential celebrity spot of the Awayday number one. That looks a lot like Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis at the bar with a backpack (presumably full of receipts). If he’s buying his beer here he’s not as adept at his job as everybody makes out.
18.33 Our train is here. On the platform that’s been advertised on RealTimeTrains since this morning.
18.50 A generous 14 minutes before departure, the time has come that we’re allowed to officially know our train is here on the platform that’s been advertised on RealTimeTrains since this morning. The 19.04 train to Penzance is a fully booked and loaded nine-carriage Hitachi set that will therefore be carrying at least 611 passengers plus anybody who gets on and stands up. These people have 14 minutes to board and can do so through a whole six automatic ticket gates which, as the train is called, the GWR employee on the line has forgotten to turn on, causing a mad scrum through a couple of them as he steadily opens them one by one.
19.04 We leave on time. Mark it down in the minutes.
19.15 Now, look, I’ve held off making mention of this little gem before because it’s a bit bougie and a bit decadent and, frankly, makes me look a right twat. More so. But given we spend this column unmercifully coating off the state of the railways in this country – and boy is there some of that to come – I’m going to take this opportunity to say something positive and pass on a recommendation. If it makes you all want to cancel your Patreon afterwards then fine but the alternative is trying to find a curry house in Plymouth that’s not only open at quarter to 11 but still has stocks of meat and Cobra after six months of Wazza Rooney rampaging around the town terrorising anything with a liquor license. At between £30-40 for three courses this is about the same anyway. A couple of times a day in each direction GWR run something called the Pullman dining service. They do not advertise or promote this greatly, there is rarely anybody in there (although tonight, being Friday, it’s heaving), it must run at a loss, but God bless them for it because it’s absolutely outstanding. Restaurant quality grub from an on-board chef at 100 mph (sometimes). Gives me a chance to do a "steaks on a train” gag for the Gram. If you ever get chance, try it and thank me later.
19.45 We’re stationary for a bit, somewhere near the Newbury Racecourse. Bit of clunking about. Then off we set again, making a different noise. In this country, in 2024, some of the mainline which connects the entire southwest of the country and Wales to the rest of it is electric, some of it is not. We’ve stopped to flick over to coal power. It’s made these brand new trains much heavier, slower and more expensive to build than they need to be. Well done everyone.
20.00 Alcohol burning off nicely and it’s time to get down to the serious business. First item on the agenda: suitable films for a plane. One of us has recently had a bad experience watching Here’s To You Leo Grande on a British Airways long haul. Only marginally less mortifying than that time I watched Monster’s Ball sitting next to somebody’s elderly white-haired mother on the way to Miami. Simmo swoops in with a late winner – he watched 12 Years A Slave on a Megabus.
21.00 Finding it hard to believe, we’re in Devon.
21.40 A gentleman travelling nearby has been at the table wine. He’s overheard talk of tomorrow’s game and wants to get involved. He does so by staggering about in our vicinity while professing supreme football knowledge. Being from Totnes he naturally supports Chelsea. He did support England as well, in 2014 (not a moment before and, apparently, never again since). He’s got a lot to say on both topics. So much so the train quietly stops, unloads, closes the doors and starts again at Totnes without him noticing. A couple of us clocked it but, come on now, be honest, would you have said anything?
22.18 The atmospheric, picturesque wind along the Dawlish Sea Wall, where the English Channel laps against the side of the tracks and you can gaze out to sea from the comfort of your seat, gives way to brutalist concrete car parks, underpasses and office blocks which can only mean we’re here at the flat roof pub of Britain’s mainline railway stations. Nous sommes arrivés à Plymouth. A city being steadily improved by its council through the medium of boarding it up and tearing all the trees down.
22.30 The Premier Inn. Where everything’s premier, except your life. Celebrity spot number two, the QPR media team are here. Rangers clearly sparing no expense. Andy Sinton (not staying at the Premier Inn) has driven five hours through the Friday rush hour to be here. What a bastard. They decline our offer of a drink which, given the options are Stella or Carling and the bar looks like an evacuation zone from Hurricane Milton, is probably wise. Genuinely, half the population of Plymouth seem to be in here. The 51st annual general meeting of the Parents of Delinquent Children Society has just been declared open and everybody has brought along an exhibit. We’re told it’s last orders in ten minutes so empty a dozen bottles of Peroni from the fridge and find a corner to cower in.
00.30 Had a piss in the sink. Went to sleep with my trousers on. That idea of getting up and going for a run feels optimistic.
09.30 There is to be no running today. We’ll leave that to Kieran Morgan. Something crawls out of my arse and introduces itself to me. I leave a cash tip for the cleaning service and beat a hasty retreat to the cruel light of a coastal morning.
10.00-10.45 Carbohydrates.
12.00 Plymouth’s Home Park is three-parts generic to one-part old school glorious. A horseshoe wrap around that could be anywhere from Liverpool to Rome is thankfully dwarfed by a magnificent antique grandstand. A sprawling, uncovered bank stretching down to the pitch side is topped off with a cabin of posh seats teetering one more named storm away from a roll back down the hill and into the harbour. Oh the times we’ve had here (mostly horrendous) since Richard Pacquette last won us a game on this ground, 22 years ago to the day. Losing a league title to Micky Evans and David Friio; trundling all the way down here for a lunchtime Boxing Day kick off only for Georges Santos to get himself sent off in the first half (plank); trundling all the way down here for a lunchtime Boxing Day kick off only for Sylvain Ebanks-Blake to score the winner in injury time… a Kaspars Gorkss own goal in the 90th minute. Why is it we like it here again?
It's also very conveniently located on top of a small mountain which, this morning, seems to have had the incline tilted more in its favour than ours. Those who were here last year will remember the reward for summiting this peak was a 45-minute queue stretching most of the way around the ground while two stewards conducted a cavity search, background check on all family members and general knowledge quiz on all 1,700 people daring to try and enter the away end. "Were you a member of the Nazi government of Germany?” "Were you ever or are you now involved in the procurement of child soldiers?” "Have you ever knowingly or unknowingly been in violation of the modern-day slavery act?” Look, fuck off chum, I just want to go in there, loudly call Asmir Begovic a cunt, and go back to my sordid little grief hole at the Premier Inn, alright?
Thankfully, this year, that’s been eased off to a bit of a pat down and a waft with an electronic wand that passes twice over my coat pocket full of keys and doesn’t even murmur a bleep so is either broken, flat, not switched on, or the daft cow is standing there waving a marzipan dildo around for £11.40 an hour.
12.40 Pilgrim Pete does himself a mischief trying to get his legs over an advertising hoarding.
14.25 GLORIOUS VICTORY.
15.00 The always tricky business of gauging how much beer we’re going to need from the off licence to complete the trip home without the danger of running dry and being forced to engage each other in conversation. Back from Reading – one large bottle or two small ones. Back from Bristol – three large or six small. Back from Cardiff - four large or eight small. Plymouth’s a thirsty one at the best of times and today is not the best of times because, against our better judgement, we’re now going straight to Hull on the less-than-magnificent six-and-a-half-hour Cross Country service to Doncaster. In the end it’s four large AND eight small, and that’s only because it’s all they had. This is described as "manifestly excessive” by an unnamed member of the queue, but they’ll be laughing on the other side of their face in about an hour’s time.
15.27 It’s time for some train geekery. Look, I’ve flagged it up nice and clearly for you. If you’re not interested that’s fine, skip to the next bit where a geezer kills himself.
The Penzance to Dundee (footwear optional) Cross Country service is the worst train in this country. I know all about your Avanti, I’ve commuted on Northern Rail as well, the three-coach TransPennine Express rattler on Manchester Christmas Market days as the drunken middle classes scramble for access to the Christmas Pudding Burrito stand is infamous, but travelling Cross Country is a different league.
It links Plymouth, Exeter and the Southwest to Bristol and Birmingham; Bristol and Birmingham through Derby and Sheffield to Leeds and York; Sheffield, Leeds and York to Newcastle and Edinburgh; Newcastle and Edinburgh to the north east coast of Scotland. It stops at Morpeth. It does this with 25-year-old diesel Voyager trains which grumble along under the electric wires mostly as four coach sets, of which one is an inexplicably expensive first class offering in which you get a slightly bigger seat and a bottle of water. Today, on a Saturday afternoon, a first-class ticket from Plymouth to Doncaster is north of £200.
The whole route, which is traversed in full by the 06.28 departure from Penzance but is mostly made up of intermittent services covering some part of it, takes 13 hours and three minutes and makes 39 stops. In part it takes this long because, to keep it on time and stop you claiming compensation, it will frequently arrive in a station and sit there for anything up to half an hour. "Dwell time”. Up to 26 minutes at Birmingham New Street alone, where they sit with the diesel engine on full power, belching out brown smoke and turning the underground platforms into a giant suicide pact. Dwell time adds up to 80 minutes to a Southwest-Scotland slog. It’s effectively slower than when it was pulled by a steam locomotive.
For the 600+ mile journey there are four toilets, two of which are almost certainly going to be out of order, one of which has a needlessly elaborate rotating door to accommodate disabled passengers which occasionally short circuits and slides open of its own volition, revealing you to a captive audience like a prize on a game show. All of them stink. They stink while you’re in there, and they stink down the carriage when anybody else is in there. God only knows what’s being stored beneath those things, and how. It’s like travelling in a teenager’s bedroom.
It used to be operated by the much-loved, supremely reliable, seven/eight-coach HST units. One would have thought if you were withdrawing those you’d look to replace them with nine coaches or, wait for this as a bit of radical thinking, MORE! Progress and all of that. Instead, nah, let’s run four and see how that goes. Try and catch this thing south out of Leeds late of a weekday afternoon and you’ll find yourself in a platform scrum from which a good third of passengers will be left behind.
It’s a long haul express service which behaves for most of its route like a commuter train, run by units that are suitable neither as a long haul express service nor a commuter train. There are other bigger, longer, more suitable sets of rolling stock sitting idle up and down the country unused but, thanks to the way the private companies procure and lease their units, Cross Country are only allowed to use these ones.
And, so, here we are, trundling out of Plymouth on a train barely fit to run the Shepperton-Waterloo route. We will not, as it turns out, be trundling for long.
16.06 Arrive at Newton Abbott/Village of the Damned.
16.25 Still at Newton Abbott/Village of the Damned. This ain’t no dwell time. You’re telling me I could be stuck in Wichita?
16.30 It’s not good news. Ahead of us on the line at a small village called Starcross, somebody has decided that January 18, 2025, will be their last, and stepped in front of a train. They were, of course, killed instantly. The line will now close for a minimum of two hours while police and emergency services attend to pick up the pieces and ensure there’s been no foul play which, inevitably, there has not.
Look, this column is all about dark humour. There will be more jokes to come as several thousand people deal with the logistical issue of being stuck in Plymouth/Newton Abbott/Dawlish/Exeter for the night in exactly the way several thousand British people always deal with the logistical issue of being stuck in Plymouth/Newton Abbott/Dawlish/Exeter for the night – heading to the nearest pub, making several passive aggressive comments at nearby railway staff, getting up the day after and writing a very strongly worded letter.
Let’s, however, pause for a moment here, because somebody died that night. Somebody's parent, somebody's sibling, somebody's child. Somebody. All we were about to endure pales into insignificance alongside it. Well, perhaps not Simmo’s train terminating and chucking him out at Reading, but everything else.
In an effort to find that news report above I did a grim Google search about our delay and it produced ream upon ream of local news reports about people who’ve got to such a point in their lives they could think of nothing else for it but to walk out in front of a train on the Dawlish Sea Wall. An unemployed logistics manager who laid across the tracks and waited there, the local postman who’d been suffering with anxiety, a teenage boy…
There is, as ever, frustrated voices amidst the chaos that follows mumbling about how selfish it is, and of course it is – devastating the loved ones left behind, traumatising the poor bastard train driver, stranding thousands of people on a cold night in Devon. I’ve been on two trains that have hit people: one who just walked straight into our path at Biggleswade, looking straight ahead, hood pulled down, never once breaking stride and turning to look at us; another who took a final step off the edge of the platform at Mill Hill Broadway. I’ve also seen somebody do it. Bored on a college trip to Durham I decided to head up to the station to renew my YP Railcard, turning away from the window just as somebody began their running jump from the back fence of the platform. Believe me, if you’re up for that, you’re not thinking about family members or train drivers or anything else. That’s rational thought, this is an irrational act.
There were 5,656 suicides registered in England in 2023, up 372 on the previous year. The majority of people doing this are men – 17.1 per 100,000 versus 5.6 per 100,000 women. This peaks at men aged between 45 and 49 – 25.3 per 100,000. The official Twitter account for the LNER operated East Coast mainline has used the term "hit by a train” 22 times since January last year – some of them for the same incident, but still.
Times are horribly tough. People are living miserable, monotonous lives. Trapped in spirals of debt, declining living standards, and a decaying country. Each piece of news more dire than the last. Particularly at this time of year, in which we exist in perpetual grey, cold, wet, darkness, dragging ourselves through a never-ending month towards a desperately needed pay day after potentially horrible, expensive, lonely Christmases. Even a quick look at the sun, right now, would be the best thing that’s happened in this country for about three months.
If you’re struggling, talk. There’s always somebody who will listen. I’ll listen. You are wanted here. You are loved.
Links >>> Campaign Against Living Miserably >>> Samaritans – 116 123
16.48 I’m telling you, you are stuck in Wichita.
Our guard, who’d already opened the doors, told us to head off to the buffet and he’d come get us if anything changes, downgrades our train from "delayed” to "cancelled”. He’s been told to head back to Penzance. We are heading for Ye Olde Railway Brewhouse. And so, it seems is everybody else.
17.00 Ye Olde Railway Brewhouse is palpably not equipped for this. A front door opens immediately into a public bar probably not much bigger than your average well-appointed living room. There’s a little horseshoe bar dead ahead selling Moretti, so I hope you like Moretti; an electronic dartboard doing brisk business to the left of that; and the sort of television that used to be ‘innnnnnnn three’ on Bully’s prize board up in the corner showing a rugby union match nobody is interested in because it’s rugby union.
Everybody is here. Everybody that was already here is here, and everybody that was on our train is here. Soon everybody that was on the train behind ours will be here as well. All of life. There’s a Plymouth fan sitting alone in the corner who looks like he’s just here waiting for the trains to start again purely so he can go in front of the next one. You’re going to need a bigger boat. We decide to get steaming drunk. We’re not making Doncaster from here are we? May as well settle in. I’ve seen Homes Under The Hammer, we could probably buy a place here for the cost of a round in The Mad Bishop and Bear. Let’s do that.
17.56 Celebrity spot number three. Our referee from this afternoon, Premier League’s own Darren Bond, is also here. In full regulation PGMOL tracksuit. He’s delighted to see us all. Truly. Moretti, because of course. He takes it all in good spirit, happy to talk football and comes across as a decent fella. He is, however, trying to get back to Preston which, we all agree, may happen eventually at some point in the future but certainly isn’t happening for him today.
18.20 The role of LFW designated pint spiller Julian, who comes in very handy when The Crown gets overrun by the Six Nations crowd, will today be played by LFW reserve match reporter Jamie. He knocks his Moretti pint off the corner of the fireplace we’ve claimed as our own and it shatters across the hearth. Having now outstayed our welcome, we decide perhaps spending the rest of our lives getting drunk in Newton Abbott wasn’t the brilliant strategy we’d originally thought. I’m not getting on a bus, because I’m not getting on a bus, which leaves…
18.25 DOOBY’S TAXIOLA. Dooby, is it much farther?
18.26 A quick piss before we leave reveals we’re all complete idiots. Ye Olde Railway Brewhouse actually has a cave of wonders underneath it. A whole other bar, eight, maybe nine, times the size of the main one, with a vast array of drinks, and screens of every size and shape all showing a sport you’d actually want to watch (in this case, Arsenal v Villa). This lost dynasty is not advertised or ever mentioned by anybody upstairs, even when the only place to stand is up to your ankles in Jamie’s spilled pint in the fireplace, and discovered only when you have to go downstairs to use the toilet for the first time. It’s an interesting marketing strategy. If we’d known it was there I suspect we may still be there now.
19.00 It’s worth noting at this point that the rest of the away end, and the half of our group who didn’t want to go straight from Plymouth to Hull (losers), and are instead trying to return home to London and their lives (boring), are all crammed into a GWR train which, four and a half hours after the game ended and three hours after it was meant to depart, remains stationary at Plymouth. Club commentator Tyler Morris is being steadily probed on who he really, actually supports. No, but, really.
19.15 So, Exeter St David’s. We are, I admit, a little bit prone to exaggeration for dramatic and comic effect, so I’ll try and keep this light and accurate as I set the scene. I want you to imagine a dockside in the port of Mogadishu just after sundown on the day a violently bloody coup has been completed by a militia vowing to slaughter everybody in the country with a vowel in their name. There is, allegedly, a boat leaving from here shortly. Right, that’s the scene set.
Nothing has run north from here for at least three hours. Trains wanting to go south are stacked up in the station, blocking up the platforms, and far to the north. There are a lot of middle age, middle class women here who blatantly made a conscious decision to find the whole thing charming to start with and see it off with wine, but are now pissed and no longer finding this, or anything/one else, charming in the slightest. One of them is "a solicitor from Birmingham”, which she’s aggressively telling the platform attendant seemingly as some sort of threat.
Platforms two, three, four and five have been closed to stop them getting overcrowded, forcing absolutely everybody who wants to go anywhere in any direction to overcrowd onto platform one. This, presumably, makes sense to somebody, somewhere. Several hundred people are being gently discouraged from gathering on an overhead footbridge from which the majority of exits and entries are fenced off because "the concrete has perished”. We elect against hanging around up there.
19.25 Allegedly there is a Cross Country train heading north from here about now – one that’s come south and is being turned around. It cannot do this until it has a platform to stand at, and currently people are being crammed onto the one which lies in its path.
"Where’s this one going please?”
"Just get on.”
"No, but, where’s it going?”
"Just get on.”
"We want to go north, is this going north or south?”
"Just get on.”
It becomes clear that a) the guard on this train has had a challenging evening, b) the guard on this train doesn’t give a singly shiny shite where we’re going and c) the strategy at Exeter St David’s is now very much about clearing as many people currently in Exeter St David’s out of Exeter St David’s as quickly as possible and if that means tipping them out into the sea then let’s do it. Eventually the train departs. Packed. South. Back towards Ye Olde Railway Brewhouse at Newton Abbott, from which we just paid Dooby £50 to escape. Try the bigger bar downstairs, lads.
Ours pulls in behind it and almost immediately (bout three quarters of an hour) is ready to finally depart northwards. Some four hours after we left Plymouth, we’re on our way again.
20.00 Roughly 45 minutes after it was supposed to arrive at Paddington, the away end train to London also limps into Exeter. That’s the good news. The bad news is there is no driver to take it further. Because of course, why would there be? A GWR train needs a GWR-employed and trained driver with route knowledge, you can’t just go into the staff room and grab any old train driver you know. Not like they’ve had a few hours to prepare for that issue is it? It will now wait here for another whole hour. QPR’s data columnist Andrew Scherer, reporting from the frontline, describes the mood as "threatening to turn a bit aggy”. Tyler Morris has now been asked who he really supports (no, but, seriously, who?) 3,776 times.
21.00 The London train is back underway, predicting a Paddington arrival of somewhere around 23.00. Special correspondent Simmo files: "That will be seven hours on this train and nobody has eaten anything more than cocaine and complimentary crisps since lunch. The table next to us were on Buckfast for fuck’s sake. The toilet has stopped displaying ‘occupied’ and now just says ‘please, God, no more’.”
21.50 Dwell time at Birmingham New Street over, we've been joined at the table by a couple of Barnsley fans. They've lost 3-1 at Bristol Rovers and were "fucking crap".
22.20 The Hull party has made it as far as Burton-upon-Trent. It is time to test the water on that familial lift back from Doncaster station we were offered some time ago. Forecast – frosty.
22.35 There’s been a development on the London train. After the best part of three hours standing at Plymouth with no information on a departure time, another hour standing at Exeter with no driver, and sporting a delay being measured now in half days, GWR has taken the decision to not bother running the thing all the way to Paddington at all. The best part of a thousand people, many in an advanced stage of alcoholic refreshment, many trapped in that train for the best part of seven hours, are now being tipped unceremoniously back out into the world. At Reading. Reading.
22.36 Simmo is taking the news well. "A declaration of war”.
22.40 A gentleman, who if he isn’t earning a living as a Chris Eubank look/sound-a-like really should be, is making his way down the centre aisle of the Cross Country service asking how everybody is. He doesn’t appear to work for the railway. Brush brown brogues gleam in the luminous ceiling lights and the pocket watch chain clinks against the buttons of the most immaculate suit I’ve ever seen in my life. "Looking good is good for business,” he tells me, before moving off into the night. We never see him again. It’s all starting to feel a bit Lost Highway.
23.15 Sheffield. The Steel City. And some not altogether unexpected bad news from the good people at Cross Country Railways. Eight hours after we departed. and nearly four after we were meant to arrive in Doncaster, the decision has been taken that, just as the Paddington train isn't going to Paddington any more, nor will we be bothering to go to the trouble of stopping at Doncaster. Well, probably not. The whole thing is shrouded in some degree of uncertainty. "This train is now vanishingly unlikely to be calling at Doncaster,” announces the guard, as if we might go in that general direction for a bit but only make our scheduled and timetabled stop if the driver’s feeling generous and changes his mind.
"Reason being?”
"Wellll we're a bit late, not many people are going to Doncaster, we can just cut the corner off and arrive at Leeds a bit sooner.”
This is why railway companies have to put those signs up telling people not to pin their staff to the floor and tear out their spleen.
23.35 With one beer left in the chamber, and after a failed sprint over the footbridge to try and get the "fast” TransPennine service, we’re now resigned to our fate on the Rotherham Central stopping service. There’s a group of old boys at the far end of the carriage making really rather a decent fist of American Pie. Certainly a better fist than Madonna made of it. We stop briefly and open one of the doors at the Swinton junction to let Shirley off. I’m not convinced this was a scheduled stop, but everybody seems to know Shirley and not mind so the whole carriage waves her on the way. "Bye Shirley”. "See ya”. Off she totters. And we’re back underway. At the pace of a reasonably well loaded horse and cart.
23.50 Just shy of Sunday, we pull into Doncaster. We are the last thing happening in any direction this evening. It’s just me, and the male voice choir who’ve finished bashing Robbie Williams’ Angels about the head and are wandering towards the taxi rank.
The delight at my arrival is writ large across mother’s face.
"I don’t really like driving in the dark anymore, any chance you can do the driving on the way back?”
Hmmmmm.
01.00 The small matter of a half-hour hop down the motorway, a reheat of some dinner cooked for somebody else a very long time ago, a quick check of the BBC News website to see how Simmo’s first wave shock and awe aerial bombardment of Royal Berkshire is progressing, and into bed. Landed on both wheels, pulled over, said what were you worried about?
09.05 The Lord’s Day. Bleary eyed and blissfully confused, I wake in my third bed in as many days surrounded by all the furniture from the house I owned before Lizz Truss’ "budget for growth” blew up my mortgage. Open a window.
11.20 Wake for the second time.
13.00 Time to be productive. It’s delay repay time. Now, when you’re buying your ticket and handing the money over, you’re marketed into thinking that in the unlikely event of a delay (surely not) this will be the work of but a moment. "ONE CLICK DELAY REPAY” it says which, a normal person might assume, means you click once on ‘delay repay’ and your money slides back into your bank account. The guards on the train, in their fulsome apologies, always say "remember to click delay repay on the website”. Like it’s just that simple. Fools.
Now, if you’ve booked your ticket through TrainLine (which, for once, on the Plymouth-Doncaster leg of the trip, we lazily have) there is no facility to reclaim at all. They’re happy to sell you the ticket, and take a booking fee for the privilege, but when it comes to compensating you for being stranded in Ye Olde Railway Brewhouse for three hours their interest in you wanes faster than an estate agent who got his commission up front. "Contact the train operator” they say.
So, I do. And via Cross Country’s most excellent coal-fired website I’m able to submit my claim. Once I’ve registered a new account on there. And then registered a special, seperate offshoot of that account specifically to claim delay repay. I fill out a form with my names, my addresses, my email addresses, my phone number, all the jobs my mother worked, all the pubs my father drank in. "Were you a member of the Nazi government of Germany?” "Were you ever or are you now involved in the procurement of child soldiers?” "Have you ever knowingly or unknowingly been in violation of the modern-day slavery act?” Look, fuck off chum, I just want to get in there for my refund, lay and listen to my stepdad loudly call Ange Postecoglou a cunt, and go back to my sordid little grief hole amongst the piles of my old furniture, alright?
To complete my refund request they want me to send them photographs of my train tickets. I take a couple on my phone, send them from my LFW email to my work email, download them onto my lap top, upload them into the Cross Country website and press submit. These pictures, apparently, are too high res. I take a couple more on my phone, send them from my LFW email to my work email at a lower res, download them onto my laptop, upload them into the Cross Country website and press submit. These pictures, apparently, are too blurry.
…
This is why railway companies have to put those signs up telling people not to pin their staff to the floor and tear out their spleen.
Luckily, I’ve already got an account with GWR, and (thanks to a similar debacle getting back from Cardiff in November) an adjacent delay repay account too, so applying for refunds on the rest of the group’s journey back to London is the work of but a moment (bout three quarters of an hour). They too want photographs of the tickets, even though I booked the journey with them directly, clicked the delay repay option directly from the booking, and the booking references are clearly displayed on the submission. Although there are three tickets on this booking, there’s only the capacity to attach one photograph, so I pick the one I like best and do that.
15.45 The delay repay submissions have been completed. And that’s lunch.
12.00 News from the good people at Cross Country Railways. This strikes me, in my long experience of these things, as being an unusually swift response to one of my demands for money. It’s soon clear why. My delay repay request has been rejected.
In order to drag my Plymouth-Doncaster ticket back below the £200 mark to a cool £190, Trainline split the ticket for me into two journeys in the same seat – Plymouth-Cheltenham, Cheltenham-Doncaster. Turns out, around the time we were screaming down the A380 in Dooby’s Taxiola at our own considerable expense, Cross Country turned once of its other trains around at Cheltenham and ran it back to Doncaster. RealTimeTrains et al simply show ours as disappearing at Newton Abbott, and then magically reappearing, bang on time, 128 miles away at Cheltenham. It was simply "our responsibility” to get to Cheltenham in time to catch it. Through the medium of teleportation perhaps?
They are, kindly, giving me just shy of 100 sheets back for the Plymouth to Cheltenham leg, which they seem to accept was "a bit rum”. Sadly though, for the five hour delay, the time in Ye Olde Railway Brewhouse, the 90 minutes spent pisballing about watching Birmingham’s drunkest solicitor extend her lead over any potential rival, the chat with Chris Eubank’s twin north of Derby, the unceremonious tipping out at Sheffield, the aborted sprint across the bridge to get the fast Doncaster train, the diversion via Shirley’s house, the 40 minutes with Bennie and the Jets, and the 1am trip to Doncaster for my long suffering mother… my charge of £90 will stand.
I’m entitled to submit an appeal if I believe they’ve reached the wrong decision. Which is nice. I think I’m going to do that in writing. Give me the chance to print their reply out and include it, rolled up very tightly to make it easier for whoever opens it to stuff up their arsehole.
Postscript – GWR have also been in touch, gladly refunding me for the ticket I sent them the photograph of but refusing me money for the two that I didn’t because their website only allows you to attach one photograph. They, too, shall be receiving a letter.
16.15 There is, somehow, for some reason, cruelly, another game this evening. I need this like I need another train journey to Plymouth. Goodness only knows how the players are feeling.
We could stop and ask them to be fair - they’re staying at the hotel in our village. The proprietor spotted the potential of this place when Hull made the Premier League and now any team playing Hull, Grimsby or Scunny tends to spend the night at the end of my mum's road (stop it). Liverpool’s short novel of totally sane and reasonable requests included the entire reception and bar area being cleared for their arrival and nobody to approach or speak to ‘man of the people’ Jurgen Klopp. Adam Lallana and Jordan Henderson had to have adjoining rooms. Bless. Got your pyjamas, boys?
Last time QPR stayed here they went for a morning walk around the adjoining golf course and my mum (who hates football, and QPR in particular) shouted "YOU R’S” at them from the third tee and waved a four iron around in the air. She says they looked at her like she was mad. Which she is a bit.
17.00 Kingston Upon Hull – unfortunately one of those places that responded to the summer atrocities by looting Shoezone - is an underrated city of really quite decent bars, pubs and restaurants around its old town and marina. It’s divided by a river that separates east (Hull KR, feral children, mostly marshland) from west (Hull FC, dentists, houses with indoor toilets).
It is served by a trunk road called The Clive Sullivan Way, named after the rugby league winger who played for both teams in the city, was the first black captain of Great Britain in any sport, and won the World Cup for this country in 1972. You’ve never heard of any of that because, well, it’s rugby league and Hull, not rugby union and London.
Somebody fairly recently decided to dig up The Clive Sullivan Way where it turns into Hessle Road and nobody really seems to know what to do with now. The city needs to improve the link of its port to the rest of the country for all the lorries and people bringing drugs back from Holland. An underpass is the latest big idea. Problem is, every time they dig into the ground, the hole immediately fills with water. It is, after all, basically in the Humber Estuary. An attempt to solve this problem in the 1980s with a tunnel ended so disastrously the collapsed remains still present a shipping hazard to any boat trying to navigate the River Hull. They might very well have guessed this latest attempt would not meet the "spring 2025” deadline which, as we sit in a long queue, I read has now been extended to "I dunno, eventually”. It will be closed altogether later on tonight, overnight, and every night, forever and ever, and is preparing for that by letting cars through at a rate of one every now and then.
17.45 The fish and chips at The Minerva are worth fighting through traffic, illegally parking the car, and crossing over a couple of industrial locks for. You can smell them through a vent in the pub’s side wall as you round the corner looking for an entrance to a building laid out like the Adams Family’s summer house. All animal fat, and carbs and burn the skin off the roof of your mouth. Salt and vinegar and salt. Eat it too quickly then sit back and feel your arteries harden. My God. Bliss. Come here to eat. Come here to drink. It’s terrific. Don’t come here when I’m here though, it’s full enough as it is.
19.30 The official Hull City matchday programme lists QPR as playing in a "blue and white hooped shit”. Which I think is a bit of a liberty. I quite like our home kit this year.
19.40 The optimism which swept through Hull’s West Park when Acun Ilicali took over from the despised Allams is fast dissipating. There are 5,000 empty seats here tonight with the hosts in the bottom three and the mood kindly described as funerial. Even the collection of virgins who’ve gathered in their little matching black jackets - as close to the away end as possible in order to indulge in mega bantz and that well scary "hold me back Kyle” routine should Hull ever score a goal here again - seem subdued. That’s a muggy trend in modern football at clubs that are winning, doing it at the side with the worst home record in the division (just two wins here all season) is positively desperate.
Speaking of muggy modern football trends… In lieu of any actual atmosphere somebody spends five minutes or so before the kick off flicking the lights on and off. There’s a couple of Ibiza Trance anthems from 2004, played at a decibel level designed to disturb any undiscovered World War Two submarines in the mouth of the estuary. With any latent epileptics in the crowd successfully flushed out, we’re ready to begin.
21.37 GLORIOUS VICTORY.
22.30 Back at the ranch, and keen to see highlights from QPR’s total destruction of Hull on an unstoppable rampage towards the play-offs, we’re forced to sit through half an hour of "tomorrow’s papers” on the only channel that has the rights to show us said highlights. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I would have thought between 22.00 and 23.00 on a night when there’s been a full programme of action in the leagues you have exclusivity to, it might be worth utilising those rights you’ve paid so much money for by showing us goals that were scored an hour or so ago? I’m wrong, clearly. What the people want is Henry Winter in his back bedroom, and John Cross in his back bedroom, staring into a Zoom call and talking about Mikel Arteta. Talking about Mikel Arteta at length. We pass the time wondering if we can appropriate the Mr Sparkle advert for Koki Saito in some way without it being hideously offensive. LFW HR officer has been resisting thus far.
23.27 To enormous erections all round, QPR’s goals are shown.
00.15 Back into bed among the furniture stacks. Little bonus beer from the fridge just to see the day off right.
12.00 Well. We’re back. At Doncaster again. The points have failed between Northallerton and York. Trains moving south are subject to delays of 60 to 90 minutes. But don’t worry, we’re told, one click delay repay is available via the LNER website.
Plymouth:
On the pitch >>> QPR performance 7/10 >>> Plymouth performance 5/10 >>> Referee performance 7/10
Off the pitch >>> QPR support 8/10 >>> Home support 7/10 >>> Overall atmosphere 7/10 >>>> Stadium 6/10 >>>> Police and stewards 4/10
In the pub >>> Pubs 6/10 >>> Atmosphere 6/10 >>>> Cost 7/10
On the train (Friday night Pullman) >>> Journey 8/10 >>> Food 9/10 >>> Cost 5/10
Hull:
On the pitch >>> QPR performance 7/10 >>> Hull performance 4/10 >>> Referee performance 7/10
Off the pitch >>> QPR support 6/10 >>> Home support 3/10 >>> Overall atmosphere 4/10 >>>> Stadium 7/10 >>>> Police and stewards 6/10
In the pub >>> Pubs 8/10 >>> Atmosphere 8/10 >>> Food 8/10 >>> Cost 8/10
On the train (from Plymouth) >>> Journey 1/10 >>> Cost 1/10
2024/25 >>> Sheffield/Luton/Derby
2023/24 >>> Austria Pt 1 >>> Austria Pt 2 >>> Wimbledon >>> Oxford >>> Watford/Cardiff/Middlesbrough >>> Birmingham/Leeds/Huddersfield/West Brom >>> Preston/Sheffield/Ipswich >>> Stoke/Bristol/Leicester
2022/23 >>> Blackburn/Sunderland/Charlton >>> Watford/Swansea/Millwall >>> Bristol/Sheffield/Luton
2021/22 >>> Hull/Boro 21/22 >>> Reading/Bournemouth >>> Fulham/Peterborough >>> Cardiff/Blackpool >>> Bristol/Birmingham >>> Peterborough/Coventry/Millwall >>> Barnsley/Blackburn >>> Luton/Nottingham >>> Sheffield/Preston/Huddersfield
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