Trained back from Gloucester to London. I was thinking about a route back via Birmingham to Liverpool but it being a Sunday (and as we’ve established before, trains are religious and so run differently on a Sunday) it all looked like too much hassle and so Gloucester-London, London-Liverpool looked the simpler option.
This suitcase. It’s like a punishment. It’s as if I’ve been damned to carry it for ever, like having to continually push a boulder up an endless staircase in Hell. It is like that. It is. And it’s interesting to think, when the London Underground was first opened, there must have been a conversation along the lines of “It’s a good idea this, having trains run under the streets, but one thing – do you think anyone will ever want to use the service with luggage? Because it’s all stairs… That might be tricky.�
“No. No-one will want to use the Underground, or Tube as it will probably be called in the future, with any luggage. The thought is absurd. Why would anyone want to travel across London with a bag?�
“Well some might at some point. And it looks like we’ve built stations like Paddington and Euston Square without any escalators or anything like that. Only a series of quite narrow steps which would be exhausting to carry theoretical baggage up.�
“True, but as I say, no-one will ever use this service with baggage, ever.�
“I’m not sure though. I think in the future, when people travel around the country more than they do now, and we have airports that…�
“Air what?�
“Airports. We’ll probably be able to fly in machines and these will land at ports. Airports.�
“Have you been on the gin?�
“No. Anyway, it is possible, even probable, that people will use this service with baggage, luggage, call it what you will, in the future and we’ve made absolutely no provisions for this. They’ll have to pull their heavy suitcase up the steps, then bounce it down some others, and this will hold up frustrated passengers in the futuristic 21st century and make the owner of the bag all hot and sweaty and irritable. We’re Victorians, we’re supposed to be design experts.�
“I don’t care! To Hell with people in the future using this ‘Air Ports’ of yours. They can suffer on our stairs. For now, we’re just building a railway for people to ride up and down on in top hats and big skirts. Stairs are fine for them. If they want to build escalators in the future, that’s up to them.�
“But they’ll probably be too lazy to build escalators at Paddington on the Hammersmith And City Line branch, and too lazy to do the same at Euston Square. It’s going to be an effing nightmare, pardon my French.�
“Ha-Ha-Ha! Good! Ha-Ha-Ha!�
That is what happened when they designed the first underground stations (which are the ones on this stretch of line) and indeed we do now suffer. I got to Euston and scanned the departure board, decided I didn’t want to get on a train just yet, sat in The George over the road watching the football and eventually got the six O’clock. Plonked myself in First Class and the ticket inspector didn’t come along the train at any point so it was a free trip back. The only free thing about this ridiculously inflated trip.
No keys of course, so stayed with my friend Sarah. So back in Liverpool, but it’s not quite over yet. Keys tomorrow… Bloody bank holidays. Had to be a bank holiday Monday tomorrow. A holiday for banks, the organisations least deserving of any type of holiday. They should only be allowed holidays when they learn to stay open until 5.30pm like other shops.
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