9.30 pm. We were out of the hotel and off in search of my son’s mobile breakfast. The rain poured within minutes of our departure (again). It’s uncanny. At Wilson Street, he and I discovered our quarry: Glasgow’s only original, authentic police telephone box. I remember seeing several of this type around London back in the early 1960s, when I was exceedingly young. The external proportions of the Tardis (as it’s presently conceived) are different; being somewhat broader:
Against the rising, cold wind, we pressed on, like two pilgrims, to London Road and that most ‘sacred’ place — guitarguitar:
From here, some years ago, I bought two Gibson guitars. Our arrival was graced by the morning’s first burst of sunlight. The shop stocks some of the best electric guitars, amps, and pedals known to humankind. I came away having spent a notional £11k.
Notionally bankrupt, we walked to the banks of the river Clyde and toward another sacred site, with which I had no association: St Andrew’s Cathedral:
There’s a rather cloying Peter Howson painting of Christ in one of the side chapels. El Greco did this sort of thing so much better. It’s not the handling that’s at fault, so much as the absence of a comprehending religious (and, particularly, a supernaturalist) sensibility:
(I look forward to Good Friday – the saddest, most emptied, and most salutary day of the year).
We ate lunch around 12.30 pm following a visit to what must be one of the few remaining HMV shops, where I picked up some bargain basement CDs of albums by John Coltrane. Having retrieved our suitcase from the PI, the two of us descended the hill to Glasgow Central station. The sun is now a fixture in the sky. (Ha hum!) 2.40 pm. ‘Goodbye Glasgow!’:
Work catch-up:
At Carlisle, where we met the connection for Wolverhampton, dark clouds and heavy rain prevailed. For no particular reason, my 20 minutes on Platform 4 felt poignant and consoling – like a vague promissory of something better to come. Such feelings are nearly always illusory:
The fulfilment is not going to be immediate in any case; our train was halted north of Lancaster due to a track fault. This will scupper our on-going connection to Aberystwyth. (Sigh!) On occasions such as these, the train staff keep a low profile. Their updates tend to be scant and wide of the mark. (It’s not their fault, and they can do little to help other than pacify the rebellion.) At 5.48 pm, we have been standing idle for over 45 minutes. 6.05 pm. The announcement warns us that we may be motionless for at least another hour. (Stranded like a crippled spacecraft.) Consequently, we’ll miss the last train home. It’s very tempting …
Free food is being handed out liberally. (This is always a sign of desperation. ‘Shouldn’t we be rationing?’, I ask myself.)
6.35 pm. The train is moving at last. The possibility of catching the last train home reawakens. We will be have been delayed by two hours. Then … 7.15 pm. An announcement to the effect that we would not be stopping at Wolverhampton or any station after Crewe until Euston. I was advised to alight at Crewe in order to catch the train to Shrewsbury and meet the Aberystwyth train there. Got to Crewe. Then the fun started, as follows:
Me: ‘Which platform for the 20.09 train?’
Assistant 1: ‘11, sir!’ [We rush across the bridge to Platform 11. But the Departures board still says that it leaves from Platform 5].
Me: ‘Is this the correct platform for the 20.09.
Assistant 2: ‘Yes sir!’
Me: But you directed another person back to Platform 5, to catch the Shrewsbury train’.
Assistant 2: ‘Yes. For the 20.09 to Carmarthen … Platform 5, that’s right.’
Me: ‘But Platform 11 is for the 20.09, you said.’
Assistant 2: ‘Yes sir. The 20.09 to Glasgow.’ [There are two 20.09 trains in fact. We race back across the bridge to Platform 5, indicate to Assistant 1 that we had no intention of returning to Glasgow, and hear this announcement on arrival …]
Announcer: ‘This is a platform alteration. The 20.09 train for Carmarthen will now be arriving at Platform 6’ [over the bridge, again.]
Arrived at Shrewsbury an hour before the Aberystwyth train (on which my elder son was travelling from London via Birmingham) pulled in:
Got home at 11.30 pm.