I managed to time things perfectly – I had a conference in Manchester after day one of the Cheltenham festival, which our friend Bob hasn’t missed since 1953, so we all went to see the first day of Gloucestershire v Hampshire (starring Wisconsin’s own Ian Holland!) at Cheltenham, and I booked a rail ticket from there to Manchester Piccadilly (via Birmingham New Street, naturally) for late in the day. Dad always liked to leave a red ball match shortly after tea, so he and Bob left me to watch an additional hour of play before getting the train.
I wandered off with plenty of time to spare and, as I approached the station, had that sense of dread known to most who regularly use English railways. About 150 people milling around outside the station even as two busses, both clearly replacements, left the station forecourt, bade ill for my trip.
ON investigation, all services to New Street were cancelled indefinitely. We were told, definitively, that no more replacement busses could be found. God knows why I cared – to be honest I’d be as happy spending the night in Cheltenham as in Manchester – but there were a lot of disoriented and pissed off people milling around. I was chatting with a very distressed young woman (20ish) from Bath University who was hoping to reach Middlesborough (good luck) when, looking at the announcements board, an alternative occurred to me. And this is what I love about the English.
The young lad (I suppose he was in his mid-to-late 20s, but he looked 13 to me) who appeared to be in charge of the whole business was, let’s say, stoical, despite being besieged by hundreds of people many of whom were being quite rude to him, poor chap. I sidled up to him and said “So, there’s no trains to New Street this evening right? Probably a death on the line?”. He confirmed my worst fears. “But: trains are still running to Worcester Foregate?” – he assented. “And, presumably, we could all get the next train to Foregate street, change there, and get a train from there to Birmingham Moor Street, from where we could walk to New Street?” (It’s a very short walk). His eyes lit up: “Yes”, he said, “What a good idea! That would work brilliantly!”. Then his face fell, “But how would people know how to get from Moor Street to New Street?”. “Well”, I said, “The most absurd strategy would be to tell them to follow me since I know what I am doing. Or – they nearly all have phones, so could navigate themselves. Another option would be to send an employee to lead them across the city”. He chose the most absurd option.
And so it was that I led about 200 people onto the train to Worcester. Funnily enough, when we reached Worcester Shrub Hill the station staff seemed to know what was going on and told everybody to get off there rather than carry on to Foregate Street, presumably because it facilitated getting an earlier Birmingham train out.[1] By then I was kind of stuck with the 20 year old woman – she was using my portable battery to charge her phone (god she was anxious) and on the one hand I didn’t want to weird her out by talking to her much, on the other hand I didn’t want to lose my portable battery, which I was going to need. With us were a young man from Hull who I genuinely couldn’t understand, and had to pretend to be deaf every time he said anything to get him to repeat it, and a slightly more comprehensible young woman from Derby: I thought they were a couple – more on that in a minute. As we all approached Birmingham I worked out that Snow Hill is as close to New Street as Moor Street is, and I knew it was an easier station to exit; combined with the fact that we’d reach Snow Hill 3 minutes sooner than Moor Street I suggested to the whole train that we all exit there for the walk to New Street. Bold, because I’d never actually walked that particular route myself.
Everything worked out though, and I successfully led my couple of hundred passengers from Snow Hill to New Street, feeling triumphant.
Until we reached New Street.