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rhythmaningIt is raining. I think it has been raining for about forty eight hours.
It is flooding. Not for me - since I live at the top of a hill (it is downhill in every direction, a universal identifier). But roads are closed, rivers flooding - just below me, there is a warning out on the Water of Leith (so tomorrow, I shall venture down to have a look at the torrents, and compare the flood to the last great deluge, several years ago, when the river rose by about sixteen feet, washing over bridges and footpaths: there was debris caught in the chicken wire railings of one bridge, leaving it thatched for years, high above the water).
And I now find out there are rail closures too.
This surprises me a little; actually, it surprises me a lot, since I have been keeping an eye on the train today, because my mother is travelling from Oxford to Edinburgh to spend a few days with me and doing some festival stuff. So I was tracking her progress on the National Rail live arrivals board, and with plenty of time to spare, I wandered off to Waverley to meet her.
Instead, I was met by a blank arrivals board at Waverley, and a horde of people. There were buses queueing around the block, and people queueing for the buses. The train was listed, but no arrival platform shown, for this or any train. I sat until after the scheduled arrival time, and then sought dome information.
The buses were because the line west between Waverley and Haymarket was flooded. It would have made most sense for a lot of the people waiting to get on a bus to go to Haymarket so they could start their journey proper to actually walk, because it is only a mile or so between the two. The trains ease their way through the tunnels beneath the National Gallery, then through Princes Street Gardens in the shadow of the castle before entering another tunnel under the Caledonian Hotel, till they finally emerge at Haymarket itself. I think it was these tunnels that were flooded, meaning no trains were heading west.
I was too bothered, since I knew my mother's train was coming up the east coast line: it arrived in Newcastle more or less on time, the live arrivals board had told me.
So I went to ask someone which platform this train would arrive on. He didn't know, since it wasn't showing on his computer screen (which was a copy of the arrivals board in the main concourse, leaving wondering why I had bothered asking). He very politely directed me the the train company's manager. Who very politely directed me to the train company's office, since they have a computer there.
It was here that I was told (and again, they were very polite, given the hassle they must have been getting) that - well, they didn't know either. In fact, they didn't know anything about it. They didn't know where it was; they had lost their train! They told me they thought it had got to Carlisle, where it had terminated. This surprised me - it has been quite a surprising evening, all told - this surprised me because Carlisle is on the west coast line, and the train I was interested in was going up the east coast. Yes, he told me, but the line between Newcastle and Edinburgh has been closed by floods, and the train was diverted from Newcastle to Carlisle. I did want to question the efficacy of this – one thing sending a train due for Edinburgh via Carlisle to avoid flooding, but another to them terminate it at Carlisle; I would have thought putting everyone on buses and driving north from Newcastle would have made a bit more sense.
Anyhow, the train, he thought, had got to Carlisle; but after that, he knew nothing. Some people, he said, might have got on another train and so make their way to Edinburgh; but he didn’t know where this train had come from, so he couldn’t track it. And of course, he didn’t know whether my mother would be one of the people who got on it.
And neither do I.
All he could suggest was that I wait around with the milling crowds – presumably in the vague hope that I might spot my mother amongst the hordes wondering how they were going to get home to Glasgow (in the west, through flooded tunnels…).
There is a subtext here. I couldn’t contact my mother. My mother doesn’t have a mobile phone. Well, that isn’t strictly true. She has a couple. My brother gave her one a few years ago, but she didn’t use it, and it managed to get itself locked because it was so infrequently used. She took it back to Vodafone, where the spotty teenager sprouted garbled technobabble at her which she didn’t understand and, worse, decided that she couldn’t deal with these people at all. So went out and got a phone from O2 or someone else.
So she does have a phone. She even has two. But she doesn’t know where it is: it is so small, she says, that she has lost it.
So there I am, waiting in Waverley, wondering what to do. I decide that rather than wait for a possibly mythical train which may not even contain my mother to arrive from Carlisle, and most likely miss her in the crowd if she does arrive, I might as well wait at home.
Which is where I am.
And she has actually just – a minute ago or so – finally had the sense to borrow a stranger’s phone and call me. She is now, they reckon, about half an hour out of Waverley; she did get a train at Carlisle, and it is going north of Edinburgh to bypass the floods at Haymarket. I can’t quite make sense of this, since I thought anything coming into Waverley from the west or north passed through Haymarket, but what the heck.
And I’m not going back to Waverley to meet her – it is safer to stay at home…
It is flooding. Not for me - since I live at the top of a hill (it is downhill in every direction, a universal identifier). But roads are closed, rivers flooding - just below me, there is a warning out on the Water of Leith (so tomorrow, I shall venture down to have a look at the torrents, and compare the flood to the last great deluge, several years ago, when the river rose by about sixteen feet, washing over bridges and footpaths: there was debris caught in the chicken wire railings of one bridge, leaving it thatched for years, high above the water).
And I now find out there are rail closures too.
This surprises me a little; actually, it surprises me a lot, since I have been keeping an eye on the train today, because my mother is travelling from Oxford to Edinburgh to spend a few days with me and doing some festival stuff. So I was tracking her progress on the National Rail live arrivals board, and with plenty of time to spare, I wandered off to Waverley to meet her.
Instead, I was met by a blank arrivals board at Waverley, and a horde of people. There were buses queueing around the block, and people queueing for the buses. The train was listed, but no arrival platform shown, for this or any train. I sat until after the scheduled arrival time, and then sought dome information.
The buses were because the line west between Waverley and Haymarket was flooded. It would have made most sense for a lot of the people waiting to get on a bus to go to Haymarket so they could start their journey proper to actually walk, because it is only a mile or so between the two. The trains ease their way through the tunnels beneath the National Gallery, then through Princes Street Gardens in the shadow of the castle before entering another tunnel under the Caledonian Hotel, till they finally emerge at Haymarket itself. I think it was these tunnels that were flooded, meaning no trains were heading west.
I was too bothered, since I knew my mother's train was coming up the east coast line: it arrived in Newcastle more or less on time, the live arrivals board had told me.
So I went to ask someone which platform this train would arrive on. He didn't know, since it wasn't showing on his computer screen (which was a copy of the arrivals board in the main concourse, leaving wondering why I had bothered asking). He very politely directed me the the train company's manager. Who very politely directed me to the train company's office, since they have a computer there.
It was here that I was told (and again, they were very polite, given the hassle they must have been getting) that - well, they didn't know either. In fact, they didn't know anything about it. They didn't know where it was; they had lost their train! They told me they thought it had got to Carlisle, where it had terminated. This surprised me - it has been quite a surprising evening, all told - this surprised me because Carlisle is on the west coast line, and the train I was interested in was going up the east coast. Yes, he told me, but the line between Newcastle and Edinburgh has been closed by floods, and the train was diverted from Newcastle to Carlisle. I did want to question the efficacy of this – one thing sending a train due for Edinburgh via Carlisle to avoid flooding, but another to them terminate it at Carlisle; I would have thought putting everyone on buses and driving north from Newcastle would have made a bit more sense.
Anyhow, the train, he thought, had got to Carlisle; but after that, he knew nothing. Some people, he said, might have got on another train and so make their way to Edinburgh; but he didn’t know where this train had come from, so he couldn’t track it. And of course, he didn’t know whether my mother would be one of the people who got on it.
And neither do I.
All he could suggest was that I wait around with the milling crowds – presumably in the vague hope that I might spot my mother amongst the hordes wondering how they were going to get home to Glasgow (in the west, through flooded tunnels…).
There is a subtext here. I couldn’t contact my mother. My mother doesn’t have a mobile phone. Well, that isn’t strictly true. She has a couple. My brother gave her one a few years ago, but she didn’t use it, and it managed to get itself locked because it was so infrequently used. She took it back to Vodafone, where the spotty teenager sprouted garbled technobabble at her which she didn’t understand and, worse, decided that she couldn’t deal with these people at all. So went out and got a phone from O2 or someone else.
So she does have a phone. She even has two. But she doesn’t know where it is: it is so small, she says, that she has lost it.
So there I am, waiting in Waverley, wondering what to do. I decide that rather than wait for a possibly mythical train which may not even contain my mother to arrive from Carlisle, and most likely miss her in the crowd if she does arrive, I might as well wait at home.
Which is where I am.
And she has actually just – a minute ago or so – finally had the sense to borrow a stranger’s phone and call me. She is now, they reckon, about half an hour out of Waverley; she did get a train at Carlisle, and it is going north of Edinburgh to bypass the floods at Haymarket. I can’t quite make sense of this, since I thought anything coming into Waverley from the west or north passed through Haymarket, but what the heck.
And I’m not going back to Waverley to meet her – it is safer to stay at home…