My sister had kindly given me a lift to Newcastle Central station. John Dobson’s famous porte-cochere loomed up out of the gloom as I strode from the car into the station towards platform 3 and the 16:36 back to Dunbar. I was pleased to be going home after a tiring weekend. Rain fell but I was warm and dry under that magnificent curving train shed roof, one of the finest in Europe. The platform seemed rather more crowded than usual. There appeared to be an awful lot of back-packers for this time of year. I was worried I wouldn’t get a seat and would have to sit in the corridor on my rucksack for 70 minutes. I was nowhere near a television screen and I could not hear any of the announcements which, in any case, generally sound like the announcer has his or her head in a bucket.
A worried-looking woman standing next to me said to her husband:
‘It’s coming in from the Manors side.’
‘That’s unusual’ I thought, ‘I wonder why that is.’ I assumed engineering works or something and thought no more about it. Precisely at 16:34, an East Coast Main Line train hove into view, from the Manors side, and pulled up at Platform 3. The woman had been right.
“Funny,” I thought to myself, “I was expecting Cross Country”. Nevertheless, the odd ECML train did stop at Dunbar, so I clambered aboard regardless. I managed to get a seat next to an American student.
“Back to the direction of travel”, I thought, “Don’t like that, but needs must.” I settled back in my seat and waited. I hate the ‘Mallard’ seats – they are excruciatingly uncomfortable, but so be it – they can be tolerated for a short journey. The train moved off. It inched forward. It did not go back. I was not sitting with my back to the direction of travel, I was facing the engine.
At times like these, the brain does not automatically register the obvious fact that something is very wrong. I was halfway over the King Edward Bridge before I had the most awful feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“What train is this?” I asked the American student.
“It’s the London train. I’m on board till Peterbro’” he replied.
“Excuse me” I said, “I’m on the wrong train.” I dashed along the corridor, through the first class and into the train office. The elderly guard, who looked, and moved, like Private Godfrey, was dealing with an idiot who wanted a single to Darlington and was thirty pence short. Eventually, with just three minutes to go until the train stopped at Durham, Godfrey advised me to get off there, cross under the permanent way and stand on the down platform awaiting the 1818 to Edinburgh, which stops at Dunbar.
“That’s 105 minutes I have to wait – is there nothing sooner?”
He shook his white head and mumbled something about people who couldn’t be bothered to look at television screens.
I stepped off at Durham. My bag weighed about 30 pounds. I wasn’t going to hang around the station, nor was I going to lug that bag around this chillingly hilly city, up around Durham Castle and Cathedral to use up the time. Instead, I lumbered down the steep hill towards a hypermarket. Maybe it had a cafe. I saw a bus standing at a bus stop near a roundabout. It was a little single-decker and it had “Newcastle” on the front destination screen. It was a Go North-East service 44. I used to work for that company when it was part of the National Bus Group back in the early eighties, so I was pleased to see it there, resplendent in its apple-green livery.
“How much to Newcastle?” I asked the driver.
“Four pounds.” That seemed very reasonable to me, so I paid up and sat down. Some drunken, foul-mouthed men were sitting at the back of the bus. I ignored them and looked at the train timetable. The 18:18 that Godfrey had been talking about was due in at Newcastle Central at 18:39. It was now 16:50, so I had bags of time. Durham is just 15 miles from Newcastle, so I guessed on a Sunday afternoon that 40 minutes maximum would get me back to the Toon.
It was only when we seemed to be travelling in the opposite direction that alarm-bells started jangling gently in my right ear. We rolled into little villages with strange-sounding names that I had never been to before – Framwellgate, Sacriston, Edmondsley, Craghead, and South Moor. After half an hour, we had reached Stanley. It is as far from Newcastle as is Durham. At least I had been there before, a mere 38 years ago. We pulled in at a fairly new bus station. The driver got out. A new driver, plump and silver-haired, got in. For a long while, nothing happened. I was becoming a little agitated, and, for the first time, realised that the undulations of the bus had had an adverse effect on my bladder and that I might soon need the toilet. Eventually, I plucked up enough courage to speak to the plump driver.
“How long are you staying here?”
“Three minutes” was the terse replay.
“Is there a toilet in the bus station?”
“Yes”.
“Would you mind waiting till I use it?”
“I don’t mind, but you’ll find it’s shut”.
I sat down and tried to think of a walk in the desert, far away from any running water, but I kept seeing oases, so I gave it up.
We rolled on and on – Annfield Plain, Catchgate, Dipton, Tanfield Lea, Tantobie, Lintz, Burnopfield. I kept looking at my watch – minute after minute ticked by and we seemed to be no nearer Newcastle.
At last, we drifted into Sunniside, a place I knew quite well. I could see the mundane high-rise flats of Gateshead on the horizon, which gave me some comfort. We drove through Whickham and Swalwell and fetched up at the huge, sprawling, insanely awful Metrocentre. It was 18:15. I had 24 minutes left and I had no idea whether the bus stopped anywhere near the station. We still had to get through Dunston and Teams before we reached sprawling metropolis of Gateshead.
As if by magic, the driver suddenly woke up and took off from the Metrocentre like Sebastian Vettel. He had the six of us left on the bus hanging onto the handrails for dear life. He made the Redheugh Bridge in five minutes and, to my delight, went over it, which cut out any lazy perambulations along Askew Road and Gateshead High Street We became briefly caught in traffic near Newcastle’s Clayton Street. I listened to one of the passengers, a young black man, pleading with his girlfriend on his mobile phone: “Please Honey, let me back in, I can change. I swear.” He sounded doubtful, and tearful.
“Get a grip”, I almost screamed at him.
To my delight, the stop was only 300 yards from the station. It was 18:28. I had ten minutes to make my train.
I made it with three minutes to spare.
I never had any need to fret, but had worried myself into a state of anxiety so chronic, I found I had unconsciously torn my train timetable in half. At least I managed to avoid the need for the toilet until I stepped aboard the train.
Whoever says that letting the train take the strain is an abject fool, I say, and should be locked up immediately.
