I woke up at a quarter to six, in advance of the alarm. It suddenly dawned on me: “Oh, no, not Maryhill again”, although my mental language was a little fruitier than that. I stumbled out of bed in the pitch dark. My suit had shrunk since I last wore it, before Christmas, and I spent some minutes clambering into a roomier one. I left the house far too early and was reduced to driving to the station at twenty miles per hour to use up time. The ticket machine was sluggish, as usual. I had to keep banging it with my fist to get it to work. It’s worse when it’s frosty – you need a sink-plunger to get the screen to move at all. The light over the Visa Card slot is the equivalent of about half a glow-worm, and the numbers have all virtually disappeared with use. In addition, the infernal machine was built without the comforting ‘beeps’ that let you know whether you’ve pressed a digit properly. As usual, I managed to secure the correct tickets more by luck than intuition. The ticket price had gone up by a pound.
The 06:51 Edinburgh train arrived on time. A bald man with thick, horn-rimmed glasses and a vacuous expression sat next to me at Prestonpans. He didn’t look too clean. I was to catch the 07:26 Cross country train to Glasgow Central at platform ten. The whole of Waverley station has been enclosed in scaffolding and wood whilst refurbishment work is being carried out, so it takes a bright man indeed to know where he is at any one time. I am not that man at 07:15 of a morning, so was almost out on Market Street before I remembered how to get to the platform.
The computer announced in a peculiar disembodied voice that the quiet coach was at the rear. It was at the front. Later, the guard announced in a peculiar disembodied voice precisely the same incorrect information. “He’s sitting on the blasted train,” I thought to myself, “He ought to know.” I tried to spread myself out to take up a seat-and-a-half, a favourite device of mine to ensure no-one sits next to me, but a shrewish little woman with a handbag the size of a horse’s halter sat next to me at Haymarket. Surprisingly, she sat with it on her knee. Thankfully, I dozed until we reached Motherwell. Daylight broke as we trundled over the Clyde into Glasgow Central, that doyen of stations. Network Rail, in its wisdom, has just installed those wretched barriers to blight the concourse, and, inevitably, a huge queue formed. “You have to lift your ticket out to let the doors open,” an official boomed at some poor bemused fool who stood motionless, presumably thinking that a command of ‘Open Sesame’ would do the trick.
I pulled my wheeled case 500 yards to the bus stop on Hope Street and caught a 40A bus to Maryhill. I sat next to a middle-aged woman with a sclerotic sad visage and blonde hair that was so badly permed she looked as if she’d been electrocuted.
The roads hereabouts are similar to those in Burundi, full of large holes over which bus drivers go out of their way to drive. If they don’t get back to the depot at night with a fractured front axle they’re extremely disappointed. We crashed and bashed our way past Cowcaddens and the Garscube Road and I was soon at that old familiar stop, four hundred yards from the office. The journey had taken me the best part of three hours but the alternative, entering the stock-car race that is the westward journey along the M8, is as appealing as a night listening to Arthur Mullard singing torch ballads.
The worst thing about this is the fact that I have to make the journey in reverse tomorrow night. I sometimes wonder whether I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.
