Number Seventy News

Somebody reads this blog!

I got e-mailed by a guy from a german TV station who was looking for a trainspotter to give some views on the privatisation of Britain’s railways, in the context of the proposed privatisation of Germany’s railways. Apparently there’s to be an announcement on 28 March, and they wanted to fill a slot for the late news.

He was kind enough to come up to York, picking up a local film and sound crew on arrival. They spent some happy hours in the railway museum, interviewed some rail passengers (vox pop they call it) and then turned their attention to me. Whisked me up to Clifton Bridge to pretend to photgraph some trains on a mobile phone and talk about how my interest began - thankyou grandfather and Hounslow Station - then on to the Sidings restaurant where I had to pretend to stride in, order a beer, and sit at a table overlooking the main line while being interviewed.

So I pontificated away on all the bad things I could think of about rail privatisation in Britain and ended by advising Deutsche Bahn not to do it - at least not our way.

Fortunately the trains co-operated by whizzing past the windows every few minutes very photogenically. They recorded about 17 minutes altogether - 17 seconds of TV time if we’re lucky.

After the first session, I found myself listening to the sound engineer reminscing aout his youth in Lancaster, when he’d obviously been a trainspotter too, probably about the same time as me. The german jounalist accused him of “coming out”. That’s the way it is for us gricers.

It was a bright, sunny spring evening, and I enjoyed doing it. Striking a small blow for public service.

To London - only 45 minutes late due to a) a late start from the carriage sidings in Edinburgh and b) a broken down freight train in the Northallerton area. (Paras. 14 and 26 in the GNER excuse-book). Slightly ameliorated by a cappucino in the coffee shop on the footbridge at York, from which there is a fine view of any trains that happen to be running.

London Tip: when you spot the massive queues for tickets at all the guichets and machines at the main Underground concourse at Kings Cross, follow the signs to the Metropolitan and Circle Lines - lots of machines and no queues (at least until Eurostar gets here). You can easily double back to the deep tube lines.

So, Spitalfields Market - half rebuilt, the other half in flagante with building works but somehow struggling on round the scaffolding and tarpaulin - it’s going to be great when it’s finished.

The Geffrye Museum - suite of period rooms, the middle classes in London from c. 1500, really well done, and well explained, leading to a wonderful imaginative 1998 extension containing further rooms, cafe, shop, and special exhibitions. Current exhibition is of paintings of 20th century London homes and gardensto 1960 - interesting how the sort of 1930s suburbs I was brought up in, and which many of us decry as sterile now, were rich with artistic possibilities when they were relatively newly built.

Hoxton Square - looks local - reminded me of a square in Berlin - open air tables outside pubs and cafes.

London Review of Books Bookshop near the British Museum - wonderful selection of good literature - not exclusively focussed on best sellers - and a wonderfully comprehensive poetry section in the basement.

John White in America exhibition in the British Museum - £7 and worth every penny. This man drew and painted the flora, fauna, and human inhabitants of the West Indies and, particularly, “Virginia” (now North Carolina) in the 1580s. It was the pictorial representations of Algonquin villages which I found most interesting - it was White’s view that these were civilised, settled and cultivated people - pity his countrymen preferred to shoot them and steal their land rather than share it. But then, if they had done that we wouldn’t have had George Bush ! It’s a beautifully presented exhibition.

And while I think of it, if you missed the British Library exhibition, London, A Life in Maps, you missed another treat. Understanding the city as an organism.

“Aesthetica”, a great arts magazine, which started in York but is now national (and available in Borders and WH Smith), holds an open mic poetry evening at the Yorkshire Terrier on Stonegate, York, every 2nd Wednesday of the month.

The Terrier does great beer, all York Brewery’s products plus a variety of guests, and the upper room has a great ambience for poetry reading (and for a quiet pint when the poets aren’t there).

Last night was good - started with Adrienne reading her sequence inspired by a song about Yorkshire fishermen’s superstition, and good contributions from Oz, Dave, Sue, Rose and several others. And two amazing sets from a bald Canadian, Jeff Cottirll, with a prodigious memory (so few of us commit our poems to memory) who gave us performance poetry including “the greatest performance poem”,”Sally dumps ?Johnny”, and “Othello and the frog”. It’s quite commendable that Aesthetica supports this little local event, now the magazine itself has become such a big player.

Manchester, Terminal 3, 05.50. Oodles of time for a 07.15 flight to Frankfurt. Checked in on line at home so straight through security and customs - what a breeze! Where’s my gate ? Shit ! Flight cancelled ! Pilot sick - no spares. A nice lady took me out through arrivals back to the check-in area in order to stand in a queue at the BA ticket desk where one harassed-looking man was busy re-booking people. Once I got to him, he sorted me out really quickly - to a Lufthansa flight leaving at 06.40, by then 30 minutes away, from another terminal , 2. I only had hand baggage, so run through the airport to Lufthansa check-in. They don’t like my hand baggage - have to check it. Join the queue for terminal 2 security - about 100 yards long. Get hauled out for express lane, clutching my carry-on belongings rescued from my bag in a plastic folder. Scamper through empty corridors to the gate. Board immediately. Get on plane, sit down. Recover. At least Lufthansa provides complimentary drinks and a cheese roll.

Frankfurt - earlier than anticipated due to earlier flight. No fancy boarding tubes here - onto the tarmac and a bus for about 5 km around the airport. Into a terminal - follow the signs to baggage claim - about 3 km, on foot this time. But lo, my bag is just coming round the carousel. Check out the long distance railway station so I know where it is - super, light, clean - but my pre-booked ticket is only valid on a later train so back to the local railway station and pay a brief visit to Frankfurt. Almost all shops between the Hauptbahnhof and the centre of Eurofinance are apparently owned by Turks. Impressed by the huge statue of a Euro sign - so much more significant of Frankfurt’s interests than some ancient philanthropist. Back to the airport for the ICE train to Mannheim.

ICE trains look like they ought to be all first class, they are so swish. But no, I have a 2nd class seat reserved (with a view of a pillar holding up the carriage roof - this happens in the UK too). My e-ticket, printed out at home on A4 is zapped by the conductor who checks my credit card and declares himself satisfied. And the ticket tells me what platform I will arrive at in Mannheim, and what platform my very handy connection leaves from, and it does, on time, and the same happens at Heilbronn for my connection to Schwabisch Hall.

Approaching Heidelberg, I can see across the fields the block of flats CArol’s cousin Bob and family lived in for a year, and from which we could look out and watch the trains in the distance.

From Heilbronn to Ohringen, halfway to SHA, the S-bahn has been extended out along the railway line, giving a much more frequent service.

But this is about airports, and how much I love them. So, pausing only to say that on the way back, when we pulled into Mannheim, there was a choice of 4 ICE trains to the 4 corners of Germany and beyond waiting to leave as connections within the next 10 minutes, back to Frankfurt.

For the convenience of travellers on British Airways, there is a coach connection between the terminals served by the rail station and Terminal 2. Once at terminal two, there are a number of screens designed to confuse the traveller by juggling a set of letters and numbers purporting to relate to check-in areas and gates. The alternatives are about 1km apart and of course I make the wrong choice - so check-in is slightly tight. At least they think of something called “valet service” for my bag which means I can give it to someone to put in the aircraft hold right on the tarmac, and collect it similarly. So, through security and then, because flights to the UK are inherently more likely to attract terrorists, another incredibly long hike along corridors, up and down escalators, round corners, to yet another security check before we get to the BA waiting area. Waiting to get on a coach that is, to take us to the exact opposite end of the airport where our plane is and adjacent to where I got off the train some time and distance before.

And then BA connect makes you pay for your tea and biscuits on the plane.

I love airports.

And about time too, you may say! But since ace service provider Dan of Braeside IT services has added that wonderful picture of my socks, I feel I owe it to him to set pen to paper (and what a quaint old-fashioned notion that is - entirely metaphorical in the current context.)

W.H. Auden was born at 54 Bootham, York, on 24th February 1907. So, thanks to the City of York Auden Society, an event was held, in the building, on the centenary day, and included the unveiling of a stunning sculpture of the old nicotine-stained wrinkly one, made by my old school-friend, Graham High, and which the firm of accountants who now inhabit the building immediately purchased for themselves and the City. Cocktails were drunk promtly at 6, which would have pleased the old chap. and a few of his poems were read.

Later in the evening (after a very acceptable pub meal in the Hole in the Wall, High Petergate) there was an event in Bootham School Hall. Again, the sculpture took pride of place on a table at the front, and there were poetry readings, songs, and a performance of a play by Auden. A number of local poets were present, who each read one of Auden’s poems, and then one of their own. My contribution was Auden’s “Song. Deftly admiral cast your fly…”, followed by this one of my own (with the last 3 Lines of an Auden poem as an introduction):

“…when I try to imagine a faultless love

Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur

Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.”

W.H. Auden. In Praise of Limestone

there’s a plaque on a house we often pass

- to W. H. Auden, born there - an ordinary house

and round the corner is one John Woolman died in

and up the road, a pub where Guy Fawkes lived

and then, not far away, the upstairs room

my daughters were born in -

where someone else sleeps now and makes love -

in that sunny, morning place

do places matter so?

will my son, born in a hospital

now succeeded by a shopping mall

stroll reminiscent though the outlets

seeking some meaning from where his life began

(though really - it was in that same sister-bearing bed

one frosty night, nine months before)

and did Auden, I wonder, think of York, much?

the clay, the gravels, the alluvial moraine ?

limestone was more his thing,

varied, subtle, soluble

and Woolman’s life is not revalued by his death

though Fawkes may regret his move away.

birthplaces pass, are left behind

- deeds, words, those we love

need no blue plaque, or brass,

and yet I’m glad I know these origins

can trace the arc from birth to death,

from little room to little room,

a scaffold, or a limestone landscape.

People seemed to like it. At least it addressed the occasion.