My train adventure by John aged 20 and a half
As discussed in my last entry I went to London to see Slayer. Gig ends, everybody lets out, I swiftly head off to Hammersmith tube station to try and make the last train home. The tube I get is only labelled as going to Edgware Road (trying to get to King's Cross which is further down the Hammersmith and City line), but that's no problem because they sometimes do that when the train is actually going further. It's all going fine until I actually get to Edgware road, where the train stops and the driver makes an announcement, except he has an incomprehensibly thick accent and I can't understand a word he's saying. Just in case it's an all change type of thing I get off the train, only to realise he was trying to say that the train was only heading as far as Aldgate, which an inspection of the tube map reveals is after King's Cross. So I should be still on the tube. Except now the doors are closing. Bugger it. The next tube to King's Cross isn't for ages and I have 27 minutes to make the last train home. Double bugger it. To rub salt in the wound, trains from Hammersmith to Wimbledon of all places seems to run about once every planck time at that time of night.
So eventually the next tube arrives and I get into King's Cross at exactly 00:07, when the last train is due to depart. Cue mad dash from the underground to the main bit of the station, but it's all in vain as I've already missed the train. Right, I've done this before, I can get the Peterborough to Huntingdon and get a taxi from there. It'll be expensive, but it beats bumming it in London in the freezing cold for an evening. So after I waste three quid in the payphones wrangling with directory enquiries (my phone was low on battery at this point and I didn't want to risk it running out unless absolutely necessary), I reverse charge call my lovely mum who happens to still be awake and ask her to text me the numbers of some Huntingdon taxi firms (thanks very much, mum!). She gives me four, of which the first three cut to answer phone but the fourth one picks up and I sort out a taxi. Happy in the knowledge that I have a way home, I buy a ticket to Huntingdon (which turned out to be a colossol waste of money as there were no barries and no conductor, but sod's law says if I hadn't bought it it would've been the one night they had a conductor working the night shift), board the Peterborough train and am on my way home.
On the train I meet some kids who were also at the show and shoot the shit with them for a bit. Eventually they get off at Stevenage, where I hear an announcement that there is a bus heading to Cambridge sitting at the front of the station. "Victory is mine!", I think, as I had previously learned that the train service to Cambridge from King's Cross was only going half way that night and there was replacement bus service the rest of the way, "The Peterborough train has caught up to the Cambridge bus. Truly the metal gods smile upon me this night!"
I quickly exit the train and make my way to the front of the station where I see an unmarked bus. I ask the driver if this bus is headed to Cambridge and he tells me to speak to the conductor, who is chatting away on the phone. As I wait for him to finish up, two more people arrive, one also looking to go to Cambridge, the other going somewhere completely different. After a few minutes the conductor finishes on the phone and informs us that the bus to Cambridge left twenty minutes ago. This leaves my similarly destined companion and I thoroughly confused, as we distinctly heard a bus to Cambridge announced less that five minutes ago and the possibility that we are both having the exact same hallucination is somewhat remote. We explain this to the conductor, who explains our situation to the station staff. As it transpires the station announcer had been announcing the Cambridge bus after it left out of habit, hence my confusion. Since our journey had been delayed through fault of the station staff, they agreed to arrange a taxi to take me and the other guy to Cambridge, paid for by the station. This was all handled very quickly, friendlily and professionally and I am very greatful to the staff of Huntingdon train station for all their help, not that any of them are likely to read this.
We are promptly escorted to a taxi rank outside where a station security officer explains the situation to one of the waiting taxi drivers, who drives us uneventfully to Cambridge. The other dude guides the taxi driver to the Drummer Street bus station. I decide that while I know Cambridge well enough on foot I'm not so confident navigating the taxi driver to Madingley Road avoiding all the pedestrian areas and bollards and other such nuisances, so I get out at the bus station as well. I walk briskly through the cold Cambridge night back to Churchill, where I go to sleep in my nice warm bed. The end.