Amble in the rain

It rained today. Actually it didn’t just rain, it absolutely lashed it down. Oh that British weather eh?

Why do we moan about the weather so much? This summer will be thought of as a wet, dreary one, due to a month of rain in August. We have forgotten that May, June and July felt like we had shifted a few million miles nearer the Sun.

I say this because today I want to moan about the weather. We’ve had about a month without any serious downpour or storm, and yet I still felt my luck was against me as I walked out the door into a wall of water.

So, today I visited Harrogate and Knaresborough, in the rain. It was quite a reasonable trip to be honest. I hadn’t listened to my ipod in a while so there was a variety of newly loaded stuff on there to get my ear into!

I’ll be honest I didn’t really get to see much of either town, simply because my hood (got to keeps those locks dry) is too big for my head, and so I was walking round with blinkers on the side of my face.

What I did see though is clear evidence of something living in the water of north Leeds, for there were a hell of a lot of runners.

I don’t just mean joggers, but simply normal people cantering around. There was a man walking towards me on the outskirts of Knaresborough, who suddenly set off on a very staggered amble, rather than a jog, that made him look like he was taking his part as an extra for 28 Days Later a bit too seriously.

He ran straight past me and continued the whole way down the street, head bobbing along like a pigeons, but with the stiff, straight arms of a gorilla. I’m pretty sure his mouth would have been frothing and eyes bulging by the time he reached his destination.

There was also a small, rough looking youth who was sprinting after his smaller, rougher, and more youthful looking brother, trying to stop the tyke crossing a dual carriageway.

In the centre of Harrogate I witnessed the delightful scene of a woman running to catch a bus. She missed it by seconds, and so threw up her arms and she came to a halt in that ‘ah shit how could that bastard of a driver set off without me?’

But Leeds has its own share of weirdoes. As I was walking through Hyde Park this morning, I passed the allotments. Stood there in the rain was a man, probably about 50 years old, who obviously loved the Yorkshire’s rainy season. He was in jogging bottoms and a t-shirt: it was freezing! Evidently he was waiting for his plants to grow. Poor codger.

The waiting game

Yep, it happened again! I’ve just experienced one of those days where public transport is not in your favour. Yesterday, on two mystery shop visits, I literally strolled from one train onto the other; such was my luck in the lottery that are timetables.

However, my luck decided to sway the opposite way. I did one visit in South Milford today (which equates to east Leeds) that took three hours of standing around and waiting to accomplish.

The problem is that it’s Sunday. Sunday seems to be the perfect day to do maintenance work on rail lines, which in effect meant that, for me, a journey that should have taken no less than one hour took four. I arrived in Leeds station at 12 noon, only to find out, thanks to maintenance on the lines, that my next train was at 1 pm. I arrived back at the station in South Milford at 1:30 pm, only to find out that the next train back to Leeds was at 3:00 pm.

I had a lot of time to kill, and instead of ruining my eardrums with my ipod or straining my eyes with my book, I instead went for a little jog. Now, this is highly out of character for me – I hate jogging as it is laborious, tiresome and my hair flops down in front of my face which makes me look (and feel) like Mark off Peep Show.

So, with two hours to kill I went for a canter around South Milford, lost in my own thoughts. It was an interesting mind path I went down, which saw me reflecting on some of the things I forgot to write about in yesterdays blog.

For instance, there was a man I passed in Leeds yesterday who looked like he was in training for Mr. Olympia, or whatever they call that bodybuilding championship. He was – as they say – ‘stacked’, and bulged out of his shirt. However, he had seemingly overdone it, as, moving my eyes up from the grotesquely titanic forearms to his face, I noticed that his eyebrow muscles, yes his eyebrow muscles, were bursting out of the skull. Obviously he had surpassed a vigorous training regime of eyebrow thrusts to pump those forehead features. Unfortunately, no matter how ‘ripped’ his head may have looked, it still looked like an arse. I was staring at an original butthead, and couldn’t draw my eyes away until he walked past.

I also saw possibly one of the gawkiest things ever yesterday, on the train towards Bradford. The train was fairly full and so I walked down the aisle of my carriage looking for a seat. I didn’t find one and so stood behind a guy sat down who looked like a nerdy computer geek, with milk bottle bottoms for spectacle lenses, 40-something bald patch, and an iphone. Pretty normal on a public train, but as I peered over his shoulder to see what he was doing on his iphone – he was being very vociferous about something – I saw he was on facebook, ogling at photos of himself.

I was fairly impressed that this guy had facebook, although he looked like one of the people that probably helped program it in the first place. Base social interaction was on his cards. However, all piddling dribbles of respect for this pot-bellied geek went out the window when his phone rang. There’s no greater shock than suddenly hearing “Wow! I feel good! I knew that I wou–” coming from the phone of a geek. The guy was fumbling to answer his phone in a ‘shit I’m so embarrassed by my ring tone it actually makes it more embarrassing’ kind of a way. For surely there’s nothing more embarrassing than someone knowing you’re embarrassed about something.

Anyway, back to today. I had decided to go jogging. I set off on a road out of South Milford (so that less people would see me trying to balance a heavy, slack rucksack on my back whilst on the run) and found myself on a nice quiet road. Unfortunately, due to a complete lack of fitness, I was knackered after about 500 yards and so had to sit down on a park bench, where I pulled a chocolate bar out of my bag, got out my book, and indulged in some serious renaissance literature study, waiting for the train home.

Bass

If you think, due to the title of this post, that I’ve been fishing rather than shopping then you’re very much mistaken.

Over the last two days I’ve done five mystery shops. They’ve included walking through possibly the largest council estate in the entirety of Yorkshire (if you don’t include Hull itself) and nearly got run over in the centre of Leeds.

However, I’ll be frank, these two days have been fairly dull. My ipod was still unwilling to negotiate terms by which I could start listening to it again, and so I threw my earphones away. However, upon arrival of a store in Crossgates, (somewhere east of Leeds) I found some for sale.

‘Fantastic’, I thought as I sifted through reams of earphones, differentiated on packaging but barely on product. For this is the odd thing about earphones, or paper, chewing gum or envelopes; it is that the product is basically the same across the board. Simply, the package should just say: “sounds great in your face”, because that’s what earphones are supposed to do. It’s the marketing and packaging on the front of the product that makes you gullibly go “oh I need ultra bass quality balance”. (I haven’t got a clue what I just said there)

So, looking at the earphones section of the store, I was confronted with basic, in-ear, hooked, clip-on, bass balanced, airflow-equal, crystal clear, and dynamic. All different packages selling basically the same product. What astounded me is that the price ranged from basic: £2.47, to ultra bass quality balance: £45.

How can earphones cost £45? And who would buy them? OK so I wouldn’t buy the flimsy £2.47 ones that look more like a cheese wire than an audio aid, but come on, there’s no way you can walk down the street with your £45 earphones and justifiably think ‘yeah, I can see where this extra £40 goes.’ Bass simply isn’t that important.

Anyway I went all-out and bought some £5.60 ones. They stood out from the rest of the field as they had ‘double air flow’. As the package says: ‘Extra bass – acoustic air-flow channelled to twin vents for balanced sound.’

Now, I have never, in all my laborious years of listening to my ipod, at any time thought: ‘oooh, this is a bit unbalanced.’ I have also never needed the help of ‘air-flow controlled vents’ for me to continue listening to those great George Formby tracks.

The reason I bought it was because of the price, and because it had ‘Philips’ on the front. Cheap, good quality, and of course, extra bass.

Down South – Day 2

Public transport is a wonderful thing. Today I travelled 230 miles in six moving hours. Unfortunately, a further three hours were added on thanks, of course, to public transport.

Getting up nice and early I left my B&B and strolled on down to the bus stop to get to my train. Next bus: 55 minutes. Now, 55 minutes could be an open window for a vast landscape of opportunity. However, on a cold Sunday morning in a small hamlet with no shops open and a heavy bag lashed to my back, I was pretty much redundant, resolved to sit and try to listen to a waning ipod next to an A-road.

I did manage to walk past a pub, on my single ramble of exploration, which had a sign outside: ‘Beer of the week: Bulmers, £2.90’. This lifted my spirits a meagre ounce or so. How can a ‘Beer of the week’ be a cider? And how can they charge such a price for one of the least ‘special’ drinks in the UK? Imports from Ireland must be rare in Hampshire.

I eventually got to Alton for my train, and delightedly only had to wait half an hour! The train was fairly nippy and I got into Guildford easy enough. This isn’t what I’ll remember it for however. There was a Korean man sat opposite me for most of the journey. As I bent down to sort my bag out at my feet, the man let slip a resounding fart. I don’t think he realised anyone had heard as he had his earphones in, but it was load and obtrusive. He looked very pleased with what he thought was an act of sheer stealth.

So far, I had only had to wait for an hour and a half. I was actually quite pleased with my own efficiency! All good spirit came to an end when I entered Waterloo from another train, and merged into the underground. The thing is with the underground is that it’s actually quite simple. Find your line, find your platform, get your train. My problem was that I couldn’t find a map to find my lie to find etc… The place was rammed! Hoards of burly football shirts clumping around blocking routes, passages and MAPS!

It seemed as though every London-based football team was playing today. West Ham shirts, Arsenal shirts, Chelsea shirts. Surprisingly no Fulham shirts (I can imagine they were all above ground in their limousines).

Every train was full to the point where people’s faces were almost pressed against the windows. I was beginning to suffer the effects of a Beijing-like atmosphere, and was delighted when I finally got on the third train up the Leicester Square, and then the fourth train to Kings Cross (X).

I practically embraced the clean air of the above ground with all the love and warmth possible, which then diluted away by annoyance as I looked at the departures board; Leeds: Departs at 14:10. The time was 13:20.

Great stuff. 50 minutes standing in the ‘QB’ queue in the station and I got on my train, read a book and a wee bit of poetry, and hopped into Leeds with a happy feeling of home.

Nine hours is a long journey. As I’ve often thought: never again.

Down South – Day 1

Last Easter I had a lovely 5-day trip to Scotland and the Shetlands doing mystery shops. I stayed overnight at a B&B, ate readily prepared supermarket meals, and became best friends with my ipod.

Today, a semi déjà vu kicked in, as I set off on my way to Hampshire (which is one of those places below London which isn’t Dover or France). I packed my big bag full of poetry, a pork pie, a laptop and a brand spanking new volume of Macbeth, and set off down to Leeds station to catch a speed demon down to London Kings Cross (spelt Kings X on the train timetable, which I took five minutes to realise).

I was heading to a town called Alton. When doing some B&B booking yesterday I googled (definitely a verb) ‘Alton B&Bs’, and clicked on the first link. At the top of this page, even before the list of possible Alton hotels, there was a flashing sign saying ‘THIS IS NOT ALTON TOWERS!’ This made me chuckle.

Anyway, to get to Alton you have to get a train from Waterloo Station. To get to Waterloo Station you have to wander around the labyrinth of the Underground looking for possible lines that aren’t under maintenance work. I thought I did quite well: only got lot twice!

Eventually I ended up at Alton train station, where a steam train was sat puffing away on the opposite platform. Crossing over to have a sneak peek at this noisy machine, I accidentally slipped back through time about 90 years. There I stood, staring at a green steam train, in a perfectly painted, maintained and flower-bedded platform. A hidden platform behind the usual dross concrete sties, this place was a picturesque idyll; the perfect scene for a woman with a handkerchief dabbing her eyes awaiting her hero from the train, with smoke billowing so that he walks out of seemingly nowhere in a terribly romantic scene from the 1940s that makes you wonder if the aisles of theatre halls of that era were fitted with vomit drainage systems.

I left the station, (handkerchief still in pocket) and set off for another town called Alresford. Here I made possibly one of the biggest cock-ups of my illustrious mystery shopping career. Having bought my selected items from my store, I left without picking up my receipt. I realised this 15 minutes after leaving the store, and so returned. I had the struggle of asking for my receipt, making up the excuse that I needed to keep track of my finances without letting loose that I was in fact a mystery shopper, and managed to convince one of the staff members to rummage through a bin of receipts until he found mine.

With that relief I left Alresford and headed to my final stop, a hamlet called Four Marks. Before this though, I was made to sit in a bus shelter next to two neanderthal girls who would have thought salad dressing was funny. They were sat, watching cars go past, saying if they would like the car or not. Not exactly annoying maybe, but when you take into account they were saying it in the ‘I want that one’ and ‘I don’t like it’ voice of Andy the wheelchair man off Little Britain, and giggling each time, it seriously got to me.

The giggling continued until I got on the bus, where my ipod decided that it didn’t want to be my friend anymore. For no reason whatsoever, my earplugs died. I changed plug (I can only use one ear obviously) and it worked, barely. So, sitting in silence on the bus, I turned to see the giggling mongoloids fixed on the road, looking for other cars.

Gladly I got off the bus, and now find myself sat in my room of a B&B looking at the pub menu. I think I need a pint…