Hurray, summer is upon us! Everywhere we look the daffodils are in flower, the birds are tweeting, and the tramps are in their t-shirts. Unfortunately, summer also means exam time for me. So, what a lovely excuse to get away from the pressures of exams and essays by going on a mystery shop, to Colne.
Colne, for those who don’t know, is in the middle of fucking nowhere! Trying to describe it to my mates went like this; “it’s near Burnley? Above Accrington? Other side of Manchester? West of here?” and so on until I got the map out.
I didn’t realise how far it was and so booked the visit willy-nilly (I’ve been craving to put that word in a blog). I then had a right good gander on the Internet and found it was a two and a half hour journey, just to get there. Unfortunately, what I didn’t realise was that there was only one and a quarter hours of actual train travelling. The rest of the time was mooching around station platforms awaiting my transport.
Well seeing as I booked it I had no choice but to go anyway. And so, at 11am on a pleasantly warm Friday morning, I was stuck in Accrington station with nothing to do, apart from watch a guy run almost in slow motion to catch a train that had already set off, as I awaited one myself to Colne.
I’ve begun to enjoy watching people run for trains. I’ve done it twice now myself, so I can justify laughing at others. I think it’s the sense of decreasing hope after every long, languid step, as the inevitable doors shut fast and the train pulls away from the platform, which amuses me most. Or maybe it’s the slow relaxing of the arms, as the weight of the briefcase takes full affect again, during which the realisation that the chase is over slows the runner in their tracks. Actually, it’s the grudging plod back to the timetable boards with a blend of annoyance and anger as they look up to find out the next train isn’t for 50 minutes, which tickles me most.
Anyways so after 45 minutes I get on the train, and finally get to Colne. I must say Colne is an odd place. The shops and buildings are modern, globalised and cool. The streets are properly tarmaced. The town hall is neatly polished.
However, under all this is still a feel that this place has been socially left to its own devices. As my dad put it, ‘It is a place that has missed out on the regeneration which has centred around Manchester’.
And, to be fair, it kind of has. Although buildings and supermarkets look fresh and exciting, the people seem trapped in a different age. Imagine if you will, a population of people from the 1960s all now living in a modern-day town. This is what Colne is like. Everyone knows each other. People hold conversations from across the street. Window cleaning is an important disk in the spine of the local economy. It is as though society has been cut off from the outside world. It’s charming, to an extent.
Unfortunately, there are the problems that occur in every other town in the country. The main one is semi-antisocial behaviour. Think of those guys who drive around with their windows down and their music splurging out of their stereos. They own the road. They take no shit. They can go at whatever speed they like, wherever they like. Now, imagine this, but everyone is doing it.
For this is my lasting impression of Colne. A long, jammed street full of cars with the windows down and music turned up to ten. What amazed me was that people over 30, with actual wrinkle lines and grey hair, were doing this too.
I thought it was a childish, immature effort to gain attention from the opposite sex, one that you grow out of that first time you plough your car into a lamppost. I didn’t realise this kind of thing stuck around with you throughout adulthood.
Anyway, I eventually find myself back on an Accrington platform, waiting 58 minutes for my train back to Leeds. I had enough time to walk round the whole of Accrington if I had wanted, but stuck to the station.
That’s if you could call it a station. Accrington station is two platforms, either side of a double rail track. There is a ticket booth that is shut, and a total of three seats. That is all. People are always sitting on these seats. The floor looks like someone had competed in a ‘spray vomit around as much as possible’ competition, and won. I didn’t sit down.
Instead I stood on the bridge overlooking the rail lines. Above is a picture of the station, and that is basically Accrington. One way in, one way out. Eventually, I happily took the later of these options.
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