In Part 1 of this post, you left me somewhat
inebriated (me, not you dear reader) on a beach in Ryde, Isle of Wight, in the
summer of 1973. Those with a good memory
may well recall that I was on a pub outing train trip with the Cooper’s Arms in
Anglesey Road, Burton.
After a sunny Sunday afternoon
sleeping off the excesses consumed during the train trip to Portsmouth, Kev and
I made our way back to the ferry and rejoined the rest of our party heading
back to the railway station. I must
admit to having only hazy memories of this bit of the day, but that’s hardly
surprising given our previous consumption and that generally foggy feeling that
persists when you have been ‘sleeping it off’ in the afternoon. Anyway, we must have found our way back to
the station somehow and settled back in our seats for the long journey
home. Naturally, the beer started
flowing as soon as the train set off again.
We can’t have been very far out
of Portsmouth when someone noticed that the toilet nearest to our carriage
wasn’t flushing any more. This was a bit
of a bind, as frequent trips to the toilet were about the only exercise that
any of us were getting on this trip, but it wasn’t the end of the world as it
was a very long train with many carriages and, therefore, many toilets. So we transferred our allegiance to a
convenience a few carriages along, until that too ceased functioning. Slowly, one by one, all of the toilets on the
train stopped flushing. The rumour went
about, and I don’t know how true it was, that some fool had failed to replenish
the water supply on the train whilst it was in Portsmouth and we were now
seeing the result. Whatever the cause,
it was clear that the problem was going to be acute before very long, and we
still had quite a way to travel.
Logic would dictate that, when
travelling on a train without any toilet arrangements, the sensible thing to do
would be to stop drinking alcohol.
However, since when did logic play any part in pub outings? Things carried on just as before, the only
difference was the increasingly unpleasant state of the toilets as the input
increased exponentially and the output ceased altogether. After a while, you had to be either very
brave or extremely desperate to go anywhere near any of them. The train had essentially become a very long,
mobile cess pit. As time went by, people
seemed to be adopting a tense, determined posture as they willed away the miles
and pinned their hopes on Burton station.
We arrived at Burton station in the
early hours of the morning. It was
pretty well deserted, but that situation didn’t last for long. The stampede from the train was something to
be seen as everyone sought refuge from the appalling smell which pervaded every
carriage and homed in on the nearest functioning toilets. I must admit that I have never seen such a
long queue for the Gents before or since.
I suppose it was a mark of our British reserve that there wasn’t a mad
scramble, just an orderly queue that stretched the length of the platform,
composed of many people in varying degrees of discomfort and desperation. Thus ended my last pub outing train trip, not
with a bang but with the whimpers of a queue of hunched and very introspective
blokes.
I don’t know if these train trips
still happen, although I would very much doubt it. I think this type of mammoth outing, partaken
by most of the pubs in the town, was a bit of a throwback to the great railway
excursions of the previous century, when a day out like this was probably the
only holiday many people ever had or could hope to
have. However, pub outings didn’t come
to an end with that queue on Burton station for me – oh no, I took to the buses, as I’ll tell you in the next exciting episode.
You can find a lot more of this sort of nonsense in the latest compilation of 'nostalgedy' stories 'A Kick at the Pantry Door'
No comments:
Post a Comment