Poaching

Last week, while travelling at speeds of almost 200km/h, I ate freshly prepared Eggs Benedict and drank a quite reasonable Merlot. Some unexpected news had reached me during a five hour train journey (via the complimentary wireless internet provided on said train), so I decided to celebrate with a modest lunch in the restaurant car. The restaurant on National Express East Coast services is in fact half of a first class carriage beyond the standard class buffet counter, so for penny pinching apex travellers like myself, a meal on the train is actually a pretty cheap upgrade to first class for as long as you are eating. The Eggs Benedict didn’t last that long, although the Merlot and a coffee meant I spent the time it takes to get from York to Peteborough in a much more comfortable seat than that which I had occupied from Glasgow at the other end of the train.

I don’t think I’d eaten Eggs Benedict until a few years ago when I tried the dish during a torrential summer downpour in a Montréal bistro. Something I miss a great deal from living in Canada (and travelling in America) is the ease and affordability of eating out for breakfast. The consumate skill required in preparing Eggs Benedict makes it a justifiable purchase in a breakfast joint, especially since I rarely have the motor skills first thing in the morning to poach eggs.

These eggs were amazing, served beneath a creamy hollandaise sauce on lightly toasted muffins, with a few slices of cured ham and salad. Light yet filling, supremely healthy, and surprisingly well matched to a glass of red wine. Before I left the train at Peterborough I asked the chef, who was lingering at the end of his immensely impressive narrow kitchen in the next carriage, how he managed to make such perfect poached eggs on a train. He said it was simple.

“I’m just good, that’s all.”

Not the kitchen tip I was hoping for, but he did disclose that poaching eggs can’t be done without a drop of vinegar in the boiling water to help the eggs thicken and coagulate. Having never poached my own eggs before, I was reminded of this tip during an early morning B&Q trip today. I was accompanying a new homeowner who wanted to buy a new contraption that makes painting easy for those who forget to wash their paintbrushes. After finding the device and purchasing it at half price we stopped at a supermarket on the way home, planning breakfast. Eggs, salmon, hollondaise sauce and bagels were procured, along with a copy of the Saturday Guardian. With some fresh spinach leaves at home, I launched into my first ever attempt to poach some eggs. I must confess that I’m slightly surprised at just how easy it was - the vinegar in the water does indeed help, and by using a spoon to stir a whirlool in the pan of boiling water the egg forms a vaguely contiguous shape that is simultaneously aesthetically pleasing to mount on a toasted bagel. I plan to poach some more in the coming weeks. What with my kitchen being slightly more spacious than that on board a high speed train, and noticeably more stable, I suspect all that is needed is practice.

Sunbathing at Ely station

The inverse law of blogging content is in effect again. The more that happens, the less that I write. I’m just a few weeks away from finishing my taught postgraduate degree, so although my eyes, ears and mind are processing more than usual, I’m just not able to spend the time ruminating on it here.

A few weeks ago I headed home to Norfolk for one last weekend before the final push. A certain octogenarian was celebrating a birthday, so much eating, drinking and celebrating took priority over technical reports and design submissions.

This will probably have been my last trip home from Sheffield to Norfolk. On and off for the last seven years, I’ve traveled between the city and the countryside: two beautiful parts of England that I have grown to call home in different senses. The tranquil countryside of East Anglia, a low-lying rural landscape of fields and forests, and the confused modern city of Sheffield, an industrial powerhouse turned into an uneasy regenerated metropolis.

I traveled between my two ‘homes’ in a number of ways. I’ve driven a selection of cars (my crumbly Saab, two Nissans, a handful of Fords and the odd Vauxhall panel van) and I’ve even taken the god-awful National Express (six and a half hours, including fourty-five minutes in Peterborough and an hour in Leicester). By car the journey takes about two and a half hours, dropping south a few miles on the M1, before crossing east to the A1M and then south again, before another turn east and across the fens. By bus it’s decidedly less direct, and infinitely less comfortable. But my most frequent steed on this cross-country journey has been the ambling shed known as the Liverpool - Norwich train.

If you forgive me for blogging just one last time about this hideous service, I promise not to complain ever again. For seven years I have endured this shameful service. As a child traveling by train through Ely station (approximately halfway between by childhood homes of Cambridge and west Norfolk) I might have glimpsed a shabby but generous rake of first and second class carriages being hauled by a full size locomotive. Intercity passenger service between East Anglia and Scotland and the north-west of England was provided by old but reliable full service passenger trains. Then in the eighties came the Sprinter - the apparent “saviour” of cross-country passenger transport. The Sprinter was a family of self-propelled diesel rail cars, normally operating as single or two carriage trains. No need for a big old locomotive up front; just sling a couple of smaller engines under the coaches and off you go. No first class. No real luggage space to speak of. No buffet. Nowhere to park a bicycle.

I started traveling between Sheffield and Brandon in 2001. The train I took was the Liverpool - Norwich service, an hourly connection between the west and the east, calling at Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham and several other major towns along the way. It’s a five hour slog from one side of Britain to the other, three hours for my trip. It could easily feel like double, since the minuscule trains were always dirty and always overcrowded. Intercity passengers carry luggage with them, and with precious little space it’s usually in the aisles or blocking the doors. Impoverish commuters who use shorter segments of the route for their daily travels usually ended up standing.

The first post-privatisation franchisee Central Trains were canned in 2007. I did not shed a tear for them, fans as they were of truncating my routes with unannounced cancellations and even unannounced diversions. On one occasion my Sheffield - Norwich train magically transformed into a Sheffield - Birmingham train at Nottingham station. No announcement was given. I was well on my way in the opposite direction to Leicester before the guard told me.

The problems with Central Trains were considered to be so fundamental that the franchise was dissolved into other neighbouring operators. The Liverpool-Norwich service went - bizarrely - to a new company called East Midlands Trains (EMT). The bad fit of this route with this franchise is only emphasised by the fact that the train is only in the East Midlands for about an hour of its five hour journey. And while I don’t miss Central Trains, the franchise split has not benefited my journey. EMT are chronically short of suitable trains to operate this franchise, and have to borrow a few from a sister company to operate this service. Hence some confusion went a train bearing the name South West Trains pulls into Sheffield station.

But it is a three hour journey that has become so familiar, it is now almost subconsciously lodged in my memory. The first hour from Sheffield to Nottingham is through the last rolling hills and dry stone walls of Derbyshire and into the industrial cities of Nottinghamshire. The second hour from Nottingham to Peterborough takes us across the wide open fields of Licolnshire and down the relatively fast east coast mainline. The last hour from Peterborough to Thetford is the most dramatic; upon leaving Peterborough the chatter of passengers in the train begins to recede. Within minutes of leaving one great cathedral city we are following a near-dead straight track for the next - a rapid run across the magnificent Cambridgeshire fens, where the sky suddenly opens up into an arc above us, consistently the deepest blue (whatever the weather) above the blackest soil I’ve seen.

At Ely the astonishing cathedral emerges on the horizon, and the train pulls into the third platform of a regional interchange station. One north-south line connects London and Cambridge (south) with King’s Lynn (north); our east-west line connects Peterborough (west) with Norwich (east); and a solitary branch heads south-east towards Bury St. Edmund’s and Ipswich. The trains shudders to a halt, the driver and guard switch ends, and we chunter off back the way we came in to leave Ely by another line. Scrubland and wetlands appear, and then the deep woods of Thetford Forest envelop the train.

Hour by hour, this three hour journey in a tired and unreliable railcar has become - for better or for worse - my cushion between city and countryside. Three segments of an hour each; three hours to unwind, read, think and watch my country roll by.

I left Norfolk on Monday morning to return to Sheffield, and boarded the Liverpool train bound for Sheffield for what could be the last time. I was already in a thoughtful frame of mind as we approached the turn-around in Ely. The significance of one final train ride to Sheffield was not lost on me.

But at Ely something went wrong. Or to use the words of the train manager, “something exploded” under one of the two railcars. A major component in one of the rattly diesel engines had gone pop, and left a bedraggled heap of debris on the track. With only one working engine, the train didn’t have enough power to drag itself onwards. With such a fragmented privatised railway, there were no back-up trains near-by to help us. We were instructed to step off the train and relax for a while - the next train to Liverpool was due in an hour, and it would have to couple up and drag us the rest of the way.

The orange-suited driver paced the trackbed and reached under the train to remove more debris. Passengers for Peterborough and Scotland were directed to another train. Those of us going to Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool remained on the station, sunning ourselves on one of the first noticeably warm days of spring. Under a bright blue sky I remembered all the times I’ve been delayed at this fenland railway station. At least it was warmer than the last time I had a connection here.

Snapshots: roadworks

For four days and for four nights I have been able to bask in a brief Easter vacation, away from Sheffield in the meteorologically diverse county of Norfolk. The earliest Easter that we’ve had for many years has also been the coldest in a long time, with sub-zero temperatures at night and indecisive bursts of hail, sleet, snow and rain throughout the long weekend.

On Monday morning I was woken by a deep rumble that shook the house. Half expecting it to be another earthquake that I would foolishly dismiss as “just the wind” I stumbled out of bed to explore.

It was, however, not an earthquake, but the vibrations caused by a road roller smoothing new layers of asphalt on the road outside the Brown family bungalow. A new school is being constructed in the village, and presumably to meet the planning and safety regulations our street has been widened to include a pavement for pedestrians. Pavements in the village always seem like a novel idea, considering how little traffic there is on these back lanes, but it must be a sign of the times.

We have our fingers crossed that the asphalt will be dry and set by two o’clock this afternoon, when I am due to leave for the railway station. If not, we shall be barricaded in, and I will be forced to spend another night here. Another night of home cooking. Another night in my own bed. How appalling that would be…

The bus stop

Although my credit card administrators may not believe it, I do still occasionally travel by coach. Feeling that my holidays were getting a bit too manic (ahem) in Castle Acre I escaped south and west on New Year’s Eve, heading first to London and then to Oxford to see in the new year.

The National Express bus stop in Swaffham isn’t exactly a bus-spotter’s dream, with just four ‘national’ buses a day. Well, actually only two. One goes to Birmingham and one goes to London, and they both come back in the opposite direction later in the day.

As I stood there waiting for the bus I wondered who it was exactly who came to Swaffham every year to change the bus timetable in this little cabinet. Surely not the (surly) bus drivers? They’re usually reluctant to even load your luggage, so I doubt they would contribute to the upkeep of their… well, bus stops.

Speaking of which, the sticker with the National Express logo is peeling off the sign at the top of the bus stop. In modern day marketing terms, there’s a real danger that it might come off altogether and reveal the old logo that’s still underneath. And that would simply not do. Will the label last until a new one is applied? Luckily for those of you concerned with coherent marketing strategies (count me out) you can see a National Express bus or a National Express East Coast (formerly GNER) train near you for a taste of another profit destroying rebranding exercise that’s coming to the entire company in the next few months. The red and blue dots with the meandering arrow (strangely appropriate for such a slow and meandering means of getting from one place to another) is being replaced with a series of inclined grey lines. It means something, but I don’t know what. Perhaps that all the bus operators who run National Express franchises are going to have to budget for another compulsory re-brand?

As my bus swung in, with a discordant clatter that was possibly reminiscent of the horse drawn stagecoach that might once have connected Swaffham with London, I pulled out my home-printed ticket and hummed a few chords of a suitable tune. Nothing like a coach journey to raise the spirits.

When you’re sad and feeling blue,
With nothing better to do,
Don’t just sit there feeling stressed,
Take a trip on the National Express.

from National Express by The Divine Comedy.

Anti-fraud, or how the mighty are fallen

We got a phone call at home yesterday from the kind people who manage my credit card. These are the same people who foolishly extend my credit line every so often with no real consideration for my salary or ability to pay, hoping that they might be able to tempt me over the edge to the dark side of payment protection plans and 17.9% APR.

The advantage (in this country at least) of using a credit card instead of a debit card is that the law affords you some basic protection against fraud and theft, and also some significant rights if a product your purchase turns out to be faulty, or doesn’t turn up at all. The responsibility of the credit card companies, and not the card holder, to foot the bill of any card payments that were not authorised, means that almost all card companies employ sophisticated computer systems that profile cardholders and their spending patterns.

This came in very handy a few years ago when someone close to me had here handbag cut and stolen from her person as she boarded at the rear of a crowded Routemaster bus in London. Before she had even managed to report the card, the credit card company had spotted some transactions that “were not in keeping with her normal spending profile”. And it was because of just such an anomaly that I got a call yesterday. A card agent confirmed my identity, and with much more friendliness than might be expected of someone obliged to work on Boxing Day, she asked me about some “unusual” transactions that had appeared on my account.

“We noticed that there were two purchases made with your Mastercard this morning.”

“Yes…”

“One is for £12.50 with National Express, and the other is £4.50 with Megabus.”

“Oh. Well they’re both definitely mine.”

“They are? That’s fine then, sorry to have bothered you.”

Re-reading my credit card statements over the last few months, I can understand their concern. Returning to university has slowed my spending, and the only times when I have chosen to flex my rather worn plastic has been on occasions when the credit card has offered significant travel protection: airline tickets, car hire, hotels, etc. After six months of trans-Atlantic and European travel (all on the cheap, using air miles and credit from previously canceled flights) and with albeit minor purchases in Strasbourg, Paris, Frankfurt, Basle, Glasgow, New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Edmonton and London, the folks at Mastercard had some trouble understanding what a man like me would be doing on the National Express. The spending profile that has been built up on me knows nothing of the £10 ATM withdrawals I make to survive in Sheffield, and the less-than-£5 grocery trips I make to Netto, Co-Op and my local veg shop. It’s nice to know that someone is watching over me, but it’s a shame they don’t actually know me that well.