Cello off

This afternoon, we were supposed to hear Alisa Weilerstein give us the first three of Bach's cello suites at the Wigmore Hall. She was going to do the other three this evening, but we thought that would have been a step too far for us. Maybe OK if we had taken a room at the nearby Holiday Inn, but at £300 or so that also would have been a step too far.

I remembered to check the trains, it being a Sunday, to find that both lines out of Epsom were out of action, with buses providing links to parts north, in our case Worcester Park.

Left home in good time, to arrive to a right old muddle at station approach, starting with a blockage at the entrance. Not clear if it was all the Network Rail vans or a bus causing the problem.

Push on to the station to find that there was no-one outside managing the bus operation. The contractors for Southern and the contractors for Southwestern Railway seemed to be on their own. Plus the regular buses. Plus the taxis. So the muddle continued. Hopeful passengers milled about.

The chap in the ticket office said that there had been police cars and ambulances earlier, so maybe that had something to do with it.

In any event, we sat and waited while various replacement buses for Sutton and Dorking, more or less unmarked, came and went. Then a red coach turned up, and unable to pull into the kerbside, blocked by the taxis and two other buses, stopped briefly in the middle of the road. I managed to get on to ask where it was going, but BH had got left behind and the rather bad tempered bus driver just carried on without her. Even more bad temper when he let me out at the traffic lights just past the station. Perhaps he was having a bad day too.

We wondered about catching the next bus to Sutton, but did not think that that would get us to Oxford Circus in time. We wondered about trying to catch the next bus to Worcester Park, but ditto. By the time I thought of asking a taxi to take us to Worcester Park, it was both expensive - of the order of £25 - and probably too late to make the connection.

So we abandoned ship and headed back home, rather cross and irritated. At least the pleasant young lady by then in the ticket office refunded our train tickets without fuss.

PS 1: another bit of entertainment had been provided by one of the small herd of young ladies from China trying to get to London for the afternoon, probably with the creationists up the road during the week, who had a new line in trousers. That is to say very short shorts, with the rest of the legs attached to the shorts by the sort of clips once used for suspender belts. An inch or two of thigh exhibited between tops and bottoms. The young lady from up the road who had tried for the same sort of effect by cutting strips out of her regular jeans looked very provincial by comparison.

PS 2: and while I am on, a moan about the timetable service once offered by something called National Rail. Service at reference 2, explanation of who they are at reference 3. A service which was always put in the second position in search results, while some more commercial and much less satisfactory service was always put in the first position. But a service which provided, inter alia, more or less joined-up information about train services out of Epsom, including London Underground and other such in the joining up. It also knew about disruptions and engineering works. Altogether, a good service. Except that since the train strikes kicked in during the summer, it has been out of service more often than not, usually ending with a more or less white bad request screen with some obscure error code. One is reduced to trying to get by with the lesser offerings, including those from the two train operators who run trains through Epsom. No joining up there. Market forces is the name of their game.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/02/wednesdays-girl.html. The first time: I was good for all six on this occasion, more than five years ago now.

Reference 2: https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rail.