Four Bars of Cadbury Dairy Milk

Last October, I performed my one-man show at the Victoria Theatre in my home town of Halifax. What a proud moment that was! Taking the opportunity to boast about my famous friend, Dr Rhona Morrison, I secured her a gig for her talk, From Machetes to Cruise Ships for this May on the same stage.

Friday, 22 May, was the day of her show. Of course, I couldn’t let the opportunity go by to support Rhona and have a weekend in Halifax catching up with my children, grandchildren and a couple of friends.

I’m a train-loving girl, but Rhona offered to give me a lift in her car for the journey down. Perfect. I could be the tour guide showing them the places of interest on the way down, including Tebay Services.

“Jill’s driving, but we have room for you.”

With horror, I realised that three in a car would mean I might end up in the back of the car. A conversation later, and it transpired that both Rhona and me are travel sick in the back of a car. Actually, I’m travel sick in cars, planes, boats, ferries and rowing boats on Shibden Park Lake. If the train is a Pendolino thingy travelling up the West Coast, I’ve been known to be sporting vivid green colour to my face by the time I reach Glasgow, much to the amusement of Mr M. So, I decided no, I’d just book a return trip on the train, which is probably cheaper than buying a single ticket anyway.

Now, my son has cajoled me over the last couple of years to move from my beloved paper-based tickets that I could buy with proper money at the train station and receive real paper tickets that they even put in a nice blue folder for me. I could check these each day before my journey, sometimes even more than once a day, just to make sure they didn’t suddenly change time or something. You get the idea. So now I buy my tickets online and get them delivered like magic to my phone. Not content with changing his mum’s habits of paper-based tickets, Ben then decided it was his responsibility to encourage me to start using the Train Line. Much cheaper and much easier, he assured me. For the last year, if I’ve been making train journeys down south, I have indeed used the Train Line and carefully carried my e-tickets on my phone. Along with a charger to charge my phone and a battery bank in case the charger doesn’t work on the train. Because what do you do if your phone is flat?

To be honest, I’ve actually quite enjoyed feeling part of the e-ticket brigade. I’ve even encouraged Mr M to buy his ScotRail tickets online. Now that’s an achievement. Even better, the trainline tickets are often ridiculously much cheaper than buying from National Rail. It must be the only time when you can get something cheaper from a third party rather than buying direct. I mean, if you go to the corner shop to do your shopping, you don’t come away saying, “Oh wow, it’s much cheaper to buy here than Tescos,” do you?

Anyway, I booked my theatre tickets for Rhona’s show, along with my return rail tickets from Scotland to Halifax. On Trainline. On my phone. And saved nearly £50. Mr M was very pleased.

Friday morning, I got up early to check my tickets again. I still do that on my e-tickets, but that’s just how I am. I challenge anyone who denies that they check and re-check tickets, passports, or other important travelling documents. Now with Trainline, you can only activate your tickets on the day of travel. A quick flick through the app on your phone, get to the right place, load up your ticket, click activate, and you’re ready to go with your QR code there to show proudly.

Except on Friday morning, my ticket wouldn’t activate. I had the usual panic. Had I booked tickets for the wrong day? What had I done wrong? But I checked. Definitely Friday 22^nd May, Lenzie to Halifax. I loaded up my computer and checked my emails again. Yes, it was there. I downloaded the tickets again. Then opened on the app. Nothing. The QR code remained light grey. I deleted the app from my phone and re-installed it. Nothing. So I printed off the email booking confirmation and the journey details. What the email didn’t include, because I’d selected to have them on the app, was the actual ticket. But it did show everything else, including the payment page, and lots of adverts, places to stay and things to do in Halifax. Probably about eight pages. A4 paper. All the little paper tickets combined wouldn’t have used that much paper if  I’d bought them at the station. I did ask Copilot if there were any issues with Trainline, and it confirmed that, yes, there were some issues at the moment.

Deciding that I had enough proof to show the nice train staff on my journey that I did actually have a valid ticket, I set off on my way. The train from Lenzie to Waverley went very smoothly, on time, and a conductor who advised me to delete the app, re-install it and re-download my tickets from my email. Listening as I explained that I had already done all this, he said everything would be OK, and I didn’t have to worry as somebody would let me through the barriers in Waverley Station. As it happened, the train arrived at a platform where I didn’t need to show my unactivated ticket, so all was well. I popped into the LNER ticket office at the station and advised them of my problem. Yes, you know what’s coming, delete the app, re-install it and re-download your tickets from your email. Then she rolled her eyes and wrote down the Train Line customer service helpline number to phone.

I phoned the number. Obviously, as you’d expect, I couldn’t get through. I lined up on the platform for my train to York and chatted to another LNER person. Delete the app, re-install it, re-download your tickets from your email and re-upload them to the app. I rolled my eyes this time. He was very nice and told me not to worry. It wasn’t my fault, and the conductor would understand. He’d spoken to a couple of people already who had the same problem.

All seemed good on the London-bound train. I had thought I’d do some writing on the train, but I was not allocated a table seat, so I opted to start a new book, Frank Skinner by Frank Skinner. Mr M assured me that it was quite funny, if a bit risky in places. Those of you who know Mr M will by now be thinking the same thing. If he said it was quite funny, it must be absolutely hilarious. I was destined to be the one giggling to herself all the way to York.

But that didn’t happen. A lovely lady sat beside me and proceeded to get all her snacks and drinks ready for the journey. I was alarmed that she took out an unopened box of Tunnock’s teacakes and then put them straight back inside her bag. I voiced my alarm at this and told her she had built up my hopes and then dashed them. She laughed. But didn’t take the teacakes back out. Despite that horror moment, we chatted away about everything and anything.

Just after Berwick upon Tweed, the conductor announced she would be doing a ticket inspection. I joked with my new friend that this would be fun, but at least I probably wouldn’t get thrown off the train at this stage.

“Why don’t you delete the app, re-install it, re-download your tickets from your email, and open them in the app again?” she asked.

The conductor arrived, and I explained my problem.

“You need to delete the app, re-install it, re-download your tickets from your email, and open them in the app again?” she asked.

“I’ve tried that,” I explained. “But I do have my email and confirmation of payment and the messages I’m getting from Trainline advising me about my train journey today.” I also told her that I’d read about issues with the app on the internet.

“I’ve heard nothing about that. As far as I know, there are no issues, and I would have been told if there were.”

My patience was running thin now.

“Well clearly there are issues, or I’d have been able to activate my ticket.”

She huffed, puffed and definitely rolled her eyes.

“Give me your phone. I’ll sort it.”

I handed over my phone, which she gave back to me after a couple of minutes of more huffing and puffing and eye rolling.

“I’m prepared to let it go this time,” she announced.

“That’s very good of you,” I sighed.

The nice lady next to me smiled knowingly and handed me a Tunnock’s teacake. Some people might say this was orchestrated to get my hands on one of these marshmallowy delights.

Shortly before Darlington, the train slowly drew to a standstill. Power cut. Yes, an actual power cut. I finally arrived into York station, minus one Tunnocks’s Teacake and long after my train to Halifax had departed without me.

Now in York, the heatwave was starting to kick in. Back up in Scotland, where we had put the central heating on only two days earlier, I hadn’t believed the weather forecast of 30 degrees in Halifax. So I had left home wearing a jumper and my coat. Yes, I was the only one in York dressed like that. When the train doors finally opened, it was like stepping off a plane in the airport at Malta in mid-summer.

I did the only thing I could and popped into the cafe and had a lovely cold drink and a cake. Needs must.

Much later than anticipated, I was on a train trundling my way to Halifax. I was indeed giggling to myself reading Frank Skinner. It is more than just quite funny. Oh, and as I passed New Pudsey, what happened? My ticket activated itself.

At 3.45 pm, I finally arrived at Halifax after leaving home at 8.45 am. I’d have been quicker cycling, or even risking sitting in the back of Rhona’s car. Maybe not. Rhona and Jill, meanwhile, had arrived just after dinner (because it’s Yorkshire, we have dinner, not lunch). They had checked into their hotel room and had a wonderful walk along the canal at Salterhebble.

That evening, Rhona was an absolute star at the theatre. I’ve been to loads of Rhona’s talks, but each time there’s something different, a tale I’ve not heard, a photo I’ve not seen, so it’s not like watching a repeat. The theme of Rhona’s books and talks is to de-stigmatise mental health. She has a unique way of doing this, with her own incredible life story, mingled with a great sense of humour. You cannot help but be moved after listening to Rhona and thinking about things in a totally different light.

I was with my friend Sally at the theatre, so it was a lovely chance to catch up and chat about old times.

The most bizarre moment was meeting Sam, my school friend I hadn’t seen since we were 16-year old pupils at Princess Mary’s in Halifax. She had been on a cruise with Rhona a number of years ago, and when she saw my post plugging Rhona’s show, she booked tickets for her and her husband. I like to think it was because Sam was desperate to see me again and introduce me to and Des, but I rather think it was more to do with wanting to watch the infamous Dr Morrison.

Saturday morning, I risked the back seat of Rhona’s car to attend a Professional Speakers Association meeting in Leeds. What a fabulous morning. Interesting talks. Interesting people. But I guess the real highlight of the meeting for me was to be surrounded once more by Yorkshire accents. Oh, and I came away with four bars of Cadbury Dairy Milk.

Sunday was my day with Minnie and Harley, my beautiful grandchildren. Halifax is home to Eureka! The National Children’s Museum. This amazing place opened in 1992 and was hailed as the first children’s museum in the UK designed to inspire curiosity and learning through play. I remember taking my children there, and now I get to take my grandchildren there. It’s just as exciting as it was all those years ago. Of course, the added benefit for me with my arthritis is that there are chairs dotted around the museum for any tired, aching adults to sit and watch the children enjoying themselves.

One of the highlights is to watch Archimedes in his tin bath. Archimedes was the Greek mathematician who reportedly exclaimed, “Eureka!” after stepping into a bath and noticing that the water level rose. You mathematicians will fully understand the importance of this displacement thing, but it goes straight over my head, much like the water in Archimedes’ bath.

I’m not entirely convinced who had the best day: Minnie and Harley, or Grandma. But I can tell you that being in an air-conditioned building on one of the hottest days of the year was a definite bonus.

My weekend ended with a BBQ with Ben, laughing that we were adding more heat to an already hot evening. I do love a BBQ, but Mr M is not a fan, so it was lovely to be able to enjoy it without the constant moans of look at that smoke, is that cooked properly, and it tastes of burning.

Then it was an early start for the 7.30 am train from Halifax to Preston. Yes, you guessed it. I tried to activate my ticket, and it wouldn’t work. The train to Preston was late before it even arrived at Halifax station, so I had longer to admire the Nestlé Chocolate Factory across the lines. Before we reached Hebden Bridge, the train stopped. The conductor apologised and said he wasn’t bothered about my ticket not activating, as Northern Rail had problems of their own. The train started. It stopped. It started again. And that’s how the journey went, right to Preston. I had nine minutes between changes to catch the Glasgow train. I arrived in Preston 40 minutes late. A little discussion with the Avanti customer service person. I won’t bore you with the suggestions she gave me to get the app working. Now, the thing with Avanti is that you can upgrade to something called Standard Premium. This means you can sit in a first-class carriage with all that extra space and comfier seats, but you don’t get the complimentary drinks and food. I had my flask of tea and cheese butty, so I was OK. As it was Bank holiday Monday and the platform was heaving with passengers waiting to get on the train that I didn’t have a seat reservation for, I figured that, as I was probably due a refund for the delays, I could use that to upgrade, so I did. My standard premium carriage was nearly empty and, to add to my excitement, the ticket machine was not working, so the conductor allowed me to upgrade free of charge. Mr M would be most impressed.

Arriving at Glasgow Central Station much later than I had anticipated, my ticket on my phone activated itself.

I’ve had a fabulous weekend, but feel a bit socialised out. As always, I crammed way too much into my brief trip, but that’s what you do when you don’t get to visit as often as you’d like.

Next time, I think I’ll drive or buy my paper tickets at the station.

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