Saturday 10th - Sunday 18th April
This title is not named after the retailing season, although it will surely be appearing in shops soon! Instead, it is an unsarcastic, unironic statement about my first week back in Saarbruecken.
As at Christmas, I made the decision to travel on the Saturday before work started again on Monday. Two main reasons for this: SNCF, and sleep! SNCF because it's a Sunday, and their service is sometimes a little sketchy on Sunday, even if they had to decided not to partake in a mouvement social (a strike to you and I), and despite the fact that the majority of my journey is spent on my laurels reading a book, listening to my MP3 player, or simply admiring the view (albeit at 270 km/h), travelling halfway across Europe (well, through France anyway) can take it out of you - so I travel on Saturday so that I can catch up on a little bit of train-lag before going back to work, where it's expected that I'm not still rubbing sleepy dust out of my eyes!
So, the journey started about 7.55 at Chippenham railway station, where it was a very nice day, and I had far too many layers on (simply to save me having to put them in the already bulging suitcase!). Now being a seasoned traveller I'd half expected the train to be late into Chippenham, but it had managed not to be. So, we left on time, and powered our way towards the only London station named after a bear who likes marmalade sandwiches. All was going tickety-boo (well clickety-clack, but you get the idea) until just outside Reading, where we seemed to stop for a while in the middle of nowhere. The Train Manager told us that there was an issue on the line in the Slough area, which was why were being held up before Reading. We eventually crawled into Reading, where the Train Manager was able to find out that the delay had been caused by someone jumping in front of a train in the Slough area, and the line was duly closed to allow a clear-up operation to begin, and then the lines were only gradually re-opened, which meant that the signalmen (and I daresay women) had to sort out the backlog. This they managed, and then we continued on our way to London, arriving a mere 45 minutes late. I would like to take this opportunity to do something which I don't do very often, and that's to have a bit of a rant!
My chosen topic this time is "People who jump in front of trains". Now, before I start I should say that I accept that suicide is not an easy decision to take, and the people who choose to end it all, are desperate and at their wits' end, and this rant is not about suicide itself, simply about the choice of someone to jump in front of a train. For this reason, I would ask people not to jump down my throat for what's about to come!
Jumping in front of a train is one of the most selfish ways of committing suicide that I can think of. On the very basic level, you will cause delays to the rail network, but let's face it the Train Companies can do that on their own without the help of someone standing in front of a train. So, all in all, the delays it causes are not my primary issue, merely an annoyance. That said, I seem to take delays better than others; one day when I was commuting to Bath, the trains had been cancelled, or severely delayed because of someone jumping in front of a train, and a lady comes down the stairs onto the paltform, and says "I hope he's dead!". I don't get that annoyed by it, instead I find an alternative way to uni. But, as I said that's not my main problem with it, my biggest issue is the effect it has on people who are innocent, and who have to deal directly with the person's suicide - people like the Train Driver, who may never be able to sleep at night again, the Police Officers of the British Transport Police who have to attend what they call 'one unders', along with the Network Rail employees who have to clear-up the line so that the trains can run again. All of these people have to deal with sights that are simply awful, and could cause untold psychological trauma. Or, in the case of Stanley Martin, the ultimate price, because someone decided to kill themselves by parking their car on the line and waiting for a train to crash into them.
Now as I said, this rant was about the effect that 'jumpers' have on others who were otherwise going about their normal daily business, and have had to deal with such horrors.
Now I've got that off my chest, I shall continue with the story! I got to St. Pancras, where I had arrived about 3 hours before my train was due to leave, so I went to a cafe and read my book with a mug of coffee in the sunshine whilst waiting for check-in to open. The Eurostar left, pucntually, and had an uninterupted journey to Paris, except for the planned stop in Lille. We arrived in Paris about half five, and as I walked to Paris Est I found somewhere to eat some tea, before meeting Esther at the station. We travelled back on the ICE together, where we also arrived on time, which is a rarity amongst the trains to/from Paris! After a short bus journey home, I was in bed by 11 o'clock!
Sunday was spent unpacking, well, rather putting away the stuff I'd already unpacked (onto the floor) and I had a private lesson in the afternoon. Otherwise, it was a quiet day, involving me pretty much catching up on a weekend of stuff I'd missed on iPlayer!
The first week back at school was full of the usual post-holiday chaos! With the ash cloud posing problems all over Europe, I was impressed that none of the teachers had been silly enough to get themselves stranded in a really hot, sunny country, instead of being shut in a room with 30 excitable children! I also rose to a certain level of fame, or the negative form thereof, because it was during this week that the English Abitur (A-Level) exam took place, on the higher tier of which all of the students in Saarland would have been told what to do by yours truly. That said, I still haven't heard it, and my ask one of my teachers if I could have a copy of it, so I can enjoy my slurring of the letter 'r' in a typically Westcountry manner!
It was this weekend in which Esther and I had originally planned on going to Munich, but time constraints let us down. It was only on the train back from Paris that we were supposed to be going then, and as nothing had been booked or organised, we shelved it, perhaps for another year! Instead, I took advantage of the fantastic weather which we've been experiencing in Saarbruecken, and spent most of the weekend by the Saar in the sun! Over the weekend there were also a couple of evening get-togethers too, in which I took part.
So, what's coming up next week? Not a lot regarding school, it's been a pretty quiet week really. There is a weekend trip to Freiburg im Breisgau (on the edge of the black forest, near the Swiss & French borders) for me and Harriet to look forward to.
No comments:
Post a Comment