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What a magical night. It’s 00h54. I’ve had a hellish journey home, but it’s been magical all the same. And for the last 40 minutes I have had a town full of crunchy snow to myself.

The day started pretty well, actually. Despite the half inch of snow the trains were running on time and zizzed into London at untold speeds. That didn’t stop them being half empty as everyone who could used the chilly dusting as an excuse for being ’stranded at home’, and a woman in the seat in front of me called ahead to warn someone that she would be late for her half-nine interview because the trains were ‘in such a mess’.

Tonight, though, was a different story.

I worked late and left the office at 20h00.

08h10, I got to Tottenham Court Road. Now I could detail all of my movements over the next four and a half hours, but that would be terminally dull, so suffice it to say that it involved heading west to Oxford Circus, north east to Kings Cross, standing in the cold for 25 minutes for a bus because five tube lines were closed, giving up and heading south west again on the tube and finding horendous delays on the Central line, walking for a bit, waiting for some more buses that didn’t come and eventually getting to Liverpool Street at 21h20.

I grabbed a pastie (the most sensible move of the whole night) and ran onto the 21h32, relieved that at least I’d be home in time to retrieve the car from the station.

Oh, I am so naive.

Five metres short of the end of the platform, we came to a halt. The doors opened, the driver made a grim announcement about some ‘incident’ where a guy went under a train and that until further notice the line was closed.

Apart from reversing back to the concourse, nothing happened for the next hour and a half when finally the doors beeped and closed and we started limping out of the station.

But…

Five metres short of the end of the platform, we came to a halt as someone lent on the emergency alarm and all the brakes slammed on.

We eventually arrived in Chelmsford at 23h50, and I felt strangely detached from the whole thing. You can’t really get cross when someone had just been killed by a train. There are so many other people involved in an incident like that who come off far worse - the driver, the family, the police who have to scrape up the bits - so it seems a bit selfish to moan about it if you’re delayed.

Besides, other people had had it worse than me. It wasn’t until we were rolling into Stratford station that they announced we wouldn’t be stopping there after all, despite the fact it had been advertised on the board. Something to do with an ‘emergency’.

Of course, after all that the train had been packed so the queue for taxis was about an hour long. So pulling on my gloves, I set out to walk, and that’s when I realised I had the whole town to myself.

Rather than take my normal route, I headed into the centre of town, through the pedestrian area, where the streets were caked in hard spikes of ice. It had clearly melted and then refrozen, and where it snapped until my feet it sounded like I was walking on those plastic bubbles you use to wrap precious items in the post.

Everything was so still and so calm and it wasn’t nearly as cold as I thought it might be. Every step was so slippery it felt like I was taking my life in my hands, but I felt very privileged to seemingly have the whole town to myself.

I took a big loop out to the flood plane and then back in over the lazy shallow bridge that crosses right over it, pausing at the central point, just above the river, and looked up at the sky. Above me was perfectly clear, but off to the east it was a dusty pink that seemed to get darker and lighter, almost as though it was on fire, or it was a dim light bulb and the electric was about to go out. This patch of light must have been several miles wide, as it was so far off.

Feeling the cold now, as the wind whipped across the flat ground, I pushed on, stepping into a deep cold puddle before crossing untouched snow on a wide patch of grass. My footprints were the first to disturb it.

It all helped me to forget about the nasty journey, and even seemed to make the trials of the travel seem worth it. In all honesty, although it was unpleasant at the time I’m quite glad I got so delayed now. If I hadn’t, the snow would have been nothing but an irritation, but at least now I feel I’ve got something nice out of it, even if I don’t have time to build a snowman before it all melts.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2004 at 12:55 am and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.