Fight, fight, fight, fight !
Sorry, wrong decade 
Bloody alzh…, waddya call it ?
Eh? I’ve no idea, I know that I am though.
I do remember being in first class from Warrington to London, and my boss and I were the only ones there. We got utterly utterly sloshed on free gin, the staff simply amused themselves watching how much we could down. Only time I’ve ever had value from first class.
The mind boggles.
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Client meeting, obvs
Did you get the best view of the soap plant?
I’ve spent a tragically large fraction of my life waiting for trains at Bank Quay. My boss and his boss (at the time, not now of course) once passed 20 minutes there trying to decide whether they’d ever waited anywhere worse. Anywhere in the whole world, that is. By the time the train came they’d concluded that the answer was no.
I used to smile at the at-seat staff (1st class of course) and ask if they’d mind jumping me up the service queue as I was going to be changing train either at Crewe or Stafford and would need to have wolfed the free dinner down by then. It always worked. If you’re nice they treat you nicely in 1st class. I got off the swish Pendolino and onto one of the wretched Voyagers. Nine times out of ten all they had were the ‘snack boxes’ 
.
VB
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Would you have been visiting Daresbury then? You’re lucky central booking didn’t have you alighting and getting on board at Runcorn, now that is a proper soul destroying station.
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They never went to the old Warrington bus station (as opened by HRH Betty Battenburg back in the day) then.
Oh, and Coventry station.
Runcorn: A brilliant target for ICBMs. It is shite for all else.
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Yup, Daresbury, several times a month for a few years. And Runcorn is probably the only station I’ve spent more time at than Bank Quay. Bank Quay was worse though. I used to book my own tickets, with a view to whittling the price down. The prices kept changing and the trick was to know where to make ticket breaks (sometimes without getting off the train). The toughest time was when the cheapest route involved changing at Oxford, Coventry and Nuneaton. So I’ve suffered Coventry too. The things I did to save the taxpayer ninepence … buggered if I was going standard class though.
I was told there were some quite reasonably priced tattoo parlours in Runcorn, if you knew where to look.
VB
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Weirdly it sort of is; or at least the Stanlow Oil Refinery is a genuine target if missiles do start flying
Oi !, choose another target, Stanlow - bit too close to home.
Indeed, its the title of one of my favourite early OMD album tracks. Also remember passing it as a child on a Ship Canal Cruise from Salford to Pier Head Liverpool.
We had a big invasion of gypsies near here on lovely park ,they moved on fast after one of their children was killed by a caravan . It’s a massive problem for authorities and they Don,t do themselves any favours
Interestingly, we had some french travellers pitch up on the park down the road from us a couple of years ago.
They stayed for about a week then disappeared, leaving no trace that they had ever been there.
A different class of traveller obviously…
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You’ll find the french authorities are less lenient to the kind of behaviour we accept in the UK…
The filth are even scared to approach them in rural areas as they are usually outnumbered very quickly.
English travellers do themselves no favours.
Though i can appreciate the way they feel if everywhere they go people are hostile towards yhem.
The French police take no shit from anyone, and seem to operate with overwhelming force regardless of circumstance. Saw an old lady selling prunes from her car at the side of the road near our house. Three Douane (customs police) pulled up on motorbikes to get her to move on. Three, for a single retired age woman.
We have had travellers like this, and no one minds. They are the true travellers, and the other scum, just give them a bad name.
I have tried to be open minded about travellers, but experience tells me that the majority of those who have pitched up locally do not give a toss about locals or the environment. Time and again they literally shit all over the place and leave the local authorities to clean up. As time goes by, the owners of affected spaces have taken measures to prevent access by vans and caravans. The travellers don’t seem interested in the purpose-built facilities provided by Bristol City Council. Maybe because there is nothing worth nicking there.
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