So, Saturday was the day of the Spec-chum gathering in Oxford. Both myself and mysterious background ‘fixer’ for YS3, Mr Jonathan Hyde, were in attendance. But first – we had to get there!
Leaving Bristol is, truly, a wonderful thing. There’s nothing quite like getting on a train that’s going far away from all the building sites and lacklustre fountains to really brighten up even the rainiest of days. (Unless you’re headed for Birmingham, but that’s a story for another time.) My secretary had booked me a mid-morning train, and I was initially quite pleased to be aboard – until I realised who I was sharing the train with. It was clearly a hen party in warm-up mode. They were clearly planning to make a day of it, so I did my best to ignore them by putting in my headphones and cracking on with some important research.
After recovering my elbows from my ribs and squeezing my way past the weighty gentleman who decided that the seat next to me and half of my seat would be just perfect for him, I arrived at Didcot Parkway, a train station so dull that most of the trains don’t even stop there. In fact, they speed up. (When the platform announcement says to stand well clear of the platform edge they’re really not kidding. Your best bet is to leave the station, because the platform’s not particularly wide.)
Hell Train Station, transfer from here to oblivion.
Eventually, I arrived in Oxford to meet with our resident international man of mystery himself. But that was at noon. With two hours to kill and the town as our playground, there was naturally only one thing to do. We tried to catch a bus…
Lawkes.
So it seems that not only is “your” Jon Hyde not the Jon Hyde I used to work with in Chippenham (just along the traintracks from Templemeades really), he was actually born in Brisbane, Queensland… which is right where I am now. This Hyde character is following me around in reverse, and I don’t like it one iota. I demand a toffee cream slice, the completion of this article and a multiface plus three this instant.
I asked Jon about this clearly heinous plot of his. Unfortunately, his only response was ‘the fat man walks alone’. He then tried to hide behind a lamp-post and refused to talk to me. I think you should be proud to have acquired a stalker this , er… ingenious.
Still, the article’s coming along!
“I arrived at Didcot Parkway, a train station so dull that most of the trains don’t even stop there. In fact, they speed up.”
Yeah, if there was a danger of stopping at Didcot Parkway, I’d do the same thing.