3705 days ago
When I was a child my mother’s wider family used to meet up at a restaurant in Marlborough in December for a meal and to exchange Christmas presents. I remember the hotel served an amazing brown breadcrumb ice cream. My grandparents would travel up from Dorset and my mother’s brother and little sister would drive up separately from London while Dad would drive us down from Northamptonshire.
My father takes after his mother and so we would arrive on the dot at 12.30 as agreed. We would then spend the next two hours enjoying the sweepstake organised by my father on which member of the Booker clan would be the last to arrive. Bookers do not do punctuality and it is correctly said that the only occasion at which they are ever on time is their funeral.
My father’s mother only once ever missed a train in her life. That was when she arrived so early that she caught the one before instead. My father operates on a similar basis and so when dropping me off at Moreton-in-Marsh he always allows plenty of time. Even though he observes a strict 20 mile an hour speed limit on all roads, more or less up to and including Motorways, I inevitably spend a good twenty minutes waiting on the platform at Moreton.
But I am as guilty of this obsession with not missing my train as is he. Regular readers will know that I catch the 4.47 AM from Bristol when travelling up to London as I am doing today. It is empty
3729 days ago
I asked readers last week why the Station at the pretty Cotswolds town Moreton-in-Marsh, appeared to have signs in both English and Chinese. Silly me, Mu (a Japanese cat loving neighbour from Bristol) put me in my place straight away – the signs are in Japanese.
Apparently, according to my step mother, there are a lot of Japanese students and tourists who visit Moreton. But in staring at the Asian letters I missed something, PC station manager Teresa Ceesay may be a whizz at the Japanese but seems a bit less on the ball when it comes to….English.
Among the signs at her station are ones for Stow-in-the-Wold. I think, Teresa will find that she means Stow-on-the-Wold. The Japanese version gets it right.
Unlike Teresa, I stand corrected.
3735 days ago
Saturday night in Shipston with my father and step mother entails a trip to Moreton-in-Marsh train station. It is a non-descript station in a pretty little Cotswold town. I have happy memories of arriving there around this time last year with snow so deep that there was no way to get to Shipston. Thankfully there was room at the (Bell) Inn and a landlord prepared to wait up for my delayed train.
This time there were no such snags but, since he could not be late for Church, my father dropped me off thirty minutes before the departure of the 10.11 to Oxford. All rooms at the station were locked so it was a chilly half an hour. The only thing of note at this station is that the signs for taxis, buses, toilets etc are in both English and a language which is, I think, Chinese but may be Japanese.
This seems harmless enough but I wonder of any local person might explain to me why there is such a pressing need for signs in Chinese or Japanese or whatever it is? Is there a big hidden demographic I have missed or something about the local economy of which I am utterly ignorant? I see the signs as a harmless eccentric and am just curious to know the reasoning behind them.
