As usual when setting off on my peregrinations, I check the weather report on the day before and it happily informs me that it is going to be clear until the early afternoon.  And, as I utterly trust the app I use, I check this with the Channel 4 news, who confirm this.  However, like politicians, meteorologists lie – although for very different reasons.  This is borne out when I open the curtains and I see that the weather can only really be described as brillig.  As a result I pack a spare hoody in case the age-appropriate hoody proves insufficient and I lace on the boots rather than the trainers.

The train station is moist and the mood of everyone there matches it.  Except for a group of ebullient American tourists who are undeterred at having accidentally arrived in Slough and are loudly laughing about the rain.  They are also undeterred by the glares they are getting from everyone else in the station who really aren’t awake enough to see the joke.

In my journeys this year, I have noticed that the stations all have regular announcements about care on the stairs.  At Slough it encourages us to “please use the handrail and take care when using the stairs.”  In and of itself, this is inoffensive and a useful reminder for the hard of thinking.  However, in the last 2 weeks I have heard versions of this announcement about a million times.  As a result, I ignore the handrail and walk in a deliberately reckless fashion just to annoy the disembodied voice.

Despite my devil-may-care attitude, I reach the train safely and sit in a packed carriage which is completely silent – except for the obviously very important woman making a series of business calls and someone who types constantly on their laptop.  The three people I’m sharing a table with are all engrossed on their phones.  This luckily allows me to continue with The Threepenny Novel by Bertolt Brecht.  I’m hugely enjoying it, but despite that I keep dropping off and eventually I just give up and go to sleep.

At Paddington, I change to the Bakerloo line for the trip across London to Charing Cross station.  The tube is again extremely quiet – just like my old commuting days.  At Charing Cross there is a convenient pedestrian tunnel to the overland station.  Convenient, that is, as long as you’re planning to trek for a mile and a half.  Clearly I exaggerate, but you can understand my frustration as I am stuck behind someone with a wheely suitcase that somehow manages to block the entire tunnel.

Despite the deliberate attempt by Evil Wheely Woman to slow me down, I get to Charing Cross Station with 5 minutes to spare and grab a seat on the train.  They then announce that at Tunbridge Wells doors will open on the front 10 coaches only.  I look around for some indication of which coach I’m in, but can’t find any.  I’m not too worried as Tunbridge Wells is the last stop, so it won’t exactly be tricky to walk down the train and there’s a very low chance of being trapped on board.  The carriage I’m in is very quiet – there are only 3 of us in here.  Maybe it’s because we’re not in the front 10 coaches?

On arrival at Tunbridge Wells, the weather is still brillig.  (Brillig, by the way, is the term I use when the weather doesn’t seem to be able to decide whether or not it’s going to rain.  And then does.  And then stops.  And then starts again.  It doesn’t happen every time though, it has to be the sort of weather where you would expect to find slithy toves.  I hope that’s helped.)  I have no real plans of where to go, except that I want to have a wander around the Pantiles.

I stand outside the station and almost immediately can see the kind of architecture that I was expecting – grand, impressive and (mostly) converted into shops.

Before I head down to the Pantiles, I spot a flash of green between two buildings and I head over to find myself in Calverley Grounds.

The Calverley Grounds is an attractive little park with some wide lawns, tennis courts and a well laid out ornamental garden in the centre.

It’s a lovely little resource and I’m sure the local residents get a lot of pleasure out of it.  What a shame that the local council has decided to reduce it’s size by 25% to build a car park to service the local theatre.  There’s a sign talking about this near the entrance and as I walk round it seems to me that this council, like the one in Slough, should spend more time developing green amenities like this.

I spot a geocache nearby and grab it but the weather is turning from brillig to downright miserable, so I head for the Pantiles.  I walk down a street that has, as stated earlier, some lovely buildings that have modern shops stuffed into them.

And then I come across the opposite.  As I’m heading down the street, I see ahead of me the modern facade of what is clearly a shopping arcade.  As I get closer I see that I’m wrong.

It would appear that modern church designers have decided to ignore the requirement for the elevation of the soul and instead have focused the most basic human instinct – the desire to shop.  One of things I always find after visiting cathedrals is that I feel inspired and uplifted.  I suspect I wouldn’t find the same in this tawdry effort.  I guess we’re lucky it wasn’t modeled on a McDonalds.

Grumbling about both the weather and the building, I head off down the road.  Just as I get close to the Pantiles, my personal kryptonite strikes – a second hand bookshop.  Half an hour later, my pack is considerably heavier and my wallet is £30 lighter.  My only excuse for the feeble spending is that I have to be able to fit them in the rucksack.  Now, if they made churches look like second hand bookshops, I’d spend a lot more time in them.  With that thought, I head into the Pantiles.

Which is basically a shopping centre.  Granted, it’s an attractive one especially when I become mildly arty and take a black and white photo.

It’s actually very pleasant and quite peaceful – though I suspect it gets highly crowded when the weather is less brillig.  I also suspect everything costs a fortune here.  That doesn’t stop me heading into a pub called “The Ragged Trousers” for some lunch.  I order a pint of the local brew and get quite excited when I’m offered the choice of a jug or a straight glass.  As someone who much prefers jugs, I opt for that only to be told that they’ve run out.  The barman nods over to a table where one person has a jug and there is the implication that they only have the one.  For my younger readers, who might not know what I’m talking about, here is a picture of a jug.

Hiding my disappointment I settle down to a lamb burger to go with my beer.  It’s not bad – but they are definitely trying too hard here.  The much vaunted “artisan” burger is just a burger.  The place isn’t bad – but I I just can’t get over being taunted with the promise of drinking from a jug.  (Look, if you want to know, it’s because they fit into my hands just about perfectly.  And, yes, I thought very hard about that last sentence as the first two drafts came out as though I was molesting someone.)

After lunch, the sun has started to fight its’ way out between the clouds and the danger of slithy toves has been reduced.  I have a good wander round, though I do wonder about the Tunbridge Wells interest in extreme surfing.

There also seems to be a high degree of interest in cosmetic surgery here – I pass three places offering it.  After a good explore, I head back to the train station.  When I avail myself of the facilities nearby, it seems that Tunbridge Wells has a dark underbelly that it’s hiding from the world.

Maybe that’s why they need so many cosmetic surgeries.  Seriously, I took the picture because this is massively under-reported and it’s good to see a local council getting behind some messages to the public about it.

Putting my soapbox away, I head back to the station where I have a largely unremarkable journey home.  That is, until I get to Paddington.  There I board my train, grab a seat that doesn’t have a reserved ticket on it and settle down with Brecht.  A few minutes later, a rail employee comes down the carriage, taking out old tickets and putting in new ones.  As he passes my seat he fumbles around behind me and without speaking, moves on.  When I check, he’s put a reserved ticket on my seat.  Why didn’t the prat say something?  I grumble as I move over.

We head off and we get the most ridiculous announcement I have ever heard.  For some stations, you must be in carriages H, I or J or First class.  For Slough, you must not be in A or B.  B is the quiet carriage.  Some people have reservations in A-E but may not be able to alight at their desired stations.  If alighting at Reading, you must have cerise luggage and walk with a limp.  Ok, I made the last one up, but by the time the announcement was finished, everyone was completely confused.  Including the woman who thought that “Quiet Carriage” meant “let your child run up and down the aisle screaming at the top of his voice while you put your earphones on and do nothing to restrain him”.  For a while he was kept under control by the woman in the seat behind me and I assumed she was traveling with them – no, turned out she was a total stranger who just took some responsibility.  But she gave up as well so he carried on running up and down – and sometimes crawling up and down.  So it was inevitable that when time came to leave the carriage, I would tread on him.  Which I did (accidentally) – and his mother didn’t even notice.

Leaving the worst parent in the world behind me, I head home and get ready for U – I’m going to need the walking boots for this one.