Juliet England: Girl (not) on a replacement rail bus

Do you like parties? I’m not averse to a good bash myself, even if the pesky old hearing problem can make these occasions trying.

The other Saturday evening, I attended one such event at a field in West Berkshire – a legal rather than an illegal ‘rave’, if indeed it can be described as such. (This was a fiftieth birthday party, after all.) It was hot. There was a marquee, live music, people to chat to – and lollipops.

My strategy for the return journey was, though I say so myself, eminently sensible. I left at around 11pm, having consumed just one alcoholic drink. Walking alone down a dark country road to the station (Aldermaston, if you’re interested) was, admittedly, a calculated risk. But I had a charged phone with a torch, knew the route, and could see (if not hear) oncoming traffic.  

I arrive at the station in good time for the 2332 rail replacement bus, having braced myself for a longer, less comfortable journey than usual. But the appointed hour comes and goes with no such vehicle appearing. Believing it to be the common sense approach, I am on the side of the station where you would expect trains to arrive – were any running. Yet not only is there no bus, but worse still I see no lights on the other side of the station either.

I press the ‘Help’ (I use the term loosely) button on the machine that allows you to speak to somebody, having noticed that the next bus isn’t due until the ungodly hour of 0039, a full hour away. (And Aldermaston, deserted at this hour, is an incredibly isolated station.)

The scene that follows truly belongs to from the eighth circle of hell. I talk to the ‘Help’ (I use the term loosely) point and explain I am severely hard of hearing, entirely alone, and need ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answers to my questions. (Even distinguishing between those two words would, I know, be challenging.)

My questions are simple enough: 1) Is the 0039 bus actually going to turn up? 2) Have I missed the 2332, or was it a figment of the timetable’s imagination – a cruel hoax, a prank played purely for train company GWR’s own merriment? 3) Crucially, am I on the right side of the station?

The sound coming out of the ‘Help’ (I use the term loosely) machine is a snap, crackle and pop of unintelligible noise:

VitaWheat earwax, Reet Petite, Wop bop a loo bop a lop bom bom! Crackle, crackle.

I start the whole miserable process again. I have a hearing loss, I explain. I can’t understand you. Please just answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Let’s walk, let’s talk, under the moon of love. Jam tarts. Rrrr Reet Petite, the finest girl you ever want to meet…Crackle, crackle.

We repeat this wretched charade few times. There’s still no one else around, and my voice is croaking from all the pointless, exhausting talking and explaining. I believe I am to be commended for my admirable restraint in not actually screaming or swearing. Then – then! – as easily missed as an England penalty, I see the sign, hidden away on the screen near the ‘Help’ (I use the term loosely) point – BUSES DEPART FROM THE A4 BATH ROAD LAY-BY.

I know that asking the ‘Help’ point (I use the term loosely) for directions to this mythical place and Holy Grail of late-night rescue would be about as effective as asking UKIP to fight to reverse Brexit.

So I leave the station to seek help elsewhere. In the village, one house has its lights on. My dignity may have long since departed, but I still can’t quite bring myself to knock on someone’s door at gone midnight.

Yes, I could call a taxi but I have no numbers, in my naiveté believing them to be unnecessary. Even if I found such a number, would they respond at this hour? Last time I needed an early-hours cab, ahead of a flight, they put the phone down on me, muttering ‘drunken lunatic’, because of the straining to hear. (This was monstrously unfair; I hadn’t been drinking.)

I text my friend and party host, but receive no reply, unsurprisingly given that the party is doubtless still continuing, so I resolve to flag down the next car for help.

One happens by far sooner than I imagined.

“I’m not drunk or mad, just stranded – and quite deaf,” I say to a young man in the back as I outline my predicament. He tries to explain where the lay-by is but I’m struggling to catch his words in my distressed state.

He jerks his head towards a trio of teenagers who are shuffling past.

“Oi, Tom,” he says. (Let’s call him that.) “Help her out, can you? She’s a bit weird.”

The car drives off and I scamper after ‘Tom’, and two others, a girl I take to be his girlfriend and a male chum.

“It’s OK,” he mumbles. “You can come with us.”

Back at the station ‘Help’ point (I use the term loosely), the young people, with their perfect hearing, try to get some sense out of the ‘helper’ and find out where the mythical lay-by, great place of late-night rescue and rail buses, might be.

The ‘helper’ has no idea, so we leave, looks of frustration etched on the youngsters’ poor, exhausted faces.

“Children,” I declare solemnly. “We’re on our own.”

It feels like a Hobbit or Harry Potter-style quest as we trudge up the little road from the station. Suddenly, like a vision, it appears. The lay-by on the A4 Bath Road.

“Er, yeah,” mutters Tom, and points. “It’s the wrong one. We need to cross over.”

Girlfriend sits on the kerb, head in her hands, like one of those Broken Britain articles about late-night revellers, though there are no indications any of the youngsters have been drinking. Tom puts a protective and comforting arm around her.

I seethe inwardly at GWR, the rail firm responsible for this fiasco. Do they think this is a dignified situation for well-mannered young lady to find herself in?

Then my legs give way and I, too, am sitting on the kerb. It is gone half past midnight. I am 48, and I am sitting in a lay-by with three teenagers.

“Tom,” I say bleakly. “I may never see my friends and family again.”

Suddenly it appears, a mirage in the darkness, a liner on the ocean of the night, a vehicle of salvation. In short, a rail replacement bus.

We leap to our feet. If I was wearing a hat, this is the moment I’d remove it and place it on my chest.

“Children,” I declare. “We’re saved.”

Er, no, we’re not. For the bus turns off the A4 Bath Road and down towards the station.

“Noooooo!” we cry as one, grabbing bags and hurtling across the road after the bus with scant regard for our safety.

I puff after the young people, trailing behind them with a glaringly obvious lack of fitness. It’s useless anyway; the bus has vanished off the face of the earth, gone who knows where.

The three young people are making furtive phone calls as I stand and wonder what to do. Eventually, Tom says I can get a lift to Theale with his mum, whom he has woken in the middle of the night.

“I told her to meet us at the station,” he says, jerking his head in its direction.

“Asked, not told? I’m liking your style,” I say. “Tom, have you done this before?” He looks sheepish.

His mum is Alison, who seems remarkably lively and pleasant for someone who has been woken up halfway through the night. She takes us to Theale, a few miles away, and drops the kids off there before offering to take me on a few more miles to Reading, from where I can walk safely home.

When it’s just her and me, I am too tired even to move to sit in the front so I allow myself to be driven as though by a chauffeur. This puts me at a more than usually poor advantage, hearing-wise, so I blether on about the awful journey to fill the silence.

Alison stops the car. We shake hands and say goodbye as I thank her again. I stumble home. It is getting on for 2am. I am 50 next year, and way too old for this kind of caper.  

Read more of Juliet’s articles for us here.

Juliet England does freelance social media and PR work for cSeeker.