Not Jean

Harlow. What a place. One of the outlying suburbs dreamed up by Sir Frederick Gibberd way back in 1947. It is one of the famous ‘New Towns’, designed to help ease the housing pressure on London after the War. Typical of these sort of places, the station is nowhere near the high street, which is annoying. A pub, masquerading as a carvery is close to the station though, which gives it something, I suppose. Otherwise, it’s all tall buildings, spread out like every business park in the country.

The train was pleasant enough – about half an hour from Liverpool Street aboard the Stansted Express – albeit full of suitcases and foreign languages but leaving the train and stepping out into the bus stop which doubles for the station forecourt, is not.

I’m wondering how it was supposed to work. The workers, encouraged to live outside Central London, arrive home and spread out in all directions, but there is no life. Visions of hordes of bowler hatted, briefcase and umbrella wielding, middle class, white collar workers streaming out at the end of each day and streaming back in the next morning, reminiscent of Reginald Perrin, spring to mind.

A station needs to connect with a town. It can’t always be in the centre because some places are so old it’s just not possible or because landowners refused to sell their land when the rail initially came through (Woking is an excellent example of this), but when a town is built specifically for commuters, one would think the station would be close to a few amenities.

The thing is, you can’t see anything but anonymous businesses from Harlow Town station. There is a massive town park but even that appears to be well outside the town and cut off from the station by a busy road. I’m sure there’s a nice bit of Harlow, but the casual visitor is not likely to see it.

Apparently there is an Old Harlow, which is, obviously, the original town but, as far as I’m aware, we were nowhere near that.

And why, you may ask, am I talking about Harlow. Or, rather, why the hell I went to Harlow in the first place. It was nothing to do with me, is all I can say. A certain person had a Wednesday meeting in Harlow and, as I didn’t want to miss out on our usual lunch, I found myself sitting in the pub masquerading as a carvery for an hour and a half working on my dissertation and writing this blog entry.

Actually the pub masquerading as a carvery was very pleasant – it didn’t actually have a name so I can only call it the pub masquerading as a carvery. While it only had two ales on tap, one was London Pride which is always a reasonable fallback option. And it kept raining on and off which makes it quite pleasant as well. It actually reminded me of the Wheatsheaf in Woking but I think that was the décor because it’s about four times the size.

After two hours and three pints and the excellent service given by Damien, I was joined by Mirinda and we had an unexpected lunch of a cheese dominated ploughman. I say unexpected because we actually ordered something else. Never mind! It was very nice with lots of salad.

The excitement of the day was provided by the Stansted Express. As we sat and the tea boy faffed around making us tea and coffee, smoke started rising from the air vent that runs along the bottom of the carriage wall. Mirinda thought that the German girls sitting in front of us had somehow overheated their laptop. It was very smelly but it settled down and the tea boy went on his way and we settled back to ‘enjoy’ our beverages.

Suddenly all hell broke loose as sparks started flashing out of the grill, forcing the two German girls to leap from their seats. Mirinda wasn’t far behind them and quickly headed off in search of the guard while I stayed with the German girls, ready to save them if required.

Returning shortly, Mirinda headed in the opposite direction, saying she’d found the end of the train. While we waited, the problem seemed to have gone away when suddenly there was a loud crackling, a huge burst of flames and smoke poured forth once more, filling the carriage. The German girls squealed and one ran off into the first class carriage while the other one bravely stood with me and watched.

Eventually Mirinda returned to say the only person she’d found with any authority (and he didn’t have any) was the tea boy. Apparently she’d reached the driver’s door and asked him to knock on it to tell the driver the train was on fire. The tea boy said he wasn’t allowed so Mirinda pounded on it to no avail. They then both yelled at the door a bit. With the same lack of a result.

I watched a news story on breakfast a while ago, claiming that London Underground was thinking of introducing driver-less trains and the unions were up in arms, mainly because it would mean job cuts. Mirinda thinks this train maybe had no driver which would explain why he didn’t respond. I think it was because the driver was asleep, concentrating on his Sudoku or deaf. Whatever, this would be a much better reason for retaining staff on trains: To put out fires and act in emergencies.

The train arrived at Tottenham Hale in a few minutes and we escaped. I’m not sure what happened to the German girls but the chap in first class, who briefly lifted his black eye shade to enquire what was happening, remained seated disregarding the smoke all round him. I assume he just replaced the eye shade and tutted something derisive about economy class before dozing back off.

The train, not content with just smoking, left the station and continued on to Liverpool Street without us. We caught the next train to Stratford which, as it happens, is quicker and connects with both the Dockland Light Railway and the Jubilee line, both of which stop at Canary Wharf.

Somewhat frazzled from a day of two extremes, I arrived at Waterloo in time to catch the 4:30 home to Farnham, hopefully to see Nicktor, his fresh bout of gout allowing. I hope the interview was worth it and I never see Harlow again.