This site has now been retired. I've moved to my new site Silverknife, where you'll find new blog posts and all my latest projects and photos. These pages will remain for at least a while, as I know some of you are still looking through the archives, but I'm reposting my travel journals and many other articles on the new site. Come and check it out.
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When we left our hero, it was Monday afternoon and I was heading to Sheffield station to catch the 1527 home, and dreaming of all the ways to spend a relaxing evening all to myself. The walk down to the station was through steady rain, which had been increasing over the last hour - the path down to the station concourse actually had a continuous stream of water running down it.
And of course, when I arrived at the station...my train was cancelled. Along with every other train running south. Floods were rising all around Sheffield as the rain came harder and harder, the river Don was threatening to burst its banks and the lines in some places were already awash. The only line still open was toward Manchester, and there was no route from Manchester going south either. Replacement buses turned up, but were cancelled off immediately as the M1 closed. I was stranded in Sheffield for the longterm. Shortly the station was evacuated too.
I had the usual brief bolt of anger and frustration, but having worked on a major London railway line for two and a half years I've been in too many of these situations to react that way for long. In my experience most people's problem, when they end up in these situations, is that they decide that the things they were planning (arriving at their destination at a certain time, doing certain things when they get there) were not only a certainty but actually owed to them. From that point of view, something has therefore been stolen from them, and they're owed an explanation and recompense.
The natural next step in that line of thinking is "I'm entitled to be angry, abusive and demanding", (usually directed at anyone "in charge", ie anyone in a uniform. I have had a particularly up-close-and-personal experience of this mentality on many occasions, because that guy in the uniform was usually me. That's not to say I feel victimised or better than the people who abused me, because in the same position, say at the end of my shift when I couldn't get home, I'd go through the same mental process! It's just that having been on both sides helped me to see how little that way of thinking helped anything.
From experience, I've learned that the best way to deal with these situations is make and own a new plan. Accept to yourself that the situation of being stuck in one place is how things now are, not some temporary blockage between you and your hoped-for arrival home. The funny thing is that your "right to be angry" basically means "right to make myself unhappy and wound up". Being angry will not change the situation, get you transport or make people do more to help you. It won't get you control, which is what everyone is really groping for in these situations. It'll just make you miserable. Better to let the control go, make yourself comfortable and wait to see what happens.
With that in mind, I made my way back up the concourse (the beautiful fountains and water sculptures starting to seem a bit ironic in the rising monsoon), and dug in at the Showroom Cafe for over five hours to watch the rain, read, write, drink copious amounts of coffee and wait to see if I would get home that day. Having given up control and just set out to enjoy my unscheduled leisure time I had a great afternoon, and a series of really interesting conversations with other patrons, both the stranded and regular customers. The evening would prove to be more interesting still.
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