Sunday's travails and travels in depth
Monday, October 27th, 2008 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanSo anyway, now I’m more awake, the story of the trip to Wembley. I say story, but that makes it sound rather more interesting than it really is. I shall relate the events that are not the game since anyone interested was either there, watched it on TV or has read the match reports in the paper or internet.
The morning and early afternoon the weather was, of course, wet and cold. That’s pretty much the combination that ruined last year’s spectacle, so I was a little worried. However, by the time of the game itself, the sky had cleared and the rain stopped. Of course, this meant that the temperature plummeted. The trip to Wembley stadium was reasonably uneventful – Northern Line to King’s Cross, change and then Metropolitan Line to Wembley Park. It’s a bit of a bind doing it that way when the stadium is only about 5 miles away from the Carpathia, but using the Tube all I have to do is invest time rather than money since my Oyster Card covers the relevant zones. The train filled somewhat at Baker Street and the asian girl standing just in front of me was clearly put out at having to share the carriage with well, anybody, it seemed. She had an iPod-alike and was trying to watch a TV show on it. The combination of carriage jolting, unintentional jostling and crowding caused here to huff and puff as if the entire thing was a personal insult. Maybe it was: the entire game was scheduled just to interfere with her personal time table.
No sympathy.
At the stadium I met up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wallabok and Mr Dreyer sans LJ, obtained my ticket and was then lead through the middle-ring of poshness at Wembley Stadium. There are fancier parts, but equally there are ruder parts. This was pretty good, though at £3.80 for 500ml the lager was somewhat over priced. Not, I might add, as horrendous as the other prices. At half time I bought 3 bottles of beer and a Cornish pasty and was magnanimously let off the 10p they demanded in addition to the £20 note I proffered. Looking back on it, I am pretty sure that I was mischarged, but by that point I was in shell-shock and the cost was believably horrendous. Standing at the head of a queue, trying to hold three half-litre bottles and a radioactive pasty whilst paying and having run out of limbs, I was in no mental position to query anything. This is why there are rich people in the world and I’m not one of them.
After the game we headed off to a pub for a bite to eat. Showing our ages, we simply had coke with our food, having been downing beer all afternoon and evening. Actually they had a head start and I never caught up, but there you go. The burger was something special: advertised as a New York Burger, I am able to tell you that unless the good citizens on New York are partial to grey, boiled rubber and coleslaw, I very much doubt that they would recognise this morsel, which was still sitting malevolently in my stomach after midnight…
Finally, home. In theory, at least. We had decamped to the pub by avoiding Wembley Way through which the police corral everybody toward the Tube station whether you want to go there or not. We did – eventually – but not while over 87,000 people were trying to exit the stadium and at least 70,000 tried to catch a train. An hour or so later, it was still busy, but no longer insane. Some slack-jawed Cletus saw my Cowboys shirt and yelled “Romo is a homo!” (Tony Romo being the Cowboys’ Quarterback). He must have spent ages polishing that little jewel. I wittily responded that we’d at least managed to win a game. Had my brane been functioning, I might have observed that if Cletus’ observation was indeed true, someone should tell Tony Romo, since living with Jessica Simpson rather sends out the wrong signals…
Yet again, London Underground coped magnificently with a major sporting event in the capital. All Metropolitan Line trains terminated at Baker Street, less than half the length of the line. Anyone wanting to go further along it had to change to the increasingly crowded Circle or Hammersmith & City Lines. Neither did anyone think to tell us that there had been a signal failure at Camden Town, so having waited at King’s Cross for ten minutes in furnace-like temperatures, it was only then that someone thought to tell us that the next northbound train was still at Stockwell, twenty minutes away and that people should look for alternative routes home.
It was coming up on 11.30 when I got in and I was hot, tired and thirsty, with a stomach getting its own back for my attempts to feed it a New York rubburger. Still we have called a truce, now. I didn’t manage any apple crumble when I got in, which I was looking forward to. Tonight maybe…
A poor end, courtesy London Transport, to a fine afternoon and early evening. I shall spare you further ling-distance photos of the game.
The morning and early afternoon the weather was, of course, wet and cold. That’s pretty much the combination that ruined last year’s spectacle, so I was a little worried. However, by the time of the game itself, the sky had cleared and the rain stopped. Of course, this meant that the temperature plummeted. The trip to Wembley stadium was reasonably uneventful – Northern Line to King’s Cross, change and then Metropolitan Line to Wembley Park. It’s a bit of a bind doing it that way when the stadium is only about 5 miles away from the Carpathia, but using the Tube all I have to do is invest time rather than money since my Oyster Card covers the relevant zones. The train filled somewhat at Baker Street and the asian girl standing just in front of me was clearly put out at having to share the carriage with well, anybody, it seemed. She had an iPod-alike and was trying to watch a TV show on it. The combination of carriage jolting, unintentional jostling and crowding caused here to huff and puff as if the entire thing was a personal insult. Maybe it was: the entire game was scheduled just to interfere with her personal time table.
No sympathy.
At the stadium I met up with
wallabok and Mr Dreyer sans LJ, obtained my ticket and was then lead through the middle-ring of poshness at Wembley Stadium. There are fancier parts, but equally there are ruder parts. This was pretty good, though at £3.80 for 500ml the lager was somewhat over priced. Not, I might add, as horrendous as the other prices. At half time I bought 3 bottles of beer and a Cornish pasty and was magnanimously let off the 10p they demanded in addition to the £20 note I proffered. Looking back on it, I am pretty sure that I was mischarged, but by that point I was in shell-shock and the cost was believably horrendous. Standing at the head of a queue, trying to hold three half-litre bottles and a radioactive pasty whilst paying and having run out of limbs, I was in no mental position to query anything. This is why there are rich people in the world and I’m not one of them.After the game we headed off to a pub for a bite to eat. Showing our ages, we simply had coke with our food, having been downing beer all afternoon and evening. Actually they had a head start and I never caught up, but there you go. The burger was something special: advertised as a New York Burger, I am able to tell you that unless the good citizens on New York are partial to grey, boiled rubber and coleslaw, I very much doubt that they would recognise this morsel, which was still sitting malevolently in my stomach after midnight…
Finally, home. In theory, at least. We had decamped to the pub by avoiding Wembley Way through which the police corral everybody toward the Tube station whether you want to go there or not. We did – eventually – but not while over 87,000 people were trying to exit the stadium and at least 70,000 tried to catch a train. An hour or so later, it was still busy, but no longer insane. Some slack-jawed Cletus saw my Cowboys shirt and yelled “Romo is a homo!” (Tony Romo being the Cowboys’ Quarterback). He must have spent ages polishing that little jewel. I wittily responded that we’d at least managed to win a game. Had my brane been functioning, I might have observed that if Cletus’ observation was indeed true, someone should tell Tony Romo, since living with Jessica Simpson rather sends out the wrong signals…
Yet again, London Underground coped magnificently with a major sporting event in the capital. All Metropolitan Line trains terminated at Baker Street, less than half the length of the line. Anyone wanting to go further along it had to change to the increasingly crowded Circle or Hammersmith & City Lines. Neither did anyone think to tell us that there had been a signal failure at Camden Town, so having waited at King’s Cross for ten minutes in furnace-like temperatures, it was only then that someone thought to tell us that the next northbound train was still at Stockwell, twenty minutes away and that people should look for alternative routes home.
It was coming up on 11.30 when I got in and I was hot, tired and thirsty, with a stomach getting its own back for my attempts to feed it a New York rubburger. Still we have called a truce, now. I didn’t manage any apple crumble when I got in, which I was looking forward to. Tonight maybe…
A poor end, courtesy London Transport, to a fine afternoon and early evening. I shall spare you further ling-distance photos of the game.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-27 03:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-27 03:47 pm (UTC)Makes all the difference.
If the Underground is working properly it is, to be fair, very good. It's just very old.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-27 10:26 pm (UTC)Pardonnez l'ignorance de moi.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-27 11:33 pm (UTC)The yokel in the Simpsons is called Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel. I believe he even has his own theme tune!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-28 02:39 pm (UTC)Ta.