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The taxi driver who drove four of us back to Sevenoaks told me that the actual Seven Oaks, almost all blown down in the UK's Great Storm in 1987, were almost immediately replaced with saplings...which local yobs promptly ripped up. The end result was yet another set of saplings, now surrounded by large metal fences. Everything is progressively being spoiled. Stood around for 25 minutes at Sevenoaks, not because there was no train, but because the power-mad harridan at the ticket window took exception to the way one of my new comrades dealt with her rudeness, and actually instructed the men on the ticket gate that he was not to travel (apparently she had the authority to do that). Ridiculous, possibly illegal as well, because he had a valid ticket to travel which she had just sold him, but the farce wore on. There's been a lot of discussion here in the UK recently about the right of transport staff to go about their business free from the threat of violence or abuse for doing their job. I couldn't agree with that more, but what happened at Sevenoaks seems to be no kind of example of that. It was a stressed, ticket-window madam with a chip on her shoulder choosing to misinterpret something said to her IN SOLIDARITY. A station manager, old man of 25, was called in, my friend apologised for HIS rudeness, but Harridan Woman wasn't having it. She was quite clearly ill but powerful...quite what else was supposed to be done if we weren't to still be standing there in 2012 was not made clear (we were not leaving without him. Respect!). In the end an even more senior employee, who looked well pissed off at being dragged up from the platform to address all of this, arrived, with a "what the f*ck is all this about?" look on his face, saying that as far as he was concerned we were all travelling because we all had valid tickets. So off we all went. It's got its funny side, but if what Harridan Woman did was actually legal, it makes you wonder what else is possible in yet another first-world country where people seem to be steadily losing their individual rights.
Sunday evening trains from Sevenoaks apparently head to Victoria, not Waterloo East, meaning my through ticket for Sevenoaks-Brentford had to be further augmented with a ticket for the Underground Victoria-Waterloo. Half-hour wait once at Waterloo, then to Brentford. Heard on the way that Sir John Mills had died. Very sad, we've lost a one-off but we were lucky to have him for a long time. Walked the twelve minutes home in drizzling rain, and wrote three-quarters of another song on the walk (not about Sir John). Who says weekends in the country don't work?
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