’Twas the Last Gig Before Christmas…

It looked fine on paper: a nice little hike from Orpington to Waterloo, and out on another train to St Ann’s Church, Wandsworth. My diary held this innocuous little note: Mozart Requiem, 2.30 and 7.30, £120. Andy, the leader of the orchestra, and more than a few others, were close friends. The church — from the website and in person — looked beautiful. While, only a few weeks ago, I’d stood in Mozart’s Vienna house, feeling all choked-up to think that he’d looked out at that view, from that window…

In short, there was nothing to suggest that it was going to be a no good, terrible, very bad day.

It wasn’t only that a crazy number — really, someone ought to tell these people about Amazon — decided it’d be fab to foregather a fortnight before Christmas in order to shop… It wasn’t only because England was, that very evening, due to play France in the quarterfinals of some rinky-dink football competition… It wasn’t only because it was so unusually cold that train signals were busy bursting all over the Greater London… but hang on, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Already by noon, Orpington train station was a seething mass of humanity, from steely-eyed fifty-somethings, the glint of shopping in their eyes, to football fans hell-bent on celebrating even if England got demolished 14-nil. My train was not only late — a half-hour late — but already crammed with matrons from Tunbridge Wells and football people. Worse still, it crawled along.

Limping out with cello at Waterloo East, I rushed to the main Waterloo station to find the first train to Wandsworth Town. Spoiled as I am with Orpington, I was mystified to discover that Wandsworth didn’t rate a ‘fastest train to’ category. Not only that but, upon spotting Wandsworth Town halfway down a row of stops, it appeared to be located at a mythical platform: platform 22.

It was news to me — but then, I live a sheltered life — that Waterloo even possessed a platform beyond 17 — might as well have been platform 11 ½ — but my train was leaving in two minutes, so off I sprinted (for once, in the right direction). As I arrived, sweating, avec cello, the train was just swanning gracefully from platform 22. There was another — but not for a half-hour as, presumably, the excitement of TWO trains an hour would have too greatly tested the nerves of the locals. This back-up train should get me to Wandsworth around two. (It turned up ten minutes late, but not crazy-late.) Then, a fifteen-minute trek to the church for the half-two rehearsal. No worries, I thought.

Except that I have this genius for getting lost. I swear Google maps hates me. The second I summon it to the screen, the microscopic little guys who run it, rubbing their hands gleefully, start screwing all the local roads in the wrong directions. Scenting a rat fairly quickly on this occasion — I’m intuitive like that — I stopped a woman wearing headphones, who set me right. Ten minutes later — the rehearsal due to start — I asked a middle-aged fellow to reassure me that I was still heading to St Ann’s.

‘St Ann’s is a church?’ he demanded suspiciously.

‘Yeah.’

‘A church?’

‘Um, yes.’

‘A church? An effing church? Why the hell d’you want to go to a church? Churches are destructive! Churches are terrible! Churches are instruments of societal corruption!’ Reading between the lines — I’m just that intuitive — I decided that he was not my target audience and pushed on, followed by him still fulminating, ‘If you’re looking for a church you want your head examined! You’re looking for a church you want confinement in a rubber room! You…’

But luckily, St Ann’s wasn’t far away. A final burst of speed and I slunk in with five minutes to go, so hot that it took me about twenty minutes to realise that this particular instrument of societal corruption was freezing. (No disrespect to the church: it was the coldest snap since roughly 1455.) On the other hand, St Ann’s lighting dates from roughly the same period. Had I not, in a rare moment of pure inspiration, swiped my electric light before leaving the house, my friend Annie and I would still be there, trying not just to sort out the flats from the naturals in the cello part but attempting to ascertain where the pages were, in order to turn them.

The soloists were good and the choir full of lovely people, but the latter were outnumbered by the orchestra — the young trombonists in particular. This pair had clearly been taught at their mother’s knee that trombones needed to be (a) in time (b) in tune and (c mind-blowingly loud. (So: almost right.) The conductor — otherwise excellent — rather strung along with this point of view. We spent a dispiriting couple of hours being blasted at from behind by the two lads on trombone, while the conductor urged, ‘a bit less from the lower strings.’

After the rehearsal, most of the band wandered into the nearest pub, where Morocco had just stunned Portugal. The locals were unsilent on the subject: each person had an opinion to share, and the furore made the trombone blasts resemble summer rain on a roof. We had to eat fast, as every table had been reserved from half-six for worthy Wandsworthians desperate to watch England put one over on the French (Ha. Instead, in the concert interval, we gathered around phones to watch England’s only score of the match.) After the show, the five of us too dumb to have driven wended our way to the station amidst freezing fog (it was 1 degree, max.).

Where we were met by a gloomy guy of enormous girth: ‘No trains,’ was his theme-song. Though he had to repeat it several times before either ourselves or the worthy Wandsworthians all around could quite take it in. We wished to know what was wrong with the trains: were they sulking about that unawarded penalty? No, the gloomy guy told us, and no, not a strike. No accident, either. Signal failure between Wandworth Town station and Waterloo. His advice? We were asking him for advice? Well, OK, his advice was, we get a bus to Waterloo. (The reason why he didn’t say, ‘a cab’ was obvious. There were cabs, buzzing around, but they’d all been nabbed by soccer fans who’d been drowning England’s sorrows in Doombar.)

It took us a while to find the right bus line, not being local, but Andy, our leader, is brilliant and his wife Rachel, the principal second, the second violist and I stuck to him like glue. After freezing at the bus stop for twenty minutes, a bus lurched out of the fog, claiming to be going to Victoria. According to Andy’s researches, trains were being cancelled all over the country, but the other four could take the Tube from Victoria to Charing Cross and nab a train, while I had trains from Victoria.)

After a fun-filled hour on the bus trying to prevent soused football fans from falling on my cello, we got there. (To be fair to the wannabe fallers, the bus driver had clearly put his shirt on England and had nothing left to live for.) As Andy had discovered that there was an Orpington train leaving from Victoria in three minutes, the second the bus driver half-crashed into the Victoria stop, I was running, wishing for my tennis shoes, while my poor, bumped-about cello was wishing I’d quit training for the weightlifter’s sprint. I could guess the platform at Victoria — didn’t even check — but I was two seconds too late for the Orpington train. It sauntered off looking exceedingly smug — as well it might — only the second on-time train on the UK mainland that day. Meanwhile, the temperature had sunk to zero, Victoria was a seething mass of disgruntled England supporters and I had another half-hour to endure.

Over the next twenty minutes, though, the noisy punters drained/trained away. By the time I’d dropped into a seat on my train there weren’t very many in the carriage (‘Soooooooo unfair! We should’ve had nine more penalties…’) Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice: Andy’s. Yes, my comrades had found me!!! The Tube being — you guessed it — up the spout, Andy, Rachel and the others were coming as far as Orpington with me, in hopes of catching the last train south from there. I volunteered to put them up in Orpington, but their dying wish was to get to the front of our train just before journey’s end, leap out on platform 7 and hotfoot it to platform 3 to catch the last train south.

They had a minute-and-a-half: the last sprint of the day. But… would they make it???

I watched them charge off, and am happy to report that this plan, at least, worked hitchlessly, because, of course, their train was late.

So they were happy and I was also, secretly, happy, because, ever since my husband turned our tiny fourth bedroom into ‘the library,’ we have exactly one guestroom… ☹

It was the perfect end to a no-good, terrible, very bad day.