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cosmolinguist) wrote2025-04-07 10:35 pm
A journey of two halves
I had to go to London for work today, and back.
The experiences of the two journeys could hardly have been more different.
To explain why this morning was so nice, I have to tell you that a week or so ago I boosted (this is fedi lingo for retweeted) a stranger's selfie for Trans Visibility Day -- just because I boosted many trans people's selfies who wanted to share them for the occasion, but one in particular I boosted because it was someone who
- talked about having a public-facing job, whose selfie was her on a train
- said train was definitely in the UK and possibly a train-operating company that I recognized (there's an information screen behind her in the selfie which is displaying text that's something like "Due to a technical fault, no journey information is available," which is extremely unsurprising for trains in the north of England!)
- her instance is a Terry Pratchett reference
I started following her too. Which meant that yesterday I happened to see she was talking about "the kind of guiding I do at work" in a way that I recognized as the sighted guiding I need getting around train stations and getting to the correct seat on a train if I have one reserved.
So I said hey, as someone who relies on work like yours, it's really cool to see someone being so conscientious about it, thanks.
She said to let her know if I ever pass through Manchester Piccadilly and that she'd be happy to assist me if she's on shift.
I was like, funny you should mentioned that, I have assistance booked for tomorrow morning!
So, after a comedy of errors getting to the station -- I almost forgot my work phone which among other things has the code I had to have in order to collect the train tickets for this journey, and I remembered just in time to go back and get it but then really had to rush to get my train so had no time to get the tickets printed at that station, saw as I rushed by that the ticket machine was broken so it wouldn't have mattered anyway, got grumpy about how inaccessible tickets are (paper and e-tickets are both stressful for me in different ways -- I was dismayed to turn on my work phone and find out the battery was nearly dead and I hadn't thought to charge it, and I certainly didn't have the charging cable. I had my personal phone's, and my laptop's which will also charge my phone, but my work phone is a fucking iPhone because they just decided blind people all prefer those and it's such a nightmare, in many ways (typing, accessing simple things like the camera app or WiFi...), but maybe the biggest is that the only charging cable I was given for it is awkward as hell to use and of course none of my USB ones work on it.
The way passenger assistance is supposed to work is that a journey like mine, where you're connecting from one train to another, staff should be on your train's platform and looking for you, able to call you by name and have a pretty good idea of what support you need. Because I start at an unstaffed train station and had no way to contact assistance staff myself (yet!), this goes wrong for me a lot. I do my best to make myself obvious, hang around whenever possible for crowds to thin out, and kinda look out for them. But today I was on a busy train (it was about 8:30 in the morning) and their uniform vests are navy and purple which just does not stand out at all for me. I didn't spot any staff, and no one made themselves known to me.
This is no big deal for me at Piccadilly. I know the station incredibly well (and I think it's pretty sensibly laid out, but that might just be my familiarity talking; I do wish it was less gray though! gray on gray on gray...) so I just made my way to the assisted travel lounge and said to the person at reception I've booked assistance for the next train to London.
This made the person next to him, who I hadn't really registered because my brain doesn't waste spoons on looking at things if at all possible, jump up. Of course that was my new internet pal, and she was very excited to see me. I don't know if she'd been the one meant to provide that assistance to me on the platform, but she definitely knew I was late for the train I was supposed to have gotten off. And she'd been worried, bless her.
She directed me to a seat and we spent a minute chatting (I'm very envious of her European holiday coming up! all train-based, of course, and we talked about various train stations in Milan, Paris and Brussels we'd seen or knew about).
I asked if there was an iPhone charger I could use and explained the problem I'd made for myself. She said there was but I didn't have time to use it, my train was already at the platform and we had to go. It felt very much like a nice conversation interrupted by a train journey! But she fished a white cable out of a pocket somewhere and held it out to me. I did my best to refuse taking her own phone cable, but she insisted that it's for her work phone (she's also an Android user saddled with an iPhone at work!) and she wouldn't be needing it that day. I promised I'd drop it off when I got back to Manchester this evening, but she was extremely chill and kind about it. I was extremely grateful. I was going to London to meet someone at a location that wasn't determined yet, and she had only my work contact details and I had hers only in my work email. It would have been a very steessful two hours on the train trying to work around this if my work phone had a dead battery!
She got me to my train, and left me with the gift of all my train tickets and the ability to have everything charged by the time I got off the train.
I've written so much, and it's so late and I'm so tired, I think I'll have to save the stories of my return journey for tomorrow.
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How lovely to find such a kind fellow traveler who understands exactly what you need!
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What a lovely and kind internet person!
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