“It’s been forever long, adventures come…this southern air is all I need…it’s in every word I’ve sung. It seems the only truth I know: this will always be home.”
I may or may not be a little sensitive right now. It’s almost been an entire year since I left home for my new home in England. A place I still consider home.
The torturous part of it though is that I still have friends in and around the area that I was in. First mention of the words “Maghull” or “Aintree” and I get a little weepy. (They’re station stops between Liverpool and Ormskirk on the Northern Line on Merseyrail, by the way).
It used to be the big things that turned me into a blubbering baby…memories of weekends in Rome or Paris…but recently it’s been the small things. The Uni I was at…the train we used to take multiple times a week….the tiny but amply big room I was in…the tilt of the window that I would love to open in hail storms.
But since I’m on a train fix right now…let’s just talk about the Northern Line for a second.
Ormskirk, Aughton Park, Town Green, Maghull, Old Roan, Aintree, Orrell Park, Walton, Kirkdale, Sandhills, Moorfields, Lime St., Central
All of those stops between me and Liverpool. We used to talk about just getting on the southbound train to Central and just getting off wherever we fancied. We did a lot of talking back then that I was we would have acted on more.
So many memories of that tiny Ormskirk station. It was down a creepy windy downhill path from the main bus station so at night we’d all huddle together and walk quickly (some hoodlums used to hang out under the bridge). I remember shuffling back up that hill will heavy rucksacks after an adventure of backpacking through (insert city here). And I definitely definitely remember running, full speed down that hill past the kind folks of our quiet sleepy little market town, trying to catch the train. It ran south to Central every 30 minutes but for us…that was a lifetime.We didn’t want the thrill of the adventure halted by a 30 minute intermission while we waited for the next train to come along!
I’ve been on the first train of the morning (to Scotland), and the last train home (Central to Ormskirk). I’ve been on every platform (remember that very confusing time when we were supposed to be on the Wirral line and didn’t know it even existed in Central? haha)…I’ve seen every confusing mix and mess up (when both the north and south bound platforms had trains going south home). I’ve been yelled at (I took a picture in Central once). I’ve run between Lime Street and Central (10 minutes to get from station to station…we can make it if we run! I’m not sure when we decided this was a good idea but sometimes we made it, sometimes we didn’t).
I also remember the ticketing agents and the gate where you just showed them your receipt from buying tickets and they’d let you through (it was meant for prams but if you didn’t have a ticket to insert into the automatic turnstiles….) and the posters on the escalators (which blew my mind when we took the Tube because they have electronic versions!)
A whole host of stories all coming back to me. Thanks for the memories, Merseyrail. You were small but mighty.
