Abbotsinch and Paisley Gilmour Street

I'd prefer it without the blue line though...maybe a line of the same shade of red?
Also, to avoid confusion, I think this pic was taken at Glasgow Central, but it is a Class 334

Well, I had a very nice time in Britain, mainly in Scotland, and as always, one of the nicest things is being outside your own life and in another, occasionally-visited one in which there is time to reflect and observe things. My hosts are usually working when I visit them, which means that during the week I enjoy their company in the evenings but have the days to myself.

On these days I would either be travelling from one place to another (I visited a total of four different households in the eleven days) or I would get on a train or bus anyway and go to somewhere bigger which had shops. Mainly this was Glasgow, though I did spend one afternoon around the shops of Ayr, and a happy day wandering round the centre of Lancaster, one of the most attractive and productive shopping places I know, though Glasgow is excellent as well.

The journey from Ayr, where I mainly stayed, to Glasgow, is about 50 minutes, with an excellent half hourly service all day, on smart-looking (they look a bit like the old railway coaches of the fifties) Class 334 electric multiple units which are fast and comfortable for the time one spends on them. As Prestwick Airport (sorry, Prestwick International Airport) station lies along the route, an almost deserted train leaving Ayr mid morning can become suddenly packed if it coincides with a flight arrival, meaning that passengers from Kilwinning; Irvine (a sixties overspill town); Johnstone or Paisley will then board a train with almost no seats available. One morning a French couple got on at Prestwick International Airport station (the next station down the line is called Prestwick Town, which confused passengers might think is a football team) and sat down, one next to, one opposite, me. Although my French is rusty, especially for listening and speaking, I understood enough to know that they were surprised at the advertised Glasgow rail link being a suburban train (banlieu was the word I picked up on) rather than the Gatwick Express clone they would probably have been expecting.

But then the problem here is the use of the word 'link'. If you say that there is a bus or rail link, then one understands that this is something which supplies a need, resolves a hiatus in a journey. When part of a railway line is closed for maintenance, a bus link is supplied from the last functioning station to the next one that is in use. It may not be a very good solution for people who have paid to travel on a train, but it will nonetheless run directly from Point A to Point B. Unlike my French fellow-passengers, I arrived at Glasgow International Airport, which used to have the much more agreeable name of Abbotsinch. (I do not know why, when a regional airport suddenly acquires one flight a week to Dublin, its name has to be altered to a formula which goes [Nearest Big Town(s)]+International+Airport, and it will then receive a big sign with this mouthful emblazoned across it, usually preceded with the words 'Welcome to', as well. Proper international airports like Heathrow or Schiphol can still keep the name of the village whose green they were constructed on, and do not have the word 'international' as part of their name at all; they have domestic versus international gates, much more stylish). Abbotsinch is near Paisley, so the cheapest option is to get to Paisley Gilmour Street station (there is no other station in Paisley, so why we need the Gilmour Street is something else I don't know), and then onto the Ayr line into Glasgow, or in my case, down to Ayr. A taxi would cost about £5 I suppose, and I was reflecting on this as I trundled my cases towards the exit. But I had arrived earlier than anticipated and did not need to get to Ayr for a while, and I remembered that I had once seen a sign on Gilmour Street station advertising a bus link.

So on reaching the door and going out into the Scottish sunshine, I looked for a corresponding sign, but there wasn't one, but I did see a row of bus shelters. These proved to be for linking services to various nearby hotels, and one for a direct bus to Glasgow, and also for some local services, but then I found one which said something about Paisley Gilmour Street, and there we were, a ten-minute service. I put my bags down in the bus shelter and was presently joined by an American couple with their suitcases, who greeted me amiably and asked if this was for the bus link. I told them that it was, as far as I knew. Before the bus turned up, the numbers waiting for it had grown to about eight: a prosperous-looking man who turned out to be Dutch; some more Americans and a couple of local women, not really dressed for travelling, who probably worked in the airport.

The bus roared round from the top end of the road, and I was mildly surprised to note that it was one of those Arriva microbuses with about twelve to fifteen seats. Also the destination blind read something that was not Paisley, or Gilmour Street, nor yet the words 'Bus Link'. It was clearly a town bus service which happened to pass both the airport and the railway station. This proved to be very much the case as there was no room for luggage, and when we set off it was at a steady 15 mph out round the roundabout and on to the road to Paisley, the outskirts of which quickly came into view. At this point, from where I could see the railway bridge about 300 yards away (Gilmour Street is a high level station) the bus slowly turned right and began a tour of a miserable-looking grey housing estate. We went all the way up one road, all the way round a roundabout and back down the other side of the same road, stopping outside a shop to let two people on. The driver then waited two minutes here before we ended up again at the same place from where I had spotted the station seven minutes earlier. We then began to approach the station but just when it was about 20 yards off, the bus turned left and began to drift through some of the town centre streets, eventually turning right and right again under the railway bridge and dropping us off. OK it only cost a pound, and it didn't inconvenience me in any way as I still got to Ayr half an hour before my friend was coming to Ayr station to meet me, but I couldn't help but wonder what the visiting Americans and the prosperous Dutchman, who told me he was looking forward to travelling all over Scotland, made of their first sight of it: a run-down housing estate, admittedly not the worst I have ever seen, but not appealing either.

The managers who run local authorities are very keen, as I have said before, on meaningless phrases, sometimes called mission statements. Simon Hoggart in last Saturday's Guardian piece, which you can read here, reports on a huge sign on a Hampshire railway station reading "Where Partnership Works", adding that over the border in Dorset they are "Facing the Future". Obviously as they love this meaningless cant so much, they have to share (another popular word) it with all of us, which is why it keeps appearing on signs everywhere. I just long for the days when driving into somewhere, you would at some point pass a rectangular metal plaque on a pole with the name of the town in bold black letters on a white background. And that was all. Now you are welcomed to the place, although being welcomed only by a notice doesn't count for much in my view, and then presented, variously, with names of obscure Polish or Czech towns they are twinned with, informed that it is a nuclear-free zone, having presumably been sprayed with something which will keep the bombs off, and the whole thing will probably be rounded off with one of these mission statements like "Working for the People" or these days, more likely, "In Partnership with the Future". We will also have learned that we are in Hillfoot Country or [Name of Local Resident Who is Famous]+Country, or [Name of Well-Known Fictional Character]+Country, and if there is room they will probably mention their No Smoking Policy (see blog of 6 September) as well. If the Health and Safety people tumble to all this, they'll get on to it double-quick as you cannot drive safely and read all this stuff as well, surely.

But tourism is important in some places, and I do feel that the signs should make sense, rather than nonsense; and if all Glasgow International Airport is offering its international 'customers' is a 12-year-old microbus with worn seats and no luggage space, followed by a tour of a depressed area and a circular trip round the outside of the station, then I think their signs should indicate this, although in fact a better idea would be for Glasgow International Airport actually to provide a proper bus link, rather than leaving things to Arriva, who clearly do not care about tourists' first impressions of Scotland.

If I knew enough management bollocks to do it, I could write to the airport managers and tell them so, but I only speak English, Spanish and French. Maybe there's a course on somewhere...