You’ve got to be Shotton me

Despite the best endeavours of Virgin Trains and the Welsh rail network to stop me through delays and misinformation, I have arrived in North Wales. In a town I have never heard of. To sum up what kind of remote backwater this is, the last bus to roughly where my hotel for the next few nights is, has passed. After alighting from a delayed train, I find myself alone at a platform with no discernible direction in which to head. Do I go left to the darkness or right into the blackness? I always tell myself “if in doubt, go left”. A phrase not without its political leanings.

I call the hotel for advice on how best to get to their location. Ominously, they do not answer.

At the edge of the station, I find an information table, a solitary light from an overhead lamp barely illuminating the words. Through the mixture of English and Welsh, I find the section for a local taxi. My cold fingers stab the unfamiliar regional code at my mobile phone as a voice from the taxi service answers. I tell them my location, of which I’m slightly unsure aside from knowing there is a clock next to the station. They ask where I’m going, and I look at the paper where I’ve scrawled the name on and divulge that to them. There is a pause, before she repeats the name of the hotel back to me, adding two question marks at the end of it. I look at the paper and confirm that that was indeed the name of the hotel. “The taxi will be fifteen minutes.” she says before ending the call. I look at the silhouette on my phone, a reminder that it was a call to an unknown contact.