Changing Trains

Towards the end of last summer we moved house. And along with the house move came the church and work and school to college moves. Obviously these are significant changes and for a while we were homesick, but now where we are feels like home and the people here are our familiar friends. But it wasn't just these obvious changes that caused a wrench - I also went into mourning for the passing of Liverpool Street Station!
Those of you who've been hanging around this Teapot for long enough may recall me talking a couple of years ago (3rd June 2006), with great affection for Liverpool Street station:

"Well, I'll begin with a confession... I love Liverpool Street Station! I have lived all my life somewhere or other on the Liverpool Street line - and am currently the furthest south on the line that I've been (the farthest away being when we lived in Cambridge for a couple of years)."

So when it came to moving to the Fenchurch Street line - well - I really couldn't get to grips with that for a while! I'd come to know 'my' station like the back of my hand, I had my favourite place to sit and watch the world go by and had an affection for the little bit of London in which it sat. I had my familiar tube routes in and out - and then it all changed. As it happens Fenchurch Street is only 5 minutes on foot from Liverpool Street so nestled fairly close by in the city. It can nowhere near compare in architectral appeal or bustle, and no tube station - well really! Those were a few of my first thoughts, and they remain, but now of course we're used to wandering round the corner to Tower Hill for the Underground, it's nice not to have to pay 20 pennies to spend a penny or fight the crowds to get to the few platforms. And the surrounding streets soon become familiar, I've even got a replacement favoured coffee shop for that world-going-by-view. And then there's the South Bank which I had given hardly a passing thought to in that previous life. Isn't it funny that in London a station only 5 minutes away can seem like another world? But it is becoming a part of my world, and I'm rather fond of it. The plain little Fenchurch Street station will never replace Liverpool Street in my affections... but I'm managing to create a whole realm of new ones!