I’m in the frozen north but it’s mildish. I came prepared for draughty railway stations with many layers. Living in the soft south has got me used to mild days in winter, and in the past I’ve been caught out on northern visits. It’s not that the cold is colder, but it is, it’s that there’s generally a wind blowing that gets under any flimsy coat and catches the kidneys. I’ve learnt my lesson and am prepared with layers that come below kidney level.

I’m here amongst other reasons to visit my grandsons and to take trip up from near Barnsley to the golden fields of Hudder to see a friend from before my own kids came along. We’ve planned a trip to catch up on old times and more recent ones over lunch. I’m not expecting big plates and small lunch type food, more like big plates with lots of food. The former would be better for me, the latter my preferred option. We will see..

I’m going on the train, a 50 minute journey north of where it is already cold, and from experience I know that this train will lumber along through an alphabet of Yorkshire names. The cost: £1.99 , possibly the cheapest rail journey I’ve yet to find. Although the rolling stock and trains on this line look about 30 years old, the difference in rail travel from 30 years ago is marked. My ticket is on my phone, the guard is now called a train manager, he scans my phone with his machine, the stations are called out by an automatic announcer as you approach, so none of that head turning neck strangling stuff when you get to the station to see where you are, and you certainly can’t lean out of the window.

I was in Huddersfield some months ago, so have tested the route. Huddersfield has a grand station with impressive portico and a sculpture of one of our former prime ministers on the front concourse. Local grammar school boy Harold Wilson managed to climb the greasy pole to the summit and stay there for some years and was in power when I started my freelance career. Not something that would happen these days with politics dominated by old Etonians like never before and politicians being regarded by the public as one of the lowest forms of life. It’s a great sculpture too.

I’d got here, to this station by taking the train from Cheltenham to Sheffield a couple of days before, via the main line train to Edinburgh and you’d expect a long vehicle, given that it is ‘half term’ and people might be expected to travel to see relatives like I was. Just four coaches lumbered into the station, thankfully at least on time, it was already packed when we got on so I was obliged to stand for most of the first part of the journey until near Birmingham when I got a seat next to a very smart blonde woman.

Now I’m one to talk on a train, but I’m sensitive to those who might prefer not to. She seemed not to wish to until a short while later in the journey when she told me she too was going to Sheffield. Turns out that she is the Managing Director of a firm that manufacturers synthetic bone dust. I kid you not. If you were to have an operation on your bod, then it’s more than likely if you needed to have repairs to bones the doctors may well use their synthetic bone dust. Made in the Derbyshire village pf Tydeswell of all places and invented by her late father 50 plus years ago. We had a fascinating conversation and the journey to Sheffield where we both got off and went our separate ways was made shorter by our chatting. Who would have thought it: synthetic bone dust, a sort of polyfilla for the bones.

I had a great day out to Huddersfield and my lunch was as predicted, big plate and big food. My good friend ordered a chicken and bacon pie and could only just see over the top of the crenellations on the top of this castle like pie crust. She’s not very big , but the pie was. She made valiant attempts to scale the walls and was really quite successful. We, or should I say more accurately I, hardly stopped talking as we’d not seen each other in talking circumstances for quite a while. Her husband had the largest prawn sandwich that I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure quite why they printed a dessert menu as the one course nailed me to the chair. Back to their house after for continued chatter then whizz back into Huddersfield for the train back.

Someone had kindly left their newspaper on the seat in front of me, the Stage, of all things. All the news that’s fit to print about theatrical stuff, on a Huddersfield train. You can’t make this sort of thing up. Somewhere in the area is someone wanting, or already in, the theatre. I did the decent thing and took the newspaper , read it, and then passed it onto a woman from Scotland who was sitting next to me on the train back to Cheltenham the next day.

The plot thickens like the gravy on a northern pie.