Nung Fnertwep
Nov. 24th, 2025 12:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseMy sister used to live in Rochdale. And when my husband unexpectedly left me (for someone else, as it shortly transpired, despite all his protests to the contrary), she correctly concluded that I was going to be rather stressed and would need a bit of time to unwind, so she invited me over for a few days.
Sheffield to Rochdale is not an entirely straightforward train journey even at the best of times. You go to Manchester Piccadilly, which is normally easy enough (and a lovely route, at that); but then you have to get across Manchester and take the train to Rochdale from Victoria. A tram is your best bet, but even that can be a bit awkward if you have bulky luggage. And on this particular occasion, even the first leg of the journey turned out to be problematic.
I arrived at the station to find that my train was cancelled, and everyone who was booked on that train was now being shunted onto the next one; and the next one, as it turned out, was a stopper. Very handy if you wanted to get somewhere along the route, but best avoided if you were trying to get all the way to Manchester. Unfortunately none of us had any choice. So we were all herded onto this train, which was already fairly full, and as a result it was absolutely ram-jam. Even at that point I wasn't able to stand up on a moving vehicle for more than perhaps ten minutes at the outside without feeling faint, so I had to find myself a corner and crouch in it, trying to take up as little space as I could. It was that or someone would be calling an ambulance before we got to Dore.
There was another thing about this train. The guard doing the announcements was obviously very new to this game, and he didn't know how to use the PA. For all I know he'd previously been used to singing into a microphone, where you have to get as close up to the thing as you can without actually swallowing it; and this was clearly what he was doing here. He was far too close up to the microphone, and consequently everything he said came out extremely garbled. Well, I wasn't very comfortable squashed up in a corner on the floor surrounded by a crowd of legs, but, you know, you make your entertainment where you can. And I made mine by trying to work out what on earth this bloke was actually saying... for which I had plenty of opportunity, given how often the train stopped along the route.
I did reasonably well until we got about halfway. The train slowed down, and this guard announced: "Nung Fnertwep!"
I was pretty sure there wasn't a station on the route called Nung Fnertwep. After all, I travelled between Sheffield and Manchester pretty often, given that I had to change at Manchester to get up to see my family in the Lake District. I felt that Nung Fnertwep was a name I would have remembered. But I couldn't work out what on earth it could possibly have been meant to be; so in the end I gave up and managed to ease myself upright for a few seconds in order to see through the window. And, sure enough, the train was pulling into New Mills Central.
It's been Nung Fnertwep to me ever since.
Sheffield to Rochdale is not an entirely straightforward train journey even at the best of times. You go to Manchester Piccadilly, which is normally easy enough (and a lovely route, at that); but then you have to get across Manchester and take the train to Rochdale from Victoria. A tram is your best bet, but even that can be a bit awkward if you have bulky luggage. And on this particular occasion, even the first leg of the journey turned out to be problematic.
I arrived at the station to find that my train was cancelled, and everyone who was booked on that train was now being shunted onto the next one; and the next one, as it turned out, was a stopper. Very handy if you wanted to get somewhere along the route, but best avoided if you were trying to get all the way to Manchester. Unfortunately none of us had any choice. So we were all herded onto this train, which was already fairly full, and as a result it was absolutely ram-jam. Even at that point I wasn't able to stand up on a moving vehicle for more than perhaps ten minutes at the outside without feeling faint, so I had to find myself a corner and crouch in it, trying to take up as little space as I could. It was that or someone would be calling an ambulance before we got to Dore.
There was another thing about this train. The guard doing the announcements was obviously very new to this game, and he didn't know how to use the PA. For all I know he'd previously been used to singing into a microphone, where you have to get as close up to the thing as you can without actually swallowing it; and this was clearly what he was doing here. He was far too close up to the microphone, and consequently everything he said came out extremely garbled. Well, I wasn't very comfortable squashed up in a corner on the floor surrounded by a crowd of legs, but, you know, you make your entertainment where you can. And I made mine by trying to work out what on earth this bloke was actually saying... for which I had plenty of opportunity, given how often the train stopped along the route.
I did reasonably well until we got about halfway. The train slowed down, and this guard announced: "Nung Fnertwep!"
I was pretty sure there wasn't a station on the route called Nung Fnertwep. After all, I travelled between Sheffield and Manchester pretty often, given that I had to change at Manchester to get up to see my family in the Lake District. I felt that Nung Fnertwep was a name I would have remembered. But I couldn't work out what on earth it could possibly have been meant to be; so in the end I gave up and managed to ease myself upright for a few seconds in order to see through the window. And, sure enough, the train was pulling into New Mills Central.
It's been Nung Fnertwep to me ever since.
