The Weasel: Platform performance

On the first Sunday after Eurostar’s move to St Pancras Station, refurbished at a cost of £800m, I was admiring Martin Jennings’statue of John Betjeman near platform 5 when I was approached by an Irish gent.“Are you a relative?”said the genial chap. “You have a bit of a look of him.” This was an ambiguous compliment. After photographing the poet in 1955, Cecil Beaton confided to his diary: “An Edwardian vaudeville tramp … the anonymity of an oyster.”

Betjeman might not have argued with this disparaging view. His poem Late-Flowering Lust begins: “My head is bald, my breath is bad/ Unshaven is my chin.” In case anyone thinks I fit this unappealing description, I might point out that I am hirsute (barring a well-planed chin) and a slave to Listerine. Still, I think the Irishman’s comment was well-intended. Though Betjeman was no oil painting, his statue has become London’s most popular icon. At the time of my visit, the old boy was surrounded by admirers. Titfer in one hand, bag of books in the other, his corporation straining against waistcoat buttons, he gazes awestruck at the marvellous roof of the station that he helped preserve. It is a bit of the Midlands in the metropolis.

When building its ambitious London terminus in the 1860s, the Midland Railway proudly used roof slates from Leicestershire, stone from Rutland and bricks from Nottingham. The massive cast-iron ribs of the station arch boast that they were “Manufactured by the Butterley Company, Derbyshire 1867”. They are now painted Wedgwood blue, so there will always be a summer sky over St Pancras. While the other new statue in the station, a vast, kitschy bronze of lovers meeting, was more or less ignored, people queued to have their pictures taken next to the larger-than-life poet. It crossed my mind that Betjeman may have the greater erotic appeal.

Will it become a ritual for passengers to touch the trousers of the man

who towards the end of his life famously expressed regret that he“hadn’t had enough sex”? Though Betjeman’s role in saving the station from the demolisher’s ball has been overstated – in his biography of the poet, Bevis Hillier suggests that Nikolaus Pevsner was more significant – he makes a more apposite patron saint than Pancras, a 14-year-old martyred in Rome in AD304 who probably didn’t have much interest in

railway stations. In some respects, however, Betjeman is an unlikely figure to be associated with London’s main portal to the continent. For much of his life, as Bevis Hillier notes, he had an antipathy to “abroad”. When lured to France at the age of 45 in 1950, he was described by a companion as being “genuinely terribly homesick”and “desperate to get back to Vincent’s Garage in Reading, where his car was”. Following a visit to the Pyrenees in 1971, a companion recalled: “John was terrified of having to talk to foreigners.” Betjeman would surely be happier with the homely litany on the departure boards of the domestic services from St Pancras – Market Harborough, Long Eaton, Beeston, Kettering – than the alien destinations of Eurostar: Paris, Brussels, Ebbsfleet … Since Betjeman was devoted to “bubbly”– consumed from a pewter tankard in the morning – he would certainly have liked the upmarket buffet that claims to be “the longest Champagne Bar in Europe”. This strikes me as an inventive assertion. Any deluded sap – the Weasel is one example – who turns up

expecting a massive mahogany bar lined with attentive barmen is in for a let-down. The seating area is very long but the bar itself is rather small. I had to queue for my pop. On the first chilly day of the year, there was no danger of your champagne getting tepid. Provided you’re wearing an overcoat, it is a completely splendid place to have a glass of champagne.

When the 12:30 for Paris left from platform 5, the passengers waved and we waved back. Though wary of abroad, Betjeman once tried to buy a ticket to the continent. This was at Blackfriars station,where, as he wrote in his 1974 book London’s Historic Railway Stations, the Victorian stonework was incised with the names of destinations including Baden-Baden and Beckenham, Brindisi and Bromley,Westgateon- Sea and St Petersburg.“I asked for a return to St Petersburg,” wrote Betjeman,“and was referred to Victoria Continental.” Nowadays, of course, he would have no trouble getting a return from St Pancras. Just to make sure, I went to Eurostar Information: “Can I have a return to St Petersburg?”

“No.We only go to Paris, Lille and Brussels.”

“Well, surely, I can get a train to Brussels and change there for Russia?”

“Er, I don’t know,”said the less-than-informative representative of Eurostar information.“I’ll have to ask at the back.” A few minutes later, she returned.“You’ll have to go to Rail Europe at Victoria, but you can’t do it today. It’s closed on Sundays.”