GREAT news, everybody! Nottingham's about to get a really fast train!
Now, when I say "Nottingham", I mean "Toton".
And when I say "about to", I mean "in several decades".
But this is just how big public transport infrastructure projects such as HS2 work. Young children of public transport bosses must lead horrible lives.
"Great news, Tulip-May!" Mum the transport official will say on Christmas morning. "You're getting a pony! When you're 36!"
But this time lag with the high-speed trains might be useful for us. If you've ever driven through Toton, the suggested site for the East Midlands' high-speed station, you may have noticed that it is not by strict definition an urban hub.
In the years before Toton International becomes a thing and Parisians start rocking up at Gare du Nord with their Lonely Planet City Break: Toton guidebooks, we will have time to consider plans for hurtling train-riders from central Nottingham to our new high-speed launchpad.
As the Post recently reported, some plans are already being considered.
They include: an express train, a tram train, a train tram, trained trampers, trampling trainers, a giant catapult, buses driven by renegade loners who play by their own rules, and the quiet hope that somebody at that fancy University of Nottingham science park is working on Star Trek-style beaming technology.
Oh, and before you ask, yes I realise that if beaming technology exists in 20 or 30 years that it will be possible to just beam people straight down to London. I'm basing my plan on an assumption that the capital will have instituted some sort of Central London Beaming Arrival Charge that will price out beamers from the shires. Actually, London will probably get really insufferable about beaming with cutesy little beaming booths all over Zone 1 inevitably named "Boris Beams" after the man who will by then be our fatigues-wearing First Citizen. Cripes.
But my concern is Nottingham. And I say, we're going at this all wrong. Let's move Nottingham to Toton.
I mean, we can all do with a fresh start, right? We can take all the good bits (The Trip, Broad Street) and leave the unfortunate bits behind. Sorry Maid Marian Way, but this is our opportunity.
If we start taking it out piece by piece now, we can surely have the entire city relocated within 20 years. Plus, doing it slowly means we won't startle the residents of Toton as much as if they just woke up one morning with a major urban centre teeming around them.
"But Erik," you say. "How will we pay for this?"
Two words: property programme. People go nuts over programmes where a single house gets a makeover – imagine the money we can get for Restoration City. BBC, call me.
If we get a rota going and make sure we haul our bit of conurbation out to its new postcode on our allotted days, we can do this. If we just factor in time, reshoots for the TV show and the five years all Britons will have to spend in Boris re-education camps, we can make sure New Nottingham is ready. For our new pony. In 2032.
