Door to door in six and a half hours

So anyway, Saturday was the day I chose to wander back off to the homestead in Sunny Shropshire to check on the aged P. Normally I'd go on Friday, but getting the time off was awkward and anyway, Saturdays are cheaper for traveling.

That said, weekends are the time that anyone involved with public transport in the UK takes the piss out of their clientele. This weekend they did it to the extent that the 150-odd miles took 61/2 hours door-to-door, Whetstone to Wem.

The Tube started it off. The Northern Line was suspended between East Finchley and oh, I don't know. Suffice it to say that I tubed from Whetstone to East Finchley and then found my self on the rail replacement bus service. That at least took me to Euston, but it did so in a skittish and disorderly fashion, taking an additional 40 minutes or so to get me there. I arrived at Euston at 1.20pm. The train departure turned out to be precisely 1.20pm. So, a wait of one hour, then. Plenty of time to buy a ticket, except that there was a power failure. So no ticket. Buy that on the train then.

Meantime, outside it started raining, but only that gentle stuff that racks up the humidity without really breaking the heat. Tra-la. One hour and a burger later, I am on the Virgin Trains service to Wolverhampton. Today, ladies and gentlemen, the service is stopping everywhere we can think of, AND traveling via Nuneaton. Oh, that'll be unexpected maintenance outside Birmingham then, will it?

Wonderful. That's a two hour trip turned three hours, then. Still, at least the Virgin Pandemonium Pandolino was reasonably empty so I could stretch out. Oh, yes. Air conditioned too, thank the gods. It rained quite heavily all the way north. And me without a coat on account of the previously stifling and all-pervasive heat. Tra-la.

Arrival, eventually, at Wolverhampton, with just enough time to be appalled by the station food and drink prices, but not enough time to be gouged by them, and it's on to the local dodger to Shrewsbury, the one that stops at every cattle-grid going west and occasionally backs up to make sure that the comfort levels don't top out. Still, at least we're moving.

Until Wellington, that is, when we unaccountably stop. The rain has stopped too, but it appears from collaring a functionary that there have been flash floods and that the track is both flooded along the line, and the water has shorted the points. There is much sage nodding from other functionaries, which is rather spoiled by the arrival from Shrewsbury - the direction we're headed - of a completely dry train.

Disgruntled driver, seeing his excuse blown out of the water, packs up sandwiches and gets back in the cab. We're off! Hurrah! More to the point, it becomes clear as we approach the supposedly flooded railway bridge, that it hasn't rained in that part of Shropshire since the early Devonian epoch. The driver, safely ensconced in the cab, refuses to be bantered by this and we continue heading west where I arrive to find my sister at the station ahead of me for the first time in recorded history.

And so on to Wem, where the temperatures are reassuringly stultifying and family members are either wilting in armchairs or bludgeoning the life out of each other on the flimsiest of pretexts.

Marvellous.

Still, on the journey home yesterday, I got back to Euston a full 15 minutes earlier than I expected to, and the driver apologised to everyone for only averaging 110mph on account of speed restrictions owing to the heat.

And it seems that I may have been over-optimistic about Dad, too, but I'll cover that at some other point.

Or not.

Chores to do now, which was the entire point of the additional day off.

Door to door in six and a half hours

So anyway, Saturday was the day I chose to wander back off to the homestead in Sunny Shropshire to check on the aged P. Normally I'd go on Friday, but getting the time off was awkward and anyway, Saturdays are cheaper for traveling.

That said, weekends are the time that anyone involved with public transport in the UK takes the piss out of their clientele. This weekend they did it to the extent that the 150-odd miles took 61/2 hours door-to-door, Whetstone to Wem.

The Tube started it off. The Northern Line was suspended between East Finchley and oh, I don't know. Suffice it to say that I tubed from Whetstone to East Finchley and then found my self on the rail replacement bus service. That at least took me to Euston, but it did so in a skittish and disorderly fashion, taking an additional 40 minutes or so to get me there. I arrived at Euston at 1.20pm. The train departure turned out to be precisely 1.20pm. So, a wait of one hour, then. Plenty of time to buy a ticket, except that there was a power failure. So no ticket. Buy that on the train then.

Meantime, outside it started raining, but only that gentle stuff that racks up the humidity without really breaking the heat. Tra-la. One hour and a burger later, I am on the Virgin Trains service to Wolverhampton. Today, ladies and gentlemen, the service is stopping everywhere we can think of, AND traveling via Nuneaton. Oh, that'll be unexpected maintenance outside Birmingham then, will it?

Wonderful. That's a two hour trip turned three hours, then. Still, at least the Virgin Pandemonium Pandolino was reasonably empty so I could stretch out. Oh, yes. Air conditioned too, thank the gods. It rained quite heavily all the way north. And me without a coat on account of the previously stifling and all-pervasive heat. Tra-la.

Arrival, eventually, at Wolverhampton, with just enough time to be appalled by the station food and drink prices, but not enough time to be gouged by them, and it's on to the local dodger to Shrewsbury, the one that stops at every cattle-grid going west and occasionally backs up to make sure that the comfort levels don't top out. Still, at least we're moving.

Until Wellington, that is, when we unaccountably stop. The rain has stopped too, but it appears from collaring a functionary that there have been flash floods and that the track is both flooded along the line, and the water has shorted the points. There is much sage nodding from other functionaries, which is rather spoiled by the arrival from Shrewsbury - the direction we're headed - of a completely dry train.

Disgruntled driver, seeing his excuse blown out of the water, packs up sandwiches and gets back in the cab. We're off! Hurrah! More to the point, it becomes clear as we approach the supposedly flooded railway bridge, that it hasn't rained in that part of Shropshire since the early Devonian epoch. The driver, safely ensconced in the cab, refuses to be bantered by this and we continue heading west where I arrive to find my sister at the station ahead of me for the first time in recorded history.

And so on to Wem, where the temperatures are reassuringly stultifying and family members are either wilting in armchairs or bludgeoning the life out of each other on the flimsiest of pretexts.

Marvellous.

Still, on the journey home yesterday, I got back to Euston a full 15 minutes earlier than I expected to, and the driver apologised to everyone for only averaging 110mph on account of speed restrictions owing to the heat.

And it seems that I may have been over-optimistic about Dad, too, but I'll cover that at some other point.

Or not.

Chores to do now, which was the entire point of the additional day off.

Toaster

Back from Finchley with new 'retro' toaster. I don't quite know what that means; does it only do retro toast and what is retro toast anyway? Should I only use bread I have to cut, or will it graciously tan sliced bread for me? I don't know and it is far too hot for me to be bothered to unbox the damned thing and try it out.

About ten days ago, our venerable toaster of esteemed and unknowable antiquity died in a puff of acrid white smoke. This was about a week after the charcoal crumbs of doom had been emptied out of it for the first time in living memory. That seemed to make sense at the time, but it increasingly seems that the toaster's entire raison d'étre had become to cherish these crumbs and shorn of this task, it just gave up the ghost: toasting simply wasn't enough for it any more.

Ah well, to all things an end.

I'm not entirely sure of the protocol for dispensing with elderly toasters. I strongly suspect that flushing it down the loo is impractical, but I have a feeling that the council will object to finding it in the rubbish bin. There are only two possible answers, therefore. I can either leave it on the kerb and set it free to wander the mean streets of London unheralded and unregarded: maybe it will meet up with the mattress of yore (see LJ entries passim), or I can do the obvious and drop it in next door's bin. That seems most sensible and an entirely humane fate for a toaster that has given sterling service these many years.

So, what else? Oh yes. The laundry has been laundered - though not as early as intended as the only thing not sweltering in heat around here this morning was the hot water tank. I ignited the remaining contents of the north sea gas fields under it just before lunch and just before I went to Finchley it was hot enough to do the laundry. So that's done.

Those few chores I can be arsed with are chored and I now intend to spend an unproductive hour or so lolloping on the bed listening to music. I may then return to the PC and watch some Stargate, having torrented that over night.

I seem to have lost the knack of days off.

(Why doesn't the spell checker like the word "kerb"?)

Toaster

Back from Finchley with new 'retro' toaster. I don't quite know what that means; does it only do retro toast and what is retro toast anyway? Should I only use bread I have to cut, or will it graciously tan sliced bread for me? I don't know and it is far too hot for me to be bothered to unbox the damned thing and try it out.

About ten days ago, our venerable toaster of esteemed and unknowable antiquity died in a puff of acrid white smoke. This was about a week after the charcoal crumbs of doom had been emptied out of it for the first time in living memory. That seemed to make sense at the time, but it increasingly seems that the toaster's entire raison d'étre had become to cherish these crumbs and shorn of this task, it just gave up the ghost: toasting simply wasn't enough for it any more.

Ah well, to all things an end.

I'm not entirely sure of the protocol for dispensing with elderly toasters. I strongly suspect that flushing it down the loo is impractical, but I have a feeling that the council will object to finding it in the rubbish bin. There are only two possible answers, therefore. I can either leave it on the kerb and set it free to wander the mean streets of London unheralded and unregarded: maybe it will meet up with the mattress of yore (see LJ entries passim), or I can do the obvious and drop it in next door's bin. That seems most sensible and an entirely humane fate for a toaster that has given sterling service these many years.

So, what else? Oh yes. The laundry has been laundered - though not as early as intended as the only thing not sweltering in heat around here this morning was the hot water tank. I ignited the remaining contents of the north sea gas fields under it just before lunch and just before I went to Finchley it was hot enough to do the laundry. So that's done.

Those few chores I can be arsed with are chored and I now intend to spend an unproductive hour or so lolloping on the bed listening to music. I may then return to the PC and watch some Stargate, having torrented that over night.

I seem to have lost the knack of days off.

(Why doesn't the spell checker like the word "kerb"?)

Soda

I am learning to despise Diet Coke with Lime.

That is all.

Soda

I am learning to despise Diet Coke with Lime.

That is all.