The 10.30 from Euston is currently a month late...

Despite inventing them and running them since the mid nineteenth century, this country of ours seems to have forgotten (if ever it knew) how to run a railway system.

The words 'temporary' and 'continuing' in this article on the repairs to the power disruptions at Wembley to the West Coast Line do not bode well...


Webcam showing actual progress of train

This is particularly true as they will try to minimise disruption during the week and concentrate it at weekends. Guess who is booked to use that line next weekend? I suppose it's some chav ripping up and making off with the copper again.

...and still they bloom!

This afternoon we did a bit of light gardening, just a bit of tidying up and late planting. We have put a large wooden pot with a Wisteria against the trellis outside the kitchen in the hope that it is not too shady (in the summer it should be okay) and that we will, over the next few years, get a massive flowery bloom in the summer once the clematis has had its day.

Fingers crossed.

I advanced on the roses with a view to dead heading them for the winter and although I managed to cut some of it back, I hadn't the heart to finish the job; there are still buds everywhere and there is still the chance of further flowering provided the frosts keep off. I know very little about gardening, but it seems rather late in the season to me, but there you go.

I took this photo of a particularly splendid little specimen on the smaller of the two roses we have in the garden. I have since sliced it off and we have it in the kitchen where we can see it. Being at work all day and it being dark when we get home, the rose would be lost to us, so we thought we'd have the benefit for a few days:



Further down the garden the onions we planted a few weeks ago, with a view to harvesting them in the spring, have started putting out shoots already.

The world is going turvy topsy.