Sorry for the lack of posts – I’ve just been far too busy to find time to blog. Every week recently I’ve had an all-day meeting in London, and it’s leaving me exhausted. One upside though is that, rather than getting a hideously early train from Malvern, I’ve gone down to London the night before and stayed with family – either my sister or my parents. It had been ages since I’d seen any of them, so it has been good to have an excuse to catch up.
One of the trips turned out to be extended longer than I’d anticipated. I’d stayed the night before with my sister in the suburbs, caught a commuter train into central London, and attended my meeting. In the afternoon, I got to Paddington in good time to get an overcrowded, peak-hours train home, only to find that there were no trains from the station at all. There was an “incident on the line” near Slough, blocking all four tracks, and there were no trains in either direction! The train I’d planned on catching was first delayed, then cancelled. Even if the next one did manage to run, it was going to be horribly delayed and totally over-crowded, and I’d be lucky to get home before 10pm. I decided to cut my losses and stay over an extra night. But I knew that my sister was out that evening, so I couldn’t really go back uninvited to her house and wait for her to get home. Instead, I phoned my parents out of the blue, and invited myself there for the night. After all, surely that’s what parents are for, even if one’s nearly fifty?! I had a very pleasant evening with them, and then caught a train back to Malvern the next day. I then spent the rest of the week frantically catching up on the work I’d missed – bid deadlines don’t slip just because the trains have stopped running……
