5450/18370
No problems on the train journey back. Which was just as annoying as the delays as it barely left me any time at all to do the work I was meant to do. I will complain to Ian Virgin about this. You can never please Richard Herring.
I had done a weekend upgrade and was travelling first class on the way home. It had only cost me about £15 more and you get some “free” coffee, juice, fruit and a little pannetonne. Plus use of the first class lounge (which I didn’t have time to use). I idly wondered whether it might be worth buying the cheapest first class ticket possible and then not go anywhere and just sit in the first class lounge all day eating free pastries and drinking tiny cans of coke whilst reading free magazine and see if you could make a profit. I will try it another day.
There were a group of young lads who were out on some kind of day trip, possibly football or stag related. The train was at 10.30am but they immediately got about six bottles of nice champagne (and then weirdly another bag of tiny bottles of prosecco) out on to their table and started drinking. And then telling stories loudly to each other and then laughing at full volume as if they had just heard the funniest story in the world. Or rather like toddlers who don’t understand a joke but want to look like they get it and just laugh much too loudly. Fair enough they were having a day out and they wanted to have fun, but they had that air of not giving a fuck about anyone else and God help us if anyone asked them to pipe down a bit. And as much as I’d have liked a peaceful journey I was self-aware enough to know that in my younger days I had probably done similarly show-offy things, without perhaps realising how intimidating they are to other people.
When the train stopped at Crewe I looked out of the window to see Duncan from Blue walking along the platform. It’s a bit sad that as his fame has slightly receded he now draws attention to himself by hanging around in places that he rhymes with.
For some reason I suddenly started thinking about the old viral video,
“Too Many Cooks” . I looked it up and watched it twice. It’s even better than I remembered (though I'd quite like to see a version that went on just as long where they just stuck with the original premised and didn't pastiche other kinds of shows)and I am sure they’ve added some new bits to it since I last looked. No wonder I didn’t have time to work. And kudos to whoever it was on Twitter who’d spotted the first appearance of the creepy dude at the 20 seconds mark.
My itinerary predicted I would be back in Hertfordshire by 2.30ish, but that was taking me in on a slow train. I spotted there was a fast train about 15 minutes before the slow one and wondered if I could walk between Euston and Kings Cross quick enough to save myself about half an hour. As long as the first train was on time I felt confident I could (having been forced to dash between basically these two stations only yesterday). I did it with 7 minutes to spare and barely had to run at all. I keep beating the system.
Of course it just meant I had 30 more minutes of wiping sore bottoms and dealing with unruly two-year-olds. But I can think of nothing better.
Apart from snorting cocaine off the breasts/chests of some 21 year olds. But, you know, I did that last night, so I can’t complain.
