Categories: ramblings
Date: 14 April 2008 15:06:57
Off to Cumbria for the weekend (birthdays, 40th wedding anniversaries, that sort of thing). We had A Plan, RosaDaddy and I. A Splendid Plan, in fact. Many splendoured, and shining like a shiny thing.
[Insert fun weekend here - family, lovely B&B, query food poisoning from ghastly hostelry*, more family, different family, sheep, mountains, extremely free-range chickens, etc].
RosaDaddy, he of the ninja driving skillz, drove from Cumbria to Oxford, whereupon I departed the fiery chariot and wandered up the steps at Oxford station. I saw the dread sign “engineering works. Buses thataway,” and quoth, verily, “oh, bugger.”
“Not to worry,” quoth a nice man, “that bus there is departing imminently, and in ten minutes you shall be ensconced, I tell thee, ensconced, and heading Didcot-wards.”
Only he told me Lies. Big, fat ones, such as to make people gasp and stretch their eyes.
Fifteen minutes later, I am no closer to the bus, and thus no closer to Didcot. And, enter stage left, a parcel of pissed up Arsenal fans, singing (may their heads turn blue and fall off at inconvenient moments).
“I ain't taking that lot nowhere,” utters the bus driver. Which, you know, is fair enough. I wouldn't want to be forced to listen to off-key, drunken singing, with the ever-present threat of Something Horrible and Unhygienic happening, either.
There was Shoutiness, and Carrying On, and Language (I hid. Behind a pillar. I don't do Shoutiness, unless it's me).
End result - pissed up footie fans (may they never walk through a door again without clouting some part of their anatomy, painfully, on the frame) all corralled onto one bus (where, apparently, they proceeded to do disgusting things), and us (sober, respectable Pillars of the Community to a man woman) on another bus.
Their bus was the fast bus. They got to Didcot in bags of time. We were on the slow bus. We got to Didcot just in time to miss the last but one train to London, but in plenty of time for the last train. Only the last train gets into London at 0107 in the morning.
I confess to wibbling, just a teeny bit, at this point.
Fortunately, a friend who goes by the moniker of GoAnneGo lives in Henley, and she came gallumphing to the rescue in the Super Saab, so I spent the night in Henley and came to London this morning. On a short-formed train with not enough seats.
And I've just checked - on the buses, at that time of night, from Paddington to Rosamundi Towers, is a further 90 minutes to get home, minimum.
Oh, and today's Helpful Advice is aimed at men on deserted railway station entrances.
The correct response when your enquiry of “where are you going?” is answered with “a friend's coming to pick me up,” is “are you ok?”
You do not proceed to repeatedly and aggressively ask “where are you going?” until the object of your questioning finally snaps and says “I have given up on your abysmal rail service for this evening. All you need to know, and all I'm going to tell you, is 'I have a friend coming to pick me up.'”
*Avoid the High Cross Inn in Broughton, by the way - my first meal was returned, sharpish, to the kitchen, because it was mouldy. Whilst they had the grace not to charge me for the replacement, it was still unpleasant.
An absolute contrast to the Salutation Inn, where we had fantastic food and wonderful service for 19 of us on Sunday lunchtime.