Blah Blah Flowers

And on the eighth day your God rose again and looked about Him.

Well, I know that Jesus rose after three days but I thought "why go through all that if you can't have a lie-in? Bollocks to that." Anyway, had a couple of days in Manchester with friends and a couple of days in Wales with family. And while I appreciate Summer starting, did it really have to go into full-on mental mode in the same week I have to do a fair bit of travelling by poorly air-conditioned transport? The train up to Manc 8 days ago was okay, though I didn't realise until halfway through the jopurney that there are trains which are express and those that aren't, and that I was on one of the ones that wasn't. Oops.

Then on Thursday down to Catford in South London where my Dad drove me around showing me some of the places his side of the family lived at (more on that some point in the future), then on Friday a ten hour drive to North Wales to spend a couple of days with him and Mum on their holiday before my journey back yesterday. Boy that was fun, National Rail on a Sunday.

My journey, according to the ticket I ordered, was SUPPOSED to be Pwllheli to Machynlleth to Birmingham New Street to London Euston. The ticket inspector on the Pwllheli train told me that the train was actually going to Birmingham New Street, so I didn't get off at Machynlleth. However, at some point past that stop it was announced that the train was actually going to be stopping at Wolverhampton. Not a huge problem, Wolverhampton is on a line with both Brum and London stations. So when we disembarked I saw on the board that a train on another platform was the London Euston train. So I dashed around and threw myself on only, as we pulled out, to be told it was the Plymouth train. (For non-UK readers, Plymouth = nowhere near London) Luckily the next stop was Birmingham New Street so I was able to wait around for best part of an hour and then get a later Euston train. I've got a feeling this was an Express train down from Manchester so only got in about an hour later than my original train would have been, so that was some nice symmetry.

I can also recommend as travelling music Orbital's 'In Sides' album. It's coming on for ten years old but when you stink to high heaven because of running around trying to catch the right train on very hot days nothing beats coming into your home station as the album draws to a close.