Wednesday 27 December 2017

12 Days of Christmas: 3

Let's Go Out!

Feels like we've been inside since the eighteenth century. Also, I have lost track of which day I'm on.

Usually, I struggle with Time. I can just manage if the first question I ask on opening my eyes is, 'What day is it?' and the answer is a day I recognise. Take this routine away from me, and I am hopelessly  lost. Call a Monday by a different day, and this is like putting a blindfold on me, spinning me round, and pushing me off a cliff.

Must be time to go out. Then to the British Museum!

This is a journey, like each day, now fraught with danger. Is London Midland NorthbyNorthWest about to do any of the following? It is like a Hitchcock suspense film! Will they:

a) Cancel all the trains
b) Cancel the train we arrive to catch, so we stand on the platform for 45 mins, at temperature 1C.
c) Start, then stop the train we are on, for two hours, maybe more, who knows? We can while away the time watching our lives fade into the distance.
d) Start and stop, start and stop, start and stop. Our plan to get off at Cheddington and walk home seems viable.
e) Break down, either going to London, or coming out of London.
f) Take us to London then cancel all the trains home, so we must crawl home via StPancras to Bedford and hitch a lift across country with someone who says 'It's alright, I'm a headteacher'.
g) Refuse to sell us tickets (ticket office shut, machine not working) then try and sell us, on the train, Group Saver Discount Day Return Flexible Journey at a total cost of £175 for the five of us, thus prompting a ten-minute argument with the ticket man while the other passengers join in.
h) Throw everyone off the train at an unknown station in the dark, then drive the train off, while all the miserable passengers huddle round the solitary swaying light bulb positioned over the closed station building, which offers no facilities anyway.

We were lucky! Today, (h) happened to the ingoing passengers, not us, and we avoided (b) because we were late.

The Scythians stayed put while we went down to meet them, but if you are keen to catch them before they depart, then hurry up.

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