Don't Spare the Horses
The greater part of the afternoon turned into a clock watching exercise, where I tinkered with a mountain of source code while trying not to get too sucked into it, for fear of losing track of time, missing my train, and adding hours to my journey home.
It got to five past three in the afternoon, and I made my excuses to leave. A meeting could have happened that would have sucked me in for the next hour. After gathering my things, I wandered down to reception of the client offices, and asked if they could get me a taxi to the station. Normally this would involve a lengthy session of wandering up and down outside while waiting for the taxi as it gets caught up in the school run, but not today apparently. After perhaps five minutes the car pulled around the corner.“I didn't expect you to get here so quicklyI must have got in ahead of the school runs?”“We haven't gone back to school up here yet”What? So their Easter term isn't based around Easter? How does that work?The driver turned out to be quite entertainingregaling me with a story about the owner of a Subaru Impreza he once saw filling his pride and joy with unleaded fuelonly to see it explode before it left the forecourt.
In no time at all we arrived at the station, and I wandered down to the seating adjacent to the rubbish bin, halfway along the platformstrategically chosen because I knew the “unreserved” carriage of my train to London would arrive there. By “unreserved”, I of course mean there are no ticket allocationsnot that all the people with no manners or tact sit in that carriage.
Fun fact for youmy nose is killing mesitting in an air conditioned office for several days kind of turns everything to concrete inside your head. I'm going to need masonry tools to chisel the dried snot out when I get home.
The fields are whizzing past outsideafter our next stop, we proceed directly to London, without passing Go. I've lucked into boarding the fast train (must remember for next time!). The train is only half-full too, so I have room to swing a cat. I've never actually seen anybody swing a cat around, mind youand I suppose they mean the weapon (cat of nine tails), rather than the feline mammal. Thinking about it though, I bet if you swung a cat around tied to a rope, it would be a pretty good weapon, wouldn't itclaws out, howling meows as it went. Our cats at home are pretty good at disassembling any small creature that crosses their path (if they can be bothered to get off their ass and mangle it).
Ok. The train has filled up ever-so-slightly. About a million people got on at the last station, and are now fighting over the table seats that I carefully avoided.
Perhaps it really is time to read a book. Or listen to a podcast. I imagine everybody that has tripped over the blog recently has become fed up with these long, meandering bouts of navel gazing. I'll let you in on a secret thoughI'm writing this on the laptop. I'm only writing it on the laptop because then I can run the USB cable to the phone, which will charge it. The tables have power socketsthe normal chairs don't. So here I am, typing this in order to stop the laptop falling asleep, so it will quietly charge my phone from it's battery. I turned the phone to “Aeroplane Mode” a few minutes ago too, to give it half a chance of actually charging, instead of using the battery up as fast it charges it.
Oh. My. God. The man adjacent to me on the carriage has just got up and wandered off down the train, leaving his coat, and bag on the chair. Anybody could wander up and rifle through them. Not that they would, but they could. I wonder if anybody would challenge them if they did?He has returned nowand seems to be eating a bag of crisps as noisily as he possibly can. Literally opening his mouth wide, cramming a handful in, and then munching them up as spectacularly as possible. Oh, this is good. He now appears to be trying to brew a cup of tea, but has nowhere to put the teabag after taking it out of his cupdangling it around over the table, dripping everywhere, while dithering. Where do these people come from?I could do with a bar of chocolate. While waiting for the train at the station I bought one of the ridiculously expensive sandwiches from the shop, and thought I would be all worthy, and not pick up any chocolate. I'm a fool.
Do you know I think he really is trying to make the other passengers explode. I've never seen or heard anybody eat like him. If he starts slurping the tea, I don't think I'll be able to suppress the laughter. I'm sure the businessman sat opposite is teetering on the edge of starting a fight. He looks like the kind of angry little man that would start a scene, with his bald head, glasses, and short sleeved shirt.
Oh, let's adding sniffing loudly while eating with mouth wide open to his lexicon of appalling behaviours. The strange thing is he looks quite smartit just doesn't add up at all.
Phone has reached 70% charge. Laptop is down to 32%. I wonder if this is like transferring the electricity between the two? You can tell I never did electronics or physics at college, can't you.
If I write thirty more words, this post will get to the thousand word mark. That's got to be worth doing, hasn't it? Do I get a certificate, and a cake? I rather think I should.