Home from the western front
After a couple of days pretending to be a knowledgeable consultant about all manner of clever things, I am home this eveningnot before something of an adventure en-route though.
Who knew that it was perfectly acceptable behaviour to turn your mobile phone speakers up to full volume, and listen to music in the middle of a train carriage, and then swear profusely and unintelligibly among your friends ? Certainly not the group of obvious young soldiers that boarded the train at Andover. A pretty mother asked them if they could quieten things down a bit, and they roundly shouted at her to “FUCK OFF UP THE QUIET CARRIAGE IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT”.
I can put up with a lot, but that pretty much crossed every line going in my head. Thankfully the train rolled into a station as they continued to express their disbelief that anybody had questioned their behaviour. Remarkably, their consternation made grammatical (and hilariously profane) sense, unlike their earlier conversations.
The rest of the journey was altogether more mundanemaking connections from train to train, growing steadily closer to home, checking in on Foursquare, and messaging my better half at each station to relay my progress to the children.
Arriving at our home station, I stepped from the carriage and found myself towards the back of the crowd. A late twenties guy in front of me quietly made his way along the platform, and began gathering pace; a girl stepped from the crowd, and ran towards him. I couldn't help smiling as they embraced each other, and then made their way with the crowd, hands tightly clasped together, a spring in both their steps.
After a few minutes walk through cold night air, puffing clouds of steam along the way, I arrived at our front door. For a moment I considered letting myself in, but then thought better of itknocking loudly on the wood instead. An avalanche of little voices came tumbling through the house.“IT'S DAD! IT'S DAD! DAD'S HOME! EVERYBODY! DAD'S HOME!“One voice became two as they grew closer, and suddenly the door burst open. It's actually quite difficult to walk with a little girl attached to each leg. It's also quite difficult to listen to two high speed deliveries of the last few days happenings.
Perhaps half an hour after dumping my bags the door knocked again, and good friends arrived with pizza, wine, conversation, laughter, and a perfect end to a crazy week.
It's good to be home.