Journey to Norwich
After walking three miles to work, spending two hours there, and walking three miles home (not the best bit of planning I've ever done), I gathered my various bits and pieces together, and trudged off for a further mile to the local railway station.
For the first time in living memory the man selling tickets on the train not only reached me before I changed trains, but also sold me the correct ticket. When the ticket actually worked in the turnstiles at Paddington an hour later, I was ready to start hanging bunting up, and arranging a brass band.
The universe has an uncanny way of bringing balance to the british transport system, and it happened when I arrived at Liverpool Street station for my connecting train to Norwich. I heard somebody ahead of me shouting “Oh Bollocks”, and looked up at the displaysmost of which read “cancelled”. An announcer was busy telling everybody in the station what was going on, but given the remarkable acoustic properties of Liverpool Street Station, it sounded like a small child had been playing with the reverb settings on the synthesiser user to play the Doctor Who soundtrack.
After a brief walk around the station, I found a sweet spot where I could just about discern that somebody had jumped in front of a trainapparently at a critical part of the track that basically knocked out all services on the east coast. For half an hour, nobody was going anywhereexcept me. I was headed straight for a cafe, where I bought the cheapest drink going, and sat watching the mayhem unfold. I say “cheapest drink”, but this was London, so it equated to buying everybody in the pub at home a drink. Ouch.
After twenty minutes or so, the lure of staring obsessively at the information displays grew too strong, and I joined the rest of the lemmings. A lady crouched down next to me to text her friend and I had to look the other way. I'm not going to describe exactly what I shouldn't have seen, save to say she was a very nice lady indeed, and I was a model gentleman. Plus you can't unsee things like that.
Finally the call went out for our half hour late train, and wisened traveller that I am, I ran like hell towards the turnstiles, and passed hoards of lazypeople who gave up walking after perhaps 100 yards. Tipa train with 9 carriages is about 600 yards long. I found a wonderfully spacious seat, stowed my bags, and relaxed for the first time all day. Five minutes later the train guard pleaded with the lazysardines packed into the first two carriages to move further down the train, because there was ample seating along it's length. I never saw any of them.
Arrival in Norwich was made entirely predictable dueto the wonder that is Google Maps. I had visited the destination via the internet the night before, so knew exactly where I was going the moment I stepped from the stationwhich made the lemmings standing around looking lost all the more annoying as I tried valiantly to step around them without being walked into.
The hotel room is great. It's a Premier Inn. It's clean, and the broadband is stunning for a change. The only downers so far are that the chicken salad I had in the restaurant was horrible, the lamp doesn't work on the desk (they never do), and the USB socket above the desk for the television doesn't work. Pants.
As is tradition with “me staying anywhere for work”, I wandered down the road to the local supermarket, and stocked up on fruit juice and snacks. I'm not sitting in the dark of the room, wondering what to do next. A few hours of garbage television, or a ridiculously late night surfind the web on a 20Mbit internet connection? Which would you choose ?