Preparing to Travel
It's just gone 2pm. My other half is at a rugby tournament with Miss 15, Miss 18 is in her room filling out various health and safety assessments for her new job, Miss 13 is in the lounge playing monopoly with a friend that has stayed with us the entire weekend, and I'm packing a bag to travel to the other end of the country for the better part of the week. Oh – and the clocks went forwards this morning, so getting up at 8am wasn't really sleeping in after all.
I need to get to the railway station by 4pm. The first train will take me to Maidenhead, then a second to Paddington, the underground through to Kings Cross, and finally onwards to Leeds in the north of England. I'll be staying in the Holiday Inn Express at the “Armouries” – a huge museum dedicated to various methods of fighting and killing each other the years (fun!). I've stayed there countless times, and never set foot in the museum itself. It's always shut when I walk past.
It always amuses me (or rather annoys me) when people presume that travelling with work means seeing anything of the world. Over the next few days all I will see is railways stations, packed trains, my hotel room, a number of conference rooms, and some busy roads I try to cross in a major city without getting run over. Oh – nearly forgot – I'll also see the supermarket just along from the hotel, and the pizza place around the corner.
I'm always a little torn when travelling with work – while staying in my room with pre-made food from a supermarket is an attractive option (in a “can't be bothered to deal with the world” kind of way), I know that sitting in a restaurant alone will provide endless stories to tell on the blog – even if nothing happens, you can always imagine the back-story of people that cross your path.
Anyway. Time is marching on. I should make sure I've packed everything.