Do you have the time to listen to me whine?

[venta]

Argh. Once upon a time, my ability to break trains was legendary. Lenny, who worked on the platforms at Darlington station, used to ask my parents to warn him when I was coming home, because he knew there would be massive rail disruption that night.

I thought, in recent years, the trains and I had reached an understanding. Apparently not. We are without car at present, and I have been late for a variety of things because of act of train.

Today the plan was: train from Ealing at 10:46, change onto a fast train at Slough, get to Oxford in time to catch the one o'clock bus to Katie's, ready for a Mabel practice at two.

And lo, the gods pointed and laughed, and twiddled with the signals in Langley. I may get to Oxford in time for the two o'clock bus. Or I may not, in which case I will catch the next one and arrive at half three for a practice which finishes at four. Excellent.

On the plus side, when my train finally pulled in I sat down opposite dr_bob and we had a nice hour-and-a-quarter chat during our twenty-minute journey.

Comments

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I was doing that the opposite way (ish), trying to get from Oxford to Newbury despite Langley signals/broken down trains etc. It got particularly comic (read: we are all suicidal now) when we got to Theale where we had a train but no driver. The driver that turned up unreasonably insisted on taking his train back to Reading, despite 100+ pleas to the contrary...

It got so bad I ended up getting a lift back to Didcot, where trains were only 20 mins late rather than chancing the replacement buses/trains/who knows what Newbury might have offered.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, in an attempt to arrive before everything was over, I ended up catching a bus to Kidlington and phoning for (car-based) rescue!