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Day of Commuting Hell 2008
Sep. 13th, 2008 04:11 pmThe sun is out!
Yesterday, the sun was most definitely in. It rained hard in the Midlands all day and at 6pm, an hour from home, the train manager announced that the train was terminating at Leamington due to flooding on the line at Fenny Compton, wherever that is. So the entire train disembarked onto the platform, whereupon there was mayhem.
I had a ghastly flashback to Day of Commuting Hell in July last year. Ugh. Anyway, I leaped into a taxi with six others, as there was a promise of actual trains at Banbury, which is the next stop and about 20 miles away.
The taxi driver was patient and tolerant, but I started to get a bad feeling when we went off the stationary motorway and began to try to make our way on the backroads. Soon, they were packed with cars all doing the same thing. Worse, water was sheeting off the fields and hills around us. We hit a tailback, with people shouting there were deeper floods ahead and we had to turn back. Floods behind us, floods in front, lots of cars.
I began to feel even worse and began to imagine how it would be to spend the night stranded on an A-road in the middle of nowhere with six strangers. Well, they became less and less strange as the journey wore on. The man I was sharing the front seat with (it was a big taxi) was an impatient organic chemist with a four year old daughter. Also, a woman who was very susceptible to cold and sat with her hood pulled tight around her face the entire journey.
We went back to the motorway, which was moving at a crawl, and made it to Banbury, where we waited on the platform of the damned in utter confusion while they tried to find a train that would take us to Oxford and beyond. Finally, after a long cold wait, one came! I did a little dance and no one complained when we went to sit in the first class carriage. We got back to Reading a mere four hours late, which is nothing compared to last year. But I was never so pleased to be home and not stuck on a dark wet road in the middle of nowhere.
The cold woman, who was a remarkably unlined fifty years old, told us her secret of youth was to put drops of rose, myrrh and frankincense in her night cream. I might actually try that. Also,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
new_kate, a recommendation for a decent central hotel in London: The City Inn. I have the details if you still need them.
Yesterday, the sun was most definitely in. It rained hard in the Midlands all day and at 6pm, an hour from home, the train manager announced that the train was terminating at Leamington due to flooding on the line at Fenny Compton, wherever that is. So the entire train disembarked onto the platform, whereupon there was mayhem.
I had a ghastly flashback to Day of Commuting Hell in July last year. Ugh. Anyway, I leaped into a taxi with six others, as there was a promise of actual trains at Banbury, which is the next stop and about 20 miles away.
The taxi driver was patient and tolerant, but I started to get a bad feeling when we went off the stationary motorway and began to try to make our way on the backroads. Soon, they were packed with cars all doing the same thing. Worse, water was sheeting off the fields and hills around us. We hit a tailback, with people shouting there were deeper floods ahead and we had to turn back. Floods behind us, floods in front, lots of cars.
I began to feel even worse and began to imagine how it would be to spend the night stranded on an A-road in the middle of nowhere with six strangers. Well, they became less and less strange as the journey wore on. The man I was sharing the front seat with (it was a big taxi) was an impatient organic chemist with a four year old daughter. Also, a woman who was very susceptible to cold and sat with her hood pulled tight around her face the entire journey.
We went back to the motorway, which was moving at a crawl, and made it to Banbury, where we waited on the platform of the damned in utter confusion while they tried to find a train that would take us to Oxford and beyond. Finally, after a long cold wait, one came! I did a little dance and no one complained when we went to sit in the first class carriage. We got back to Reading a mere four hours late, which is nothing compared to last year. But I was never so pleased to be home and not stuck on a dark wet road in the middle of nowhere.
The cold woman, who was a remarkably unlined fifty years old, told us her secret of youth was to put drops of rose, myrrh and frankincense in her night cream. I might actually try that. Also,
new_kate, a recommendation for a decent central hotel in London: The City Inn. I have the details if you still need them.