It’s been a busy week so far. As you know, we started with my triumphant return to the dance floor(!) on Monday. This was followed by jumping on the train to York on Tuesday morning to see Steve and Lesley (Cath’s brother in law and sister), and to get some work done. Now, I had to be back in plenty of time last night because we were going to see Michael Palin give a talk about his latest series called “The New Europe” which is about his travels around eastern Europe. I thought, if I catch the 3:30pm train, I’ll be in London at 5:30pm, and that’ll give me an hour and a half to walk half a mile to the venue – not a difficult one is it?

Well I got to York station and it was packed!Now, for all you Canadiaians out there, this is not a good sign, because it is usually a warning that someone has cocked up. It seemed that there was a bridge problem between York and Doncaster, and there was only one train an hour going south. The two previous London trains had been cancelled at York, and everyone was waiting for my train. Good job I didn’t need to leave earlier, eh?

Well I got on the train, and nobody was in my seat, so that saved a fraught conversation, and off the train trundled out of the station and towards the south of the country. It only started at about 50mph, but soon got down to 30mph, and eventually came to a grinding great halt in the middle of a load of fields. Now, I always see that as a bad sign on an intercity express train! Well we sat for quite a while, before the train started up, and at a heady 20mph finally got through the problem area and got into Doncaster about 40 minutes late (not bad on a 20 minute journey). At Doncaster, the guard/train manager/commercial director/your personal ticket collecting friend (delete as appropriate, I can’t keep up on these job titles) sent a message out saying that there was a second train two minutes behind us that would stop at Doncaster, so if you’re stood up, get on that because it’ll get in to London only 2 minutes after us. Now, I had a seat, so I decided to stay where I was, but quite a few people who were stood up decided to get off.

Out of Doncaster we carried on down the line, the estimated time of arrival at Kings Cross was now a heady 6:39pm – only 20 minutes before the start of the talk!!! Now, I hate being late for things, so I started to get pretty annoyed by now. Not half as annoyed as I was when we stopped further down the line at Retford. We were told we were waiting there to let the other train pass us. It was decided that this express express would got straight from Doncaster to London without stopping, and instead of following us as they previously said, it was going to get in at London 15 minutes before us!! I did swear ever so slightly under my breath at this point so as not to upset the woman from Tesco’s supermarket in Newcastle who was sat next to me and was travelling to Spalding to “experience potato picking” – I told her not to put her hand through the green mushy ones, not without a gas mask on, anyway. Actually as I sit here writing this I realise that she’ll be in the field right now enjoying herself. I have to say, there are worse jobs on the land.

Right, back to the train. I decided to visit the toilet before we pulled in to London, as I didn’t think there would be time afterwards. I pressed the door close button and watched it roll around until it was within an inch of closing before it changed it’s mind and opened up again. Good job I wasn’t assuming anything eh? I reckoned that it wasn’t working so I started walking away, only to be met by the eastern European cleaning lady who barked “What’s up?” – “The door doesn’t close,” I told her. “It does!” she replied. Well I went back in and she shouted at me trying to tell me how to work a toilet door. I gave her what I hoped was a withering look, and told her that I had had experience closing doors. Of course, when you do it a second time with the person looking on the bloody thing shuts properly, doesn’t it?

So we trundled along and finally got into the big smoke (hmm, I did notice that nobody was brave enough to check our tickets, wonder why?). I had thought ahead, so had moved to the front of the train so that I could be first at the taxi rank. As soon as the doors were unlocked I shot out of the train like a speeding bullet. Luckily I knew where the taxi rank was, so I raced down to it – it wasn’t there! No signs to say where it was either, only a sign that said that the station staff were there to help you – except they weren’t. Ok, I’ll race outside, the taxi rank wasn’t there, but, there was a taxi dropping off, so I jumped in, and managed to get to the venue at 5:50pm – ironically I was there a few minutes before Cath.

Sooo, Michael Palin, was it worth the hassle? Well, in short no. It was interesting enough, but it was a talk with a slide show. The lighting was pretty poor, so you could hardly see him, and he tried to cram too much in so there weren’t too many humorous moments. He was also running so far out of time that at the end of the last slide he pretty much bolted out of the room to get ready for the book signing. So although we were pleased we’d gone (to say we had), I don’t think we’d do it again.

There you go, bit disappointing, but life’s apparently like a box of chocolates or something. We ended up going home and practising some of our steps ready for next week. We do it in our socks so we don’t annoy the neighbours. We must look like right buggers…