Hello Splodgies!
Today, I made the mistake of putting my packed lunch in the fridge at the office with the apple still in the lunchbox. This meant that I had to perform ye-olde-fruit-on-radiator-trick to make sure that I didn't get brain freeze or tooth freeze from biting into an extremely cold apple when it came to lunch time. Sadly there was nobody else in the office today to witness this, so I took a picture:
I came back to Lancaster after work and had a most irksome time on the trains trying to get home. Firstly, the train was more expensive than I had anticipated because I was going via Carlisle instead of Barrow-in-Furness. Then literally 17 seconds before I got on the train, I realised I could've saved most of the difference if I split the ticket. Then when I got to Carlisle an hour later, I found that my train was delayed by over an hour. With my phone and my Nintendo DS both out of battery and not having a book with me because I had expected this to be a swift journey, I decided the best thing to do would be to go in search of a plug socket that I could charge my phone at. I went to the pumpkin cafe on platform 3. To all my foreign friends, this isn't nearly as charming as it sounds; pumpkin cafe is a chain of railway station cafes that sell over-priced, substandard sandwiches and baked goods and mediocre coffee. It was very busy in there, probably because of all the cancelled trains. I spotted a plug right at the bottom of the skirting board. There was a table nearby, but a man was already sat at it. I asked if I could join him and he said that I could- so I sat there and after realising that my phone charger was too big to fit in the socket (it was literally ON the floor, only a perfectly square plug would've fit in it) I explained my predicament to him. He told me that he was also supposed to be going on the London Euston train, but wasn't too worried as his train wasn't due for ages anyway.
So I went off in search of a post box instead, having a letter I needed to send. This mission was extremely short lived, because there was one just around the corner from the cafe along the platform form the cafe that I had neglected to notice earlier. Probably because my eyes were looking at their usual level, but rather up in shock at the departure board that was telling me that I would have to wait longer than the duration of my journey before I was able to get on a train to my destination. I sat outside on their faux-grass with the little white fence and played ukulele for a little while because it was so noisy in the station that hardly anyone would be able to hear it- I couldn't even hear it myself unless I played a little louder than usual. But in the end it got cold so I decided to retreat to the warmth of the waiting room. It was full of about 60 people, all in silence, nobody talking to each other. I had to climb over a table to get to a socket to plug in my phone, but still nobody was saying anything. It had to be one of the most determined-to-be-British circumstances I've ever been in; everyone was feeling grumbly because of all the cancelled trains, but at the same time nobody wanted to talk to strangers in the waiting room AND everyone wanted to maintain a stiff upper lip and get through the worst of this train cancellation without displaying any emotion and thus risking any potential embarrassment.
When I eventually managed to get on a train, things were much nicer. I met Brett The Friendly Cockney, who I had a chat with most of the way back to Lancaster, apart from when his boss mysteriously turned up and started telling him how to fill in some forms. as he was using the plug socket on my side of the table because his was broken, he let me charge my phone from his laptop, and pulled out an ENORMOUS (and I mean literally 2m long) USB cable for an iPhone 4. Turns out he's just the sort of person who carries that sort of thing with him. Good for you, Brett The Friendly Cockney. Good for you.
The reason I was coming back to Lancaster in the first place was so that I would be able to go to Ollie's birthday lunch tomorrow and when I got home I found
Ruthie had made this delish delight for me:
.....mmmm.... pizza! And my new t-shirt was waiting for me when I arrived. So that was pretty great too!
And when I finally came upstairs to the room I sit in writing now, I saw my lovely birds again. Ah! I forget them when I'm gone, but I love seeing them when I come back :)
Today, this is my face upon hearing how delayed my train was going to be:
See you tomorrow!
-Rosa
x
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