Premature

Yes, I knew I was cursing it by banging on about it being the last time I had to do that fucking train journey.

Life, you utter, utter bastard.

I got up at the usual time, did all the normal domestic gubbins – preparing breakfast, letting Hound out into the back garden, blah blah – then checked the local news for travel. Uh-oh. “Severe problems on the Reading – Waterloo route, due to over-running engineering works”. Arses. Check the train times on the XDA (I love useful little services like the train times via Kizoom) and yep, my normal train isn’t just delayed, it’s fucking cancelled.

As are lots of others from earlier in the morning. So I could get the (still delayed) 8:02, but that’ll be rigid with epically pissed-off people, and I just can’t be bothered. So I leave the house at 8:10, get the 8:30 train instead, which was (initially) a bloody good plan. You see, the 8:02 had actually been delayed by twenty minutes, so it was absolutely stuffed with people. Thankfully, not one of them had the brains to say “Hang on, there’s another one in ten minutes, and that’ll be just about empty, as everyone and his Uncle’s on this one” So the 8:30 was pretty quiet for the most part.

However. The engineering works were still over-running, so we ended up fucking about, getting to Twickenham, then re-rerouting through Kingston (wherever the shit that is) and Wimbledon in order to get to Clapham Junction – and because everything was going that route, we travelled at a snail’s pace.

Eventually, at 10:30 we got to Clapham Junction. At which point the service was cancelled, because someone had collapsed on the train, and needed medical attention. Now, I’m not a ghoul, and it was obviously pretty severe – put it this way, it’s the first time I’ve ever heard the guard put a call out for “any medical personnel on the train”. I just can’t believe the number of self-centred smug fuckers who just tutted and sighed at this news, like whoever had collapsed had done it just to spite them, you know, because the train was already late, so why not collapse, and put their day right in the shitter? Cunts.

Anyway, eventually got to Kings Cross, and a quiet train direct to Cambridge. Four and a quarter hours for a journey that normally takes two and a half at worst.