All Together Again

Friday, saw me  make what should have been a quick two and a half hour train journey to Yorkshire to pick up LB from her grandma's house, except all didn't quite go as planned.

I got myself to King's Cross on time and boarded the train and all was going okay for the first half of the journey.

I had my phone plugged in charging (just as well as I needed it later!), I was enjoying tea and biscuits, a sausage butty and reading a copy of The Times, which formed part of my first class ticket entitlement.

The only discomfort was the sun shining in on me, but the window curtain soon put paid to that until it was high enough in the sky not to be a problem.

Then suddenly we drew to a halt and several announcements were made.

Staff were discretely running up and down the carriage.  I knew then that something serious had happened and it had. There had been a fatality on the line ahead of us and we weren't able to continue with the planned journey.

As a consequence, the train returned to a previous station in order to change lines to circumvent the incident and consequently the journey took an extra two hours.

Thankfully for me, I was nice and comfortably ensconced in the First Class carriage, but even so, it did make the journey rather a long one.

However, I was mindful that this was a small problem compared with facing the catastrophic news of someone's life having ended, so complaining seemed inappropriate somehow.  I heard some slightly less sympathetic comments from another passenger, which is a little sad really and just goes to prove how inured and unsympathetic we have become as a nation, with regard to others' misery and heartbreak.

Anyway, I got there eventually and by the time LB and I went to catch the train home, normal service had just about resumed, which must have taken a superhuman effort by the staff, with literally no turn around time.

An eventful day, which made me appreciate having LB back home with us again. The dog, incidentally, was super pleased to greet her at King's Cross after her week away, which was a surprise, as she's a stoic little creature, who rarely shows any emotion, so she must have missed LB too.

Hopefully, normal family life will now resume for the remainder of the summer holidays.