Not quite as planned....

This evening we are going to see Al Stewart at Birmingham Town Hall. The original plan was to get the bus into town, train to Birmingham, stay overnight and then get the train to Birmingham Airport in the morning for our trip to Italy. As we had to cancel the holiday we booked the return train all the way back home, and because W is still walking with a crutch I decided to drive to the station and leave the car overnight. That's where it went wrong. Milton Keynes is renowned as the City of the car, and there are thousands of parking spaces in the centre. Not a single one was free. I drove around in ever increasing circles and could not find a single parking space, even on the premium rate spaces. It finally got to the point where even if I found a space we would have missed our train and as our tickets were only valid for that one and non-refundable, we would have had to buy new tickets. So I decided to drive to Birmingham and take the hit on the train tickets.

In itself, that wasn't an issue. But there is a lot of building work going on in Birmingham at the moment and the car park recommended for the hotel appeared not to exist any more; where it should have been appeared now to be a very large hole in the ground. I couldn't drop W at the hotel (which had been chosen as it was right next to the station) as it was now on a 'tram only' road, so we eventually found a car park near the library and she had to hobble all the way to the hotel. In the morning I will have to try and find somewhere near the station I can drive to, to save her the hobble back to the car park. But we're here now, this is the view from the room, and we're going off to eat before the show. And I rather think a couple of stiff drinks might be involved too.