Enlightened

Warning…rambling transport grumpy wittering coming up, go get your cuppa and scone now.

It’s been a bit of a trains, planes and automobiles scenario last few days. ScotFail set the ball rolling with one of their typically unreasonable and short notice cancellations, announced 5 mins after I’d walked down the hill to the station. This led to a comedy- style wheezy, limping scarper uphill, jumping in the jalopy, and driving at pace along the M9 to Linlithgow with the plan of linking into another bit of railway. Falkirk Council soon put a stop to that, having closed the entire High St, so I couldn’t get anywhere near the railway station  but was diverted many miles off course via Bo’ness. 

Only thing I could do was race 25 miles into Edinburgh, jam the trusty shooting brake into a side street in Corstorphine and force a cab to do a near-emergency stop and urge him to make like the wind to Waverley main station. Made it onto my intercity choochoo, with less than two mins to spare. All else went comparatively smoothly, despite the comedic camouflaging of an entire level at Nottingham station car park, where my lift was skulking.

East Midland Trains, clearly jealous of ScotFail’s incompetence, did the same this afternoon around Nottingham for today’s return leg, but I got the better of them, and managed to get to Grantham, with a little assistance from a couple of coppers…but I will gloss over that…then jumped on one of those splendid LNER expresses to York. LNER continued to be a class act, communicative, flexible and even a touch of human humour on display. Splendid fellows got me back on a train which materialised at a platform is wasn’t supposed to be, at a time it shouldn’t have been there and allowed me to use an otherwise restricted ticket which they weren’t supposed to. 

Arriving in Edinburgh, I paused to capture a glimpse of the festive illuminations at Princes Street Gardens, as I went to catch a bus, to a street in the west end, in the hope that my car was there….it was. 
It and I defrosted companionably, propelled ourselves back up the M9 at a more legal and calm velocity, and I am now home, on the outside of a Char Sui Chow Mein.

If you read to the end of my waffling, well done, and thank you, zzzzzzzzzz :-)