The 'X'

Not the title of the picture, but a title to herald my mode of transport into and out of central London now that my rail pass is out of date. I caught the X68 bus that goes fast from my neck of the London woods to Waterloo in the morning. I doubted that it would take 20 minutes, but it actually did! Nothing stops the X it seems. Well, one confused passenger tried to when it became apparent after a few bell rings that the bus was not stopping between West Norwood and Waterloo. One lady slowly explained in the stopped-record mantra that all X68 passengers employ in their heads when someone rings the bell during the express travel: 'The bus is non-stop to Waterloo'. After a few despondent minutes, the passenger tried asking the driver to open his doors. The driver truly knows the terror of being on the wrong side of the X68 regulars, because he said: 'I'll get into trouble and there will be complaints!' However, he did open his doors at the next set of traffic lights and I didn't hear anyone complain. It's nice to be back on the X. I took it regularly when I worked in Holborn a couple of years ago. There's a real community on the bus - one of the rare modes of transport in which people chat to each other. I guess we know that we're trapped when the bus is in express mode!

An OK first day back at work in 2010. I met a colleague of mine from my old workplace who'd just started at my place of work and we had lunch together. It was lovely to see her and catch up. I suspect there will be more meet-ups in the future. Hooray!

When waiting for the X home, I popped into the square at Somerset House to snap the skaters.

I returned home to a Fred who'd turned boiler-repair man. He'd called one place asking them to look at our boiler, but they said it was the heating system that needed looking at and they weren't the people for the job. So he called a plumber, but she isn't Corgi-registered. Sigh. We don't even know which part of the boiler/heating/nonsense system is the problem! The boiler works, but it won't do heating and hot water together, and cuts out when we have the heating on continuously at a low heat, which we need to do for the guinea pigs and the pipes if we're away. It also fires up constantly and is incredibly noisy. It's doing our heads in, and possibly those of our neighbours, too. Argh!

So we went for a curry.