The Kindness of Strangers

An odd sort of journey. It started on the bus to Lincoln, a very elderly couple got on at Wragby or some such place, and sat in the seats just in front of me. I noticed that she had a small bumblebee in her white, carefully curled hair. Not sure what to do I started fashioning a bee catching container out of a cereal bar box. Then came the dilemma - should I try and catch it without her knowing or would it cause her less panic if I told her first? The bee saved me the trouble and managed to disentangle itself and fly off towards the back of the bus.

Then at Lincoln train station it was difficult not to notice a swan wrapped in a visibility jacket on the platform. Apparently it had flown onto the track and the hero in the picture went onto the tracks and managed to catch it. They were now waiting for the RSPCA to arrive. One of the many train spotters on the platform had captured the whole drama beautifully. 'Not what you'd normally expect to see at a station' he said. I suggested doing something with his images and mentioned blipfoto, but he told me he wasn't on the web.

At Doncaster, not the most uplifting of stations, I got on what I thought (according to the clock and the platform info) the 13.10 to Edinburgh. I didn't notice that I was the only one left on the train at York until a man in a uniform said the train wasn't ready for boarding. Wrong train and the one I was meant to be on had just left. Seeing the panic in my eyes a very lovely East Coast member of staff did some checking on her phone and scribbled some code on the back of my ticket (think it referred to a woman of a certain age) that allowed me to go on the Inverness train without having to buy another ticket. Apart from some problem that delayed the train by 45mins the rest of the journey went ok.

Am so looking forward to getting home tomorrow.