Doing the Yo-Yo...

I've been up and down the country a bit this week.

I spent Monday and Tuesday in a cold and wintery Newcastle, catching up with the team for a planning meeting, making the acquaintance of our latest team member for the first time, going for our "Christmas" do on Monday night. It was our first opportunity to all get together. Many of the others do a lot of charging about the country like me!

Anyway we went to Oldfields, specialising in locally produced food with a predominantly English menu - sometimes I get quite nostalgic for the Christmas Curries we used to have! I started with crispy duck with a beet coleslaw and then had belly pork on a bed of celeriac mash that was totally scrummy.

On Tuesday I caught the train down to London Kings Cross, after the meeting finished and just had time to spruce up a bit (it doesn't make a lot of difference...) and grab a quick bite to eat before meeting up with a good friend, actress Caroline Munro. We spent the evening chatting in the hotel bar, catching up with the latest gossip about her film work and my band and swapping news about mutual friends.

Yesterday I was at City University for a meeting of the Inter-University Project Management Group which turned out to be a very interesting day.

I couldn't believe my luck when I got to Euston to find that the next train north was an express to Glasgow, only stopping at Preston - where I was heading - and Glasgow. It took just two hours from London to Preston - and then another 30 minutes to do the twenty miles to Blackpool! But that was much better than the tedious journey it used to be up the West Coast line. It has improved no end. If only Virgin could make the trains comfortable to sit in...

Smaller windows make carriages more stable and safe in a crash, but that combined with the narrower profile of tilting coaches means if you are sitting against a wall rather than a window, your shoulder has to be where your head would be in a comfortable pose. The seats are not exactly generously wide to begin with... and I'm afraid I am...!

Sorry! All old photos again, despite the New Year's resolution to use the camera more!

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Good (Not Great) Railway Journeys

I occasionally watch programmes with names like "Great Railway Journeys" and wonder why can I not have some of those?

Today I had a "Good Railway Journey". Which means the trains were on time - one actually arrived nine minutes early, my goodness that must have thrown the station staff into a mild panic...!

There's something about a Virgin train that somehow conspires to take the "Great" out of a journey though. Small seats (or is that just my large figure?) and luggage space for a packet of smarties each. Every seat taken and people walking past glaring at seat reservation signs that since digitisation hardly ever work or (as in my case) have been double booked.

But the weather was fine and made for pleasant views of England's green and pleasant - er... make that waterlogged - land. Streams, rivers and dykes looking full and land at either side showing signs of recent flooding with a water table levelling out around half an inch above ground level. That can't be good for crops or sheep's feet...

Nobody in any of the three trains I've been on seemed to want to inflict their personality on the rest of the carriage. This is frequently not a good thing anyway but very occasionally there is a gem who brightens the journey of everyone else. Today the closest was a lively 3 year old who had been on the train for far too long, travelling to Penzance and even then he did nothing more annoying than run up and down the deserted aisle, smiling wonderfully at us all. In turn everyone else smiled back at him and at anyone else who met their eyes. I can certainly live with that!

And despite a journey with crowded trains and two connections to be made I arrived tonight in Taunton at the time originally planned and to a climate borrowed from Summer.

I jumped straight into a taxi with no waiting or fuss. The driver had an agreeable and totally desirable "Zummerzet ahhhxant" and furthermore had a face full of beard that would have not been out of place on an 18th Century stagecoach and which I could immediately picture streaming with cider later on tonight.

Clive meanwhile is battling the roadworks on the M1 and I can do no more than leave him alone to it and sit down to enjoy a relaxed meal and then wait for him in the bar. It's tough but someone's got to do it.

Tomorrow we treat the colleges and universities of the South West to a Change Management workshop. Then more travelling. I'll tell you about that later! For now, I'm going to go and peruse the menu!

Sunday in London

Well I got to London on time - Virgin Trains actually got in a little early although it was a long journey compared to the more usual weekday one! We went via Coventry and all round the houses it seemed.

Met up with Fran and Gill on Trafalgar Square where they were resting their feet and getting splashed by the spray from the fountain every time the wind blew their way. They didn't have a great deal of time with me as they have to get over to Stansted for their flight back. Why oh why are Ryanair stopping their Blackpool/Stansted flights? Doesn't seem to make sense, every time I've been on them they have been very nearly full and over the past few years I've used them quite a bit!

When you consider the cost of train fares if you have to book close to the date of travelling, being able to get a flight and then be in London by 10:00am was brilliant! Even considering the train to and from Stansted-Liverpool St station, it was still less than half the price of Virgin's fare.

We had a trundle up Regent Street and into the big HMV on Oxford Street where I was delighted to find at last a DVD of "Prehistoric Women", a Hammer film starring the lovely Martine Beswick as a queen of a tribe of women stumbled upon by Michael Latimer. I've met Martine several times over the last few years, she was a Miss Jamaica, a stunning beauty in the 1960s (and not at all hard on the eyes now!) who starred in several of Hammer's films and a couple of Bond films; "From Russia With Love" as a fighting gypsy girl and "Thunderball" as one of Bond's doomed helpers! Anyway, I've never watched this film before so I will enjoy that once I get home again!

A relaxing night in store I think - chance to finish my book, the 10th in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. And yes... I did bring No.11 with me!