Wednesday of Joy

Well, not really, but I couldn’t think of a good title.

The weekend went brilliantly – I left Cardiff Saturday morning handing over care of my lovely Discovery to , who despite his best efforts couldn’t break my gearbox between his house and the train station. Wondering how many pieces he’d be handing back to me on Monday I jumped on the train and headed into London. Coffee sorted my tiredness out and I hit Paddington on schedule before heading into the joy that is the Underground. Managed to get to Victoria on time without issue despite large chunks of LU being closed down, managed to resist the call of the bagel stand (mmmm, salmon and cream cheese bagel) and headed off to catch my train to Croydon. Managed to miss it, only to find another train about 10 minutes later so I jumped on that. On the way we passed the train I missed in the first place (woohoo!). I should have known I needed to stop and think and get more coffee when I was trying to work out the map in front of East Croydon station, but I headed off for the bus and sat down. My head jerked up as I woke up after a few minutes and I purposefully kept myself awake watching the bus stops wondering how far from the station Matt and Yudit lived. When I started seeing signs saying “Lewisham Borough” I thought “Hand on a moment…” and jumped off sharpish. A quick call to Matt and I was headed back where I came from until I got to his stop – all of 6 stops away from East Croydon – I must have slept through it.

Other than that the evening went well with lots of drunken people being….well…drunk, really. Lots of food. Oh, and Min brought a small field of Banoffee Pie. Wow.

Sunday dawned wet and dreary as we drank water and downed our Ibuprofens. Croissants for breakfast and a recap of the more drunken moments from the previous nights for those who couldn’t remember (yes, you Karen). It was good just chilling out as I recuperated – didn’t fancy meeting ‘s parents hungover…

So I headed off to Gatwick when ‘s dad called to say they were stuck in traffic, so I waited at the gate for . Amusingly I knew when the flight was on finals and when the baggage was in the baggage hall because I used BAA’s SMS Service which is nifty. Anyway, coffee with parents was good and we headed off to ‘s place. I had a great weekend there and got on swimmingly with his parents which was good. It was so nice to see him again. I even managed to blag a second-hand VCR off his next door neighbours (they were throwing it out anyway).

I finally got back about 0230 on Tuesday morning –  had picked me up. Surprisingly the Landy still had a gearbox – though he pointed out that it was probably due to the fact that he’d avoided using 2nd all weekend. Nice. I also managed to miss two sheep rescues, a search in Neath and a near-callout for someone else – more details will be provided after Thursday’s debrief.

Since then I’ve been cleaning the house ready for a new tenant who arrives on Friday, and laughing at the local authority who, it seems, can’t quite get the hang of bilingual signs it seems. Oh well.