oh dear

Paul moved back home night before last :{ I’m glad to see him, he is more than welcome, but :{ on his life with Dee going west again.

This morning, he crashed the car when someone pulled out in front of him on the roundabout outside Stoke Mandeville Hospital. He is OK, but the car isn’t :{

Me? I worked like a loon yesterday in Woking on the EA startup thing, and didn’t get home till 9pm.

This morning, tired, I got a lift to the station bridge and was just in time to get a ticket and get on the train at 7:50 but ~ the ticket machine was out of tickets. The time printed on the ticket I had to buy at the window was timed at ~ 7:50. Never mind, the next train was 08:05 so I shouldn’t have been too much late.

Got to Vauxhall in the pouring rain, at 09:38 (having had to dive in the loo at Marylebone – bit concerned about the dodgy tummy here) and they knew nothing of the course, or the man, and I was further delayed with them having to authorise my ID card for Southbank. Phoned Jane, who said she’d come out and fetch me. After about ten minutes, she called me. I was in the wrong building. Ssssssssssssssssake! I should have been at the ‘real’ Southbank at Waterloo, not Vauxhall. After paying £30.50 for a peak rate travelcard, I wasn’t up for taking the taxi Jane suggested, and fired up the laptop on my own mobile broadband to get the right address and directions. 77 bus, 20 minutes. OK. Except it was still raining, and cold, and the bus took about fifteen minutes to arrive. Kept the calm and got off at Waterloo.

Then forgot a right I should have taken and ended up on the river and walked round three sides of the block to get to the office. *sigh* Sign in, ask where the course is being held, man on the desk says some passing chap will escort me, all nice, chatty, still calm and cool. He took me to the wrong place. Luckily they have little screens outside the rooms saying what’s going on in them so I didn’t gatecrash some other meeting or course. Chatty chap saw me heading back to reception and I followed the desk man’s original instructions and found the room, by which time it was 10:45.

Not bad for having got up at 7 and left the house at 7:35 for a 9.30 meeting.

At the end of the day, having just handed back the visitors pass and about to leave the building with Jane, I realised I had left my scarf in the training room. Palaver to get back in to be able to get it, but at least I remembered.

Improvement when I called Mark to find he was already home, OK to visit and was cooking dinner. ~ annnnnnd relax! ~

We managed to see off three bottles of wine between us and I managed to get the bus back in good time to get the last Amersham train home. Also remembered to get the taxi driver to drop me off at the end of Grenville, which would seem to have saved me at least a quid on the fare, spared me having to give repeated directions and meant I had some minimal exercise to walk to the house.

More bad news when I got back, apart from wanting to be quiet and get to bed rather than have conversations (I got back just in time to see Mel Gibson bravely acting the stoic as Wallace being drawn and quartered – shame, I like that film, or I did) Paul had managed to get an antivirus virus on my machine, a really nasty persistent new one, which took a while to track down information about, but I did manage to clear it off the registry and etc. I’ve told him he can use his own sodding machine for downloading whatever films/games he does because it’s THEM that brings these things in. grrrrrrrrr.

Almost 3am now, think I’m past tired now although I did sleep on the train.