I’ve just had a very nice weekend indeed. The actual week, and in particular the last two days of it, were utterly horrible. I’m currently working on my most hated client in Wantage, and this year is worse than all the awful years which have come before, by virtue of the fact that I am in charge, and not only have I been given too little people for too little time, the client’s financial accountant has moved on to pastures new and her replacement seems more interested in telling me about her son’s lesbian ex-wife than actually doing her job Nevertheless, I only went down on Thursday morning, so I shouldn’t technically have been that depressed and stressed by Friday evening. I actually wouldn’t have been, were it not for the fact that I proceeded to have one of the worst journeys of my entire life.

I left the client at half past four on Friday afternoon, which I thought was quite daring of me considering that I shouldn’t have left until half five. The aim was to be home by half seven, because Babel and I were supposed to be heading up to Barlaston for a weekend of Esperanto discussions. My taxi arrived promptly at 4.35 and was soon speeding me away to the nearest train station in Didcot, admittedly at a cost of £22 which I’m unlikely ever to see refunded. I dashed into the station building upon arrival, eager not to miss my departure to Oxford at 5.09, and was somewhat surprised to find it full of people. That is to say, Didcot is not exactly the centre of the universe, and several hundred people congregating in the main entrance hall of the station seems a little excessive. I soon discovered that this was indeed an exceptional circumstance. Due to a power failure somewhere outside Oxford, there were currently no trains running in or out of the city. Great

This was pretty much my worst nightmare come true. I joined a queue of disgruntled commuters, requesting further information from National Rail staff. Let’s just say they were less than helpful. They didn’t know how long the power was likely to be down. They had failed to find any buses to act as replacement road transport. They suggested we went across the road and sat in the pub for a few hours until the situation sorted itself out. Great It was fortunate that, as I wandered aimlessly about inside, I noticed a bus stop directly outside the station. The bus stop was displaying a helpfully positioned bus timetable, and upon a brief examination of this it transpired that there was a bus due to leave within ten minutes for the vague vicinity of Oxford. I had no idea where exactly it was going, how long it might take or what it was going to cost me, but in the absence of any better ideas it seemed like a better bet than sitting in a random pub
and drowning my sorrows. I actually naively thought that Oxford and Didcot weren’t located too geographically far apart. Boy, was I wrong!

That is to say, they probably aren’t located geographically far apart, but the bus driver didn’t allow this fact to concern him, and succeeded in chauffeuring us in the biggest circle you can possibly imagine. After forty minutes, it came to my attention that we had just passed the Premier Inn where I had stayed the previous night, a mere mile or so from Didcot rail station. To say I was frustrated would be an understatement! There was another rail passenger on the bus, and he was even more wound up than me. Halfway through the journey he actually went up to the bus driver to ask if we were ever going to get to Oxford. After a few facetious replies, the driver eventually admitted that we should be there before half six.

Checking the trains, I realised that there was less than one train northwards every hour, with the nearest at 18.37. Could I make it? It depended how far the bus stop was going to be from the station. I managed to find the website of the bus operator and downloaded the timetable as a pdf. Putting the name of the road into Google Maps on my phone, I received the unpleasant information that it was more than a mile away. Bother it

As luck would have it, however, the bus actually got in before 6.25. It didn’t stop entirely where I had anticipated, however, so I was reduced to asking somebody for directions. Luckily it seemed to be pretty straightforward – just one left turn and then keep going in the same direction – but she warned me it was a pretty long way. I knew that if I caught this train, I could be home for half eight. If I missed it, it would be more like 10 and I wouldn’t be able to go to Ni Festivalu that evening as intended. There was only one thing for it. Visualing the Barlaston breakfast in front of my eyes, I decided to run for it.

It’s difficult to give you a mental image of what I must have looked like because happily I didn’t see myself, but I think it’s a fair guess that I wasn’t terribly graceful. Not only did I have a massive rucksack on my back but I was also trying to pull my trolley case behind me as I charged down the streets of Oxford. Oxford incidentally looks like a really nice place, and I’d like to go there for a day trip. No time to enjoy it on Friday; I was totally out of breath, forcing myself to go as quickly as I could so that at least if I did miss the train, I couldn’t reproach myself for not having tried hard enough.

I’m not a person who normally takes a lot of exercies, so by 18.33 I was just about on the verge of giving up and lying in the gutter to die quietly, when I caught sight of the station on the horizon Inspired, I made a final mad dash, but literally just as I was half the way up the ramp to the main departures area, disaster struck. It seems I had been running so fast that the motion had caused the zip on the top of my laptop bag to work itself undone. My pencil case, which had been sitting precariously on top of my computer, suddenly saw fit to jump out of my bag and spew it’s contents all over the floor. Torn between the forlorn hope of catching my train and seeing Babel, or my auditor’s love of stationery was a pretty hard position to find myself in, but a very kind lady started to help me pick things up, so I had to opt for salvaging my pencil case. I managed to retrieve most things about from my extensive collection of paper clips and rubber bands, which had landed in a nasty sort of puddle

I was now 100% sure I had missed my train, but as luck would have it, it had actually been delayed. Another short jog to the platform ensued. I arrived literally as the train was pulling in, only to be greeted with an announcement to the effect that the train was already full and could we please not get on an crush people. By this point I didn’t care. I happened to be standing by a door where someone had just got off, so I crammed mysef in, luggage and all, and proceeded to spend a very unpleasant hour and a half squashed into a small gap next to the toilets.

It was worth it though. I arrived at my home around half eight, shortly followed by Babel who had been invited for tea. Feeling a bit more refreshed, we soon set off in the Moosemobile and the combination of being with Babel and listening to minstrel music was enough to calm me down. We had such a good journey that we even had time to head down to the pub in Barlaston for a quick drink before closing time

The rest of the weekend was very pleasant. I got my two lovely breakfasts, and although I normally find eating at Barlaston a bit of a nightmare, it was better this time than it had been on previous occasions, mainly by virtue of the fact that there wasn’t a compulsory fish meal The course itself was very interesting and I will try to review it at some point on the JEBsite blog rather than here. I didn’t make any terribly intelligent contributions, but it was nice to be there anyway and get a bit of practice, even if I did leave having allowed myself to be roped into more commitments than I’d intended!

My one complaint would be how absolutely bloody freezing all the rooms were! Other than the fact that I was constantly shaking, I had a lot of fun and it was especially nice to be able to spend some time with Babel. Days which I know will finish with me being able to go to sleep next to him are days where I always feel strangely peaceful and not stressed, as opposed to days will involve me going home or being alone somewhere I’m not sure whether this is some inherent quality of Babel, or more the fact that whenever I’m with him I seem to end up eating a lot of biscuits…

Tags: Ni Festivalu, oxford, trains

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 12:29 am and is filed under Esperanto. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.