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…

It all started with booking the flights a few months ago. The website of the IJK makes it sound like Szombathely is ideally placed near to three major European airports, but in matter of fact it is miles from anywhere useful. The closest airport is Graz, with a transfer time of under two hours, but regrettably Ryanair are the only operator to fly to Graz from the UK and they don’t offer flights on the days we need to travel The next closest airports are Vienna and Budapest, each with a transfer time between three and four hours. Flights are offered by a variety of operators, but they either depart from Up North or Down South. The best offers seemed to be with Easyjet from Luton, but they didn’t quite comply with my idea of a cheap flight. It was going to come to £160 each, not including the cost of a train fare to actually get to Luton in the first place.

For this reason, I decided that we were going to fly from Birmingham to an airport which they optimistically call “Bratislava (Vienna)” with Ryanair. I stand by the fact that this was the most economically logical decision to make. The total cost of the flights has come to £80 each, including all taxes and outrageous add ons for the privelege of taking a bag. It doesn’t realistically get any cheaper than that, and it doesn’t get any more convenient either than flying from Birmingham

The only slight challenge is getting from Bratislava to Hungary. Bratislava and Szombathely really aren’t very far away when you look at it on the map, which I did last night in order to illustrate the details to my mother. Unfortunately, the only way to travel between the two points, however, is via Vienna, which is actually a pretty big detour. Task number one, therefore, was to figure out a route to Vienna.

On the face of it, this seemed like it was going to be pretty straightforward. Ryanair have a deal with a company who run a transfer bus from the airport to the city centre, and the cost is only €8 for a single ticket. Cool Sadly, closer inspection of the timetable revealed that they only run 4 buses a day and we would have around a two hour wait between our flight getting in and the earliest possible departure. Bearing in mind that I knew our total transfer time would be in excess of five hours, a two hour delay just wasn’t an option if we wanted to arrive that evening

Not one to be defeated, I started investigating trains. The airport isn’t connected to Bratislava proper by train, but there is a bus 61 which runs four times an hour, takes 25 minutes and costs absolute peanuts. It seemed like a plan, until I looked into the actually connections from Bratislava to Vienna. The timetable was such that we would just miss the optimum train and have to wait over an hour for another. Again, not ideal.

I then started googling Slovakian transport sites. This was hampered slightly by my lacking competence in Slovak, but actually wasn’t entirely impossible; firstly because I know some rudimentary Czech, and secondly because some websites had shaky translations in German. I chanced upon the website of the Slovak Eurolines, only to discover that they also run a transfer bus between the airport and the main bus station in Vienna. It takes two hours, costs 400 SKK which I hope is only about £10, and there is a bus departing 45 minutes after our plane lands which is just about the right time, assuming we don’t get delayed

Things were looking up, but I was worried about booking on their website. Parts of the booking form are in English, parts are in Slovak only, and the whole page is rather temperamental and prone to crashing. I decided to go back to OEBB, the Austrian National Railways, and look up connections there.

I think OEBB has the best train website in Europe, better than die Deutsche Bahn, because it also gives you connections by buses. In fact, it provided me with a total itinery connecting the bus journey I had just discovered above with a couple of trains into Hungary. Cool It looked like there was an option to book online, but when I tried to do so I got the frustrating message that they can’t quote for international fares on the internet. There was, however, an address to email to make a booking.

I duly emailed, and received a response that they could only sell me a ticket for the train part of my journey; that is to say, the two trains from Vienna to Szombathely. That was better than nothing, and after some brief correspondence in German I said that was fine and am hopeful that my tickets will arrive in the post within the next few weeks. They also helpfully directed me towards the Austrian PostBus website, and suggested I ordered some bus tickets there.

I went to their website, and tried to order tickets from the airport to Vienna. I was surprised to get redirected to what looked like an identical booking form to that of the Austrian railways, but decided to give it a go anyway. Within a few hours I had a response that I couldn’t book bus tickets through the website, but I would be able to if I emailed a separate airport bus company.

I duly emailed the separate airport bus company in my bestest German and tried to reserve tickets for the relevant times. They emailed me back within half a day to say it was all cool. I asked how I could pay, and they said I could pick up my tickets from their counter in Vienna station and pay for them there. I pointed out that I’d reserved tickets from Bratislava to Vienna, and therefore wouldn’t be physically able to get to Vienna to pay for the tickets. I asked if I could pay online and have them posted. They said, “Erm sorry, posting tickets is impossible so you’re screwed”.

Back to Slovak Eurolines then. Having revised some Czech on the bus this morning, I just about managed to navigate my way through the form until I reached the payment page. I was a little worried that I might only be able to pay if I had a Slovakian bank account, but eventually I found a place to type my card number. Just two minutes ago I appear to have had two pdfs emailed to me which look like they might be tickets, but the narrative is beyond my linguistic capabilities and I haven’t had time to print them off/stick the mail in an online translator. I’ve just got my fingers crossed

Assuming that’s worked, I’ve now secured our journey from Bratislava to Szombathely. We land at 14.40, catch a bus at 15.25, arrive in Vienna at 17.25, skip to the station and catch a train at 17.59, change somewhere weird in the middle and arrive at our destination at 20.32. A bit late, but that seriously is the earliest time possible.

All that remained to sort was then the journey home. In order to check in for our flight on time, we needed to be at the airport for 1pm. That meant catching the bus from Vienna at 11am. OEBB suggested a very convoluted route, involving catching a bus from Szombathely at 7.30 to a place in Austria called Oberdorf. Arriving there at 8.45 we would allegedly make a connecting bus at 8.46, which would take us to a random tram stop in Vienna, from where we had to jump on the correct tram and hopefully arrive at the main bus station for our connection to the airport.

You can imagine that I was a little bit dubious about this itinary, as the potential for something going wrong was enormous Nevertheless, it looked like the only option so I found the website of the bizarre little bus company operating the routes. I couldn’t find the right timetables on their site, so sent them a email asking for help. They finally got back to me this afternoon, and said that the first bus is in fact run by someone else. If that bus is on time, you can run across the road in Oberdorf and hop on theirs. If it’s late, you have to wait two hours, with the result that we would miss our flight.

I didn’t feel that was a risk that could be taken, so it was back to the drawing board In desperation I started investigating leaving Szombathely the night before and sleeping on a platform somewhere. For reasons I don’t understand, this brought up a connection which hadn’t shown on my search before: there’s a train which leaves Szombathely at 6.48 and goes directly to Vienna :)

Okay, so catching a train at 6.48 isn’t ideal, but it’s genuinely the only option there is So, I have emailed OEBB again, and they are hopefully now processing my second request!

My head hurts But I *think* that I might now have cracked it. The only thing which could really go wrong is that our Ryanair flight will be delayed. If that happens, I think I can probably sweet-talk the Austrian conductors into letting us travel on the already purchased tickets (have done it before!), but the next connection means we probably won’t get to the IJK until after 10pm.

Hmmm. I have mixed feelings about Ryanair. To be fair to them, I flew to Carcossonne with them last summer and they were amazing. My only prior experience, however, was an ill-fated return flight from Dublin to Birmingham in 1998. In those days before the internet, they cancelled our flight without informing us and then sent us on a wild goose chase across the airport which culminated in our entire family running out onto the runway and yelling stop at an England-bound plane that had just taken off, under the mistaken impression that our luggage was aboard it. In that pre-September 11th world, it was perfectly possible to run through security and onto the runway of Dublin airport without anyone so much as asking what you thought you were doing

In a couple of weeks I am going to sort out some Slovakian currency in case something does go wrong and we get stranded in Bratislava. And I am going to brush up on my Czech, because according to my book the two languages are 95% mutually intelligible. At the moment all I can remember to say is that I have a sore throat and am looking for a bookshop, but I used to be able to say more useful things than that I have also bought travel insurance for my boyfriend and I and read the small print avidly so that I know exactly what I can claim for in the event of a disaster

When I am not being stressed, I am very much looking forward to going. I was first invited by someone to an Esperanto event in 2003, and back then I could never have imagined that I would one day tell my mother I was attending one and not meet with a dreadful reaction. But I told her yesterday that I had just booked the flights, and she was actually very cheerful about it and said how exciting it sounded etc etc. I didn’t exactly tell her the truth because I had in fact booked the flights some months ago, and I made it sound like my boyfriend had paid for and organised his own which wasn’t exactly the case, but on the whole it was a fairly accurate rendition and she was cool with it

Whew. I’m off to bravely print my Slovakian bus tickets. And perhaps do some work. I’ve spent the afternoon on the phone to a very inept insurance company trying to extract some information out of them about a client. Highly frustrating, but at least it has allowed me to organise my holiday to a background of classical music In other news, I have discovered that anti-depressants cure PMT, but am still undecided as to whether or not this is a good thing!

There was a stunned sort of silence in the carriage, and then we all obediently began to get off. Stoke station was soon a heaving mass of people, all of whom had been trying to travel northwards and none of whom knew what was going on. The station staff didn’t know what was going on either. Well, apparently there had been a total power failure in Manchester Piccadilly, but it had literally only just happened and no one knew whether it might take two minutes or two days to get it running again. In the meantime, we were advised to sit on the platform and not make a nuisance of ourselves.

Sit we did, for the best part of an hour, whereupon we were unexpectedly allowed to board our train again and told it would soon depart. This would have been cool, apart from the fact that the number of passengers trying to travel northwards had greatly multiplied in the intervening period, and the train was no longer big enough for them. By virtue of some menacing wielding of my suitcase, I managed to squeeze my way onto the train and find a quiet corner in which to stand. As more and more people squeezed onto the train, however, I got pushed further and further back into the wall and by the time the train pulled off I could hardly see or breathe, certainly not move, so surrounded I was by people. I’m not normally panicked by confined spaces, but this was exceptionally unpleasant

Mercifully it lasted less than an hour and we did finally arrive in Manchester. Manchester Piccadilly looks like it is a very nice station, far better than Birmingham New Street, and if the entire place hadn’t been in a state of frenzied turmoil I might have been better able to appreciate it. As it was, trains were being announced, then cancelled, then reannounced willynilly and no one had a clue what was going on. I eventually found my way to platform 14 where Bolton bound trains were supposed to leave from, only to find about 500 people who had been hoping to board a cancelled service to Liverpool Lime Street. I stood there for a farcical half an hour while that particular service was cancelled and uncancelled three times, after which time it finally arrived and was followed by what I hope is the train I wanted to catch. To be honest, I haven’t got a clue in hell where I am, where I’m going, or whether I’m actually going to get there, but I am at least sitting down which seems like a bonus. Wish me luck!

Following the complaint which I made to Cross Country trains, I have to date had absolutely no response. I had a response from the rail passenger focus group, who told me that they weren’t able to intervene until I myself had received a response from Cross Country but that they would keep my correspondence on line. I also had a reply from Network Rail, who had the following to say…

Thank you for contacting Network Rail.

Train services are managed by the Train Operating Companies which between Birmingham and Leicester is Cross Country (as you have rightly contacted).

Although the Easter engineering works have finished, the railways are constantly maintained throughout the year.

It is in Network Rail’s interest to let the Train Operating Companies keep running their trains as often as possible, as replacement bus services are an inconvenience to travellers and lost revenue to the Train Operators is compensated by Network Rail.

We apologise for the inconvenience. For up to date information on train times and services visit www.nationalrail.co.uk

Right. Well, it’s nice to be acknowledged but I’m unsure how that addresses the issue.

In any case, this is all becoming academic. Trains are running this weekend and next weekend too, and it is sheer bad luck that I can’t actually get to Leicester on either day because my boyfriend and I both have other commitments.

In other news, as of 18th May the ticket pricing structure has been rejigged. The idea is, apparently, that this is a renaming procedure which is going to make all our lives a whole lot easier. If you would like to read more about it and judge for yourself, please go here.

Note in particular this response to the FAQ Will fares increase as a result of these changes?

No, fares will not increase as a result of the new fare names

Okay, so how precisely do Network Rail explain the fact that as of this week, the cost of a return fare from Leicester to Birmingham purchased at half three in the afternoon has increased from £8.50 to over £13.00, an increase of nearly 60%??! As a result of the new naming structure, it appears that half three in the afternoon is now designated as rush hour, and the same extortionate pricing structure applies as before 9am in the morning. You won’t, of course, find this explained on the National Rail website.

I am contemplating whether I have the energy to make another complaint…

The man whom I had just sat down next to gave me a funny look. “There’s always tomorrow,” he said. I was unsure whether he meant that in a consolatory way or not.

Okay, let’s be honest that this week’s audit has been running a little bit behind schedule. This is partly because I worked no overtime on Monday night (I was busy watching wrestling), no overtime on Tuesday night (I was busy getting drunk) and did precious little during the day on Wednesday (I was busy throwing up). I worked dead hard on Thursday though. I did a full day at the client obviously, then came back to my room and worked until gone eleven before getting up at six to do a couple of hours before the official start of the day. I was confident that with a hard day’s work at the client and a bit of tinkering on the train I would still be on track to hand in a completed audit file and fully drafted Key Issues Memorandum before eight pm on Friday evening.

The first couple of hours at the client went okay. We were slightly inconvenienced by the fact that their sole meeting room had been booked by a woman in a purple headscarf who was giving massages to the client staff, but hey, what else do you expect with a client in the media industry who’s just made a loss of £700k before tax?! And who are we to object if we are made to audit from the stationery cupboard on an unsteady circular table which has a nasty habit of swinging round on it’s stand whenever you touch it? It would have been churlish to complain that I had to stand up every time somebody needed a new pen in order to allow them access to a shelving unit and having sorted out some of the key audit issues instead of having breakfast, I still felt reasonably upbeat.

Things became a little complicated around eleven when I accidentally discovered that the premises in which the client is situated are not leased by them from a landlord, but rather leased by a different company who have just been sold out of the group and with whom there is no formal signed contract in place which allows my client to be present in the building at all. I was having an interesting debate with myself regarding substance over form and whether IAS17 required that this circumstance be disclosed as an operating lease commitment (actually to be honest I was wishing I hadn’t designated IAS17 as a standard to omit during my tactical revision process last Autumn), when suddenly everything went dark.

It really did go very dark, as my stationery cupboard not unreasonably had not been furnished with a window. Simultaneously, my laptop switched to battery power and my phone stopped charging. Hmmm. There appeared to have been a power cut

I opened the door to the main office to let in some natural daylight and saw the client staff standing round in abject confusion. They continued to stand around in abject confusion for nearly an hour, after which point they debunked en masse to the pub leaving behind only me, my colleague and the management accountant. I was actually invited to the pub too, by a rather nice looking girl who wondered if we could book everybody’s drinks to my company’s expense budget, but I declined.

My colleague and I continued to work for the couple of hours which our laptop batteries allowed, and then I began to get concerned. I still had a tonne of points to clear with the client and being honest I hadnt really started writing my Key Issues Memorandum yet, but the client was hardly able to answer anything at all without access to her computer system, and there was no sign of the power coming back on. Someone had called the electricity board and it turned out there had been some sort of fatal failure in the system which meant an entire three streets had gone off. Oh dear

Having already decided that there was nothing for it but to leave the client with a list of outstanding information required and pull off site, I phoned my supervisor to get permission, assuring her that I would be back to the office before the close of play to discuss things with her and finish writing everything up. I still wasn’t too concerned at this stage as I knew I could do a good hour’s work on the train and recharge my ailing laptop battery in the process. My supervisor agreed this was reasonable, so having talked things through with the client and thanked her for all her help during the week, I left the premises before three pm in a taxi bound for Euston.

Arriving at Euston I was expecting to see it somewhat calmer than it generally is on a Friday evening, by virtue of the extreme earliness of the hour. I was therefore somewhat surprised to find several hundred people (I do not exaggerate) milling around in front of the display boards. There was far too much background noise to hear any of the overhead announcements and so it was several minutes before I realised that the reason for all the hubbub was that every single train out of Euston appeared to have been cancelled. At roughly the same time the girl I was travelling with received a call from another colleague who had skived off work even earlier and who was apparently now stuck on a train outside Milton Keynes where there had been a severe signal failure. Never one to believe the electronic displays in railway stations (bitter past experience has taught me that they can be ridiculous behind the times in terms of the actual situation) I quickly checked out the real-time situation on my phone and was merrily informed by National Rail Enquiries that there would be no Birmingham bound trains out of Euston until Saturday. Shit!

To say I was upset would be to put in mildly, but luckily so many years of not being able to drive meant I have a good grasp of the train network and was quickly able to start brainstorming alternative methods of getting home. It came down to a choice between getting a train from Saint Pancras to Leicester and from there back to Brum, or going to Marylebone and travelling into Birmingham Snow Hill on the Chiltern Line. In the end I decided that much as I detest travelling on the Chiltern Line it was going to be marginally quicker than going via Leicester, plus my original ticket would be valid for travel whereas work might object to me trying to recharge a ticket home from Leicester. Soon we were in a taxi speeding swiftly down the road to Marylebone.

I apologise to anyone whose geography of London makes them question why the bloody hell I had to get a taxi between Euston and Marylebone when it is a perfectly pleasant twenty minute walk. The nineteen year old I was travelling with was wearing most unsuitable shoes and thought that walking from the Euston to Euston Square tube station constituted a hike, so I didn’t have much choice

We arrived to find Marylebone in chaos as hundreds of irate commuters desperately sought a way out of the capital. A Birmingham train was due to depart at four so we ran onto the platform and along the whole length of the train only to find that it was completely rammed. Seriously, I have never seen a train that was so crowded in my entire life. Never mind seats, there wasn’t a single place to stand remaining and the people were all crammed in like sardines. We soon heard an announcement saying could everybody please get off platform two as no one else was going to be allowed onto the sixteen hundred hours departure to Birmingham for their own safety.

Too many train journeys backwards and forwards from High Wycombe happily gave me an advantage over most of the disgruntled commuters and I managed to coerce my colleague into getting onto a 16.03 service to Banbury. I might add that she was extremely reluctant to do this, having no idea where Banbury was and not believing me when I said it was en route, but I knew that once we got there we could catch a Virgin service coming up from Oxford and would be okay. This train was not quite as packed as the Birmingham one and we even managed to get a seat. I worked for my eleven frantic minutes of remaining laptop battery time and then proceeded to calculate an operating lease disclosure note on paper in a good old fashioned manner to pass the rest of the journey. We passed through High Wycombe with the gleeful knowledge that we didn’t have to get off there, and were actually quite excited when we suddenly realised we could see the manor where we have our courses looming on the horizon.

Banbury, when we arrived, was in a complete state of chaos with vast quantities of people trying to fight their way onto services to Birmingham and beyond. Our luck was in and we managed to squeeze onto the first service northwards. I did have to stand for the entire duration of the hour long journey but by this stage I was so glad to be getting out of London that I didn’t care and I had exhausted my aptitude for auditing without a computer.

So it was that finally at seven pm I rolled up to the office with my trolley case and bumped into a pile of colleagues who I charitably assumed to be working late but who actually turned out to be halfway through a bar crawl. The office was full of hoovering cleaners who were intensely irritated by my arrival, and my line manager who gave me a funny look and didn’t speak to me for half an hour as he sat busily typing.

I set to work on a hasty audit of deferred tax, then began writing up all the notes which the poor person who is going to have to pick up my work next week was going to need. I was about halfway through when my manager came to speak to me, asking if I had been in London. I explained my disaster of a day and that I was on holiday next week so had had to come in to sort some things out and ensure that no one had problems next week when following up on my work. As he was leaving he thanked me for coming in, which was rather nice because even if it turns out that all the work I’ve done is crap, at least it’s been noted that I am trying hard and do have a certain amount of motivation, which is what he had accused me of lacking a month or two ago. I am going to make a point of saying on my appraisal how much overtime I have worked over the past few weeks. If i claimed all of the hours which I have legit worked, I think I could easily have another whole week off but I’m not going to put in a claim in the interests of making a good impression. Plus, being honest, some of the overtime which I’ve worked wasn’t a result of the complexity of the job but of my own inexperience at being in charge and auditing areas like revenue recognition in the service industry, so what I will say on the appraisal is that if anything the time really ought to be booked to training.

Anyway, around half eight the security guard came and asked me to leave. I had pretty much done all i wanted to on this weeks audit and submitted my timesheet so I was happy to, but I still had review points I needed to clear on last week’s job. I started doing that some time after eleven pm last night and emailed my supervisor at one in the morning to inform her of my progress. I’m not sure she will be impressed with the said progress as much of what the client told me is utter crap, but hopefully the time of the email will be noted. I’ve also told her to call me next week if there is a problem, despite the fact I will be in Geneva, and I hope that that also will be noted as commitment to the job

And now I’m exhausted and just want to sleep for a week! I’m going abroad though which is cool, and to a country where the trains actually function properly. Hooray!!!

I am not a snob when it comes to hotels, but my feelings about Travelodges are mixed. I love Premier Travel Inns, and would happily stay in one any time, anywhere; their breakfast is of the highest quality and their rooms are always clean and comfortable. Travelodges, on the other hand, seem considerably more basic although they aren’t always considerably cheaper, and so many little niceties like soap in the bathroom are missing. The first time I ever stayed in one I was most put out to discover it didn’t serve breakfast and that instead my £5 a day would earn me a brown paper bag placed outside my room each morning, with a dubious looking apple and a yoghurt pot of cornflakes The one I’ve been staying in in Leicester isn’t bad in some respects. The room was actually quite spacious and had a long sofa in it, which I liked. The bathroom, however, had a rather unpleasant smell and to me the bath looked none too clean. Plus one night there was a school trip of rather obnoxious children staying there, which had I wanted to go to sleep before half one in the morning, might have been a bit of a annoyance.

It was worth it though to get to see my boyfriend, although he was mostly working until ten so we only got between about half past and whatever time we manage to keep our eyes open til. I’ve been trying to complete my Star Wars education during the week which has been rather fun, although I have to confess it’s an awful lot more complicated than I expected and I don’t always understand who everyone is! Until last November, I’d never seen an episode of Star Wars in my life. In fact, I had a habit of getting confused as to the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek, and sometimes even Doctor Who Then in November my boyfriend introduced me to it; I was a bit sceptical at first but it ended up being miles better than I’d expected and now I’m quite a fan.

Aside from that, I’ve been trying to make some progress with an Esperanto course called ‘Paŝoj al plena posedo’. I bought the book quite some time ago, and my boyfriend promised that if I did the exercises he’d correct them for me. There’s a little course booklet which comes with it and gives you instructions on what to translate. Each chapter of the textbook has an extract from some sort of story in it, and one of the exercises is invariably to translate it into English. The course booklet then has another text, which has to be translated into Esperanto.

On the face of it, this sounds like rather a good idea and a worthwhile thing to do. When I purchased it, it was with the idea of forcing myself to do some more practice, and I got through the first three chapters in reasonable time. By the time I for to the fourth, however, I seemed to come unstuck. It wasn’t exactly that the exercises were increasingly difficult, but the things they were suggesting I translate began to increasingly annoy me. It just felt like whoever had written the texts had gone out of their way to choose pointless passages full of untranslatable concepts. One particular example which springs to mind was the phrase “light tea-time music”. What on earth is light tea-time music when it’s at home?! In the end I went for “leĝera vespermanĝa musiko” which may or may not be complete gibberish depending on whether “tea-time” relates to the time at which the music is played or is a random musical genre in it’s own right.

The exercises which I virtuously attempted last night included similar gems, including one sentence which seemed to go on for half a page and included a ridiculous number of instances of the phrase “one another”. When I got to chapter six I was forced to give up on the grounds that not only was I unable to translate “door-scraper”, I was unable to foresee an occasion on which I would ever want to!

It is good though to have time to do things by myself and not to be trapped in Wantage where every minute of my life seemed to belong to work. I had a certain feeling of elation when I left Wantage last Friday. I think everyone did, not least the client financial accountant who pretty much hugged the entire audit team she was so glad to see the back of us. She did, however, express the desire that the team for next year’s audit be the same, saying how nice it was now we’d all got to know each other. I’m not entirely sure if I share her sentiments Don’t get me wrong; the staff in Wantage are all really pleasant, but the job is so stressful and the site itself is kind of spooky. I don’t much like being there late at night when all the office workers have gone home and you have to walk in and out the maze of factory blocks which all seem to emit sinister noises and threatening bursts of steam.

Talking about threatening things, by virtue of spending the weekend with my boyfriend I have managed to avoid any further zombie-related nightmares I have slept uncharacteristically well all week actually, although I woke up somewhat shocked at half five this morning because I had no recollection of having fallen asleep. I ended up being slightly drunk last night, and I remember getting back to the hotel room, getting in to bed and my boyfriend setting my laptop up because we were going to watch some wrestling. I remember us listening to some sort of theme tune, and I remember him fast forwarding through a bit of it trying to get to something else, and I remember thinking that this was going to be interesting… and after that I remember nothing more! Apparently my boyfriend asked me if I was watching it, only I had my eyes closed, and I claimed I was, but I have no recollection of anything else until I woke up at five thirty wondering where my laptop was and who had switched the lights off.

I didn’t actually feel entirely sober this morning either :blush2: I’m sure I should have been, since I’d been asleep for hours, but I had walking-in-a-straight-line issues en route to the office which made me decide not to do any important work for the first few hours of the day until I was feeling more normal. I would absolutely kill for a cup of coffee right now but I’m waaaaay too shaky to perform delicate balancing acts with trays through doors, so I’m trying really hard to hold out until 1 pm when I can go out and buy one. It’s just occurred to me that it is about 40 hours since I last had an injection of caffeine and I don’t actually know how much longer I can survive

I was hoping to buy a cup at the station in Leicester actually but I encountered an unforeseen obstacle to this plan upon arriving at the platform; my train was actually on time and so I didn’t have a spare ten minutes to kill in a café A train running on time is not an eventuality which I have to contend with very often, and it quite upset my world view for about thirty seconds, after which time I realised that the train may have been on time but it was on platform one when it was scheduled to be on platform three and thus all was in fact right with the world.

Now I really don’t have a problem with travelling by public transport; I love trains in fact, and I use them all the time seeing as I haven’t yet taken the momentous step of booking myself a driving lesson, but this week the service between Leicester and Birmingham has been severely testing my patience. For a start, this week all the electronic signs in the main hall of Leicester station which normally display the departure times of the next ten or so trains have not been functioning. Quite what is wrong with them I’m not sure; I’m still harbouring suspicions that someone may just have forgotten to flick the on switch, because curiously all the electronic signs on the platforms are working perfectly. This means the only way of telling where your train is departing from is to choose a platform at random and walk halfway down it until you find the display. Happily, being the small northern town which it is, Leicester only has four platforms to choose from, but you can be sure that whichever staircase you go down first will turn out to be the wrong choice

The displays at Birmingham have yet to give up the ghost, but the announcements leave a lot to be desired. I was innocently standing on platform 10a on Wednesday night, alongside the hordes of other people who try to catch the Leicester train from that platform every night, when the sickly synthesised voice which insincerely tells people how deeply sorry it is for the severe delay to their service, announced that there was a platform alteration and the 17.59 to Leicester would now be departing from platform 12b. Since it was now 17.57 there was a moment of mad panic as people dashed for the staircases. I was lucky in that last time this happened to me, a nice elderly gentleman showed me a secret passage by which it is possible to get between platforms underground, without climbing up the enormous staircase back to the main station again. Several other people and I hurried down this passage and were just arranging ourselves in strategic positions on platform 12b which we believed best calculated to enable us to gain seats, when there came another announcement from Mr Electronic Insincerity.

“This is a platform alteration. The 17.59 service from this station to Leicester will now depart from Platform 10a. Platform 10a for the 17.59 service to Leicester”.

I confess to have a severe “I don’t believe it!” Victor Meldrew moment

We all proceeded to dash back through the passage, except somehow I got a bit lost and emerged on platform 11a where I very nearly boarded a train to Hereford and was never seen again.

I could overlook this as a minor inconvenience which hasn’t destroyed my life, but as the week progressed I got increasingly irritated with Cross Country, who I think are providing a much worse service than good old Central Trains used to. I swear the trains they are running have less carriages. One night this week they sent a specimen which consisted of a mere two coaches. The number of people who appear to commute between Birmingham and the environs of Leicester each day is really quite considerable and the effect of cramming them all into such a small space was not pleasant. There was standing place only by the time I arrived (10 minutes prior to departure) and so I settled myself into a nice corner by one of the doors within easy reach of the handrail. I had the presence of mind to remove my backpack from my back and was just about to remove my coat when a sudden influx into the vestibule area resulted in me being wedged in such a manner as made it impossible to sufficiently move my arms. I was therefore condemned to stand in this corner for the 55 minutes it took our delayed service to reach Leicester in severe danger of either overheating or passing out from the smell of a banana a person standing next to me saw fit to eat. Considering I was paying £16.70 a day for the privilege, I was more than a little annoyed

Moral of the story? I really need to learn to drive…

Going left then, you will proceed to walk down the not inconsiderable length of platform one, until you reach the stairs to the footbridge at the far end.  Ascending the two steep flights of steps, you will find yourself suspended on a covered walkway above the station, with further steps down to platforms two, three. four and six.  There are no steps to platform five.  Discovering this, you will curse in bewilderment but, aware that your current position gives you a perfect vantage point over the railway network, will scan the environs for an extra platform.  None will be visible.  With feelings ranging from mild despair to violent outrage, depending on how long it is until the train you were intending to catch is due to depart, you will turn around on your heel and suddenly notice a further sign declaring “Platform one, platform five, way out” and pointing in the direction from which you have just come.

And so you will set off upon your merry way again, descending the stairs, marching along platform one and ending up right back where you started.  This would be a good time to consider cursing again, particularly if it is now raining, which it generally is in Wolverhampton.  For want of better ideas, you now decide to walk to your right along the other length of platform one and discover, quite accidentally, that platform one inexplicably turns into platform five halfway down, without any sort of sign to warn you, and your train is actually sitting there.  Depending on what sort of day you are having, your train may now pull off just before you manage to sufficiently recover from the shock of seeing it to jump aboard.  If this happens, you will find that the next train to Birmingham is actually departing from platform three, and so you will need to climb all the way up those stairs again…

***

If I sound bitter, it is because my job tends to force me to work in the blot on the landscape which is Wolverhampton a couple of times a year.  The jobs are always spaced out at intervals that are just long enough for me to forget the location of platform five until it is already too late and I am standing on the footbridge watching my train pull away.  This post is to help me remember for next time.  It seems that the trains to Birmingham very frequently depart from platform five.  I can only assume that the station layout was designed by a Brummie, who wanted to ensure that the unfortunate inhabitants of Wolverhampton were never able to escape from the prison which is their town and do their Christmas shopping in the Bull Ring.