Well you'll be pleased to know that I did indeed make my train with enough time to buy beer, but shortly after the trip began I started to wish I hadn't. We travelled with a well-known train company - think hot air balloons, rockets to the moon - in one of their well advertised brand-spanking new trains. Hurray! Or not. After departing London, we started to notice that things weren't quite right with our "new" train - water was coming from the roof, the toilet door wouldn't stay shut (leading to some hilarious getting to know yous with the passengers), and the intercom was perfectly legible which meant something was definitely up. So, we get to Rugby and the lovely northern conductor announces that they have to "reboot" the train to solve the problems, which in effect meant switching it off and on again. Now, I've done that with printers that won't play ball, and indeed computers, but I thought trains were slightly more complicated than that. So we sat in the dark at the platform for a good 20 minutes, then thankfully the train decided to work and we could set off again.
So far so good, but now the train is late, and being the last train out of civilization for the evening lots of people have missed their connections. No problem chirped up the conductor, he promised to get everyone to their final destinations be it by taxi, bus or ... on horseback. I swear we smelled horses when we walked up the train, I assumed this was due to the reported problems with the toilets on the fancy new trains, but are train companies now keeping horses on board just in case they need extra transportation? Times they are a'changing...
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