Flying visit to London

Up with the lark yesterday, to get the coach to London at seven thirty to see sister June. It didn't take long to fall asleep. I woke up refreshed near Reading, with my mind buzzing about an article for the CBS newsletter. I got my little laptop out but in addition to the closeness of the coach seats, the guy in front had leaned his back so that he could sleep and there was little room to use it properly. I perched it against his headrest and typed with one finger. By the time we reached Earl's Court I had three hundred words written, to fill in the last major article slot. To my surprise, when reviewed later it read quite well and didn't need much revising. And the bus was early. A triumph!

It's more than half a year since I last made the trip. It was good to catch up with June and perform my usual duty of tidying her Sony laptop and completing its updates. Since I was last there the three year of laptop battery (or its charging circuit) has died. The machine and charger always ran hot, to my mind. Both the original charger and the costly replacement one. Definitely an older generation of technology dressed up in a smart looking case. And it uses Windows Vista, sluggishly. I'd love to replace it with Ubuntu with the Unity interface as I think she'd find it less demanding and simpler for her limited uses. Well ... maybe next time I'm there.

With the weather being so terrible yesterday, some train services weren't running, so South Wales was served by three coaches at seven o'clock, one for Newport one for Cardiff and one for Swansea, where there's normally one coach for all three destinations. Traffic leaving London flowed smoothly. This meant we could look forward to arriving in Cardiff ahead of the scheduled time with no stops to be made en route. No such luck. The M4 was down to one lane for two miles before the Severn Crossing and right across the bridge itself, for maintenance work, and there was a long traffic queue. As a result we lost twenty minutes, and arrived when we should have done. With a further fifteen minute wait for a bus home, I got in at eleven.

I felt sorry for our driver. As his was a 'duplicate' coach hired in to provide spare seat capacity, he was due to drive home to Ludlow after dropping us off in Cardiff, an hour and a quarter on quiet roads. The twenty minute delay meant that he couldn't drive straight home without going in to his enforced rest period after four and a half hours on duty. He would have to stop over in Cardiff for half an hour or so before he set out, and arrive home well after midnight. He was philosophical about it, but I wondered if his wife ever got used to it.