Unexpected chaos

This morning after breakfast I walked up to St Michael's College with a bag of books on Orthodoxy to leave there for Ross, who forgot to take them with him from St German's on Sunday last. I intended to go by bus from Llandaff straight into town to buy Clare's birthday present, but left without a face mask, so I had to return home to collect one, and then catch the 61 into town. The Tudor Street road works impose a one way system, and the buses have adopted this, entering the city centre from Fitzhamon embankment over the Wood Street Bridge, then continuing to a bus stop on one side of Westgate Street, where inbound and outbound passengers get on and off. It must get pretty crowded at peak times, and in these covid times that's not such a good thing.

Ann was due to arrive from Felixstowe at three thirty five this afternoon, but her train was delayed by just over an hour.  I left the house to collect her by car in what I thought was good time, but traffic in Canton was very heavy. I thought I would have to queue for ages at the Tudor Street junction, but this wasn't the case. I was only five minutes later than Ann's first ETA, then she texted me about an extension to the delay. The train arrived five minutes later than the delayed time advertised on the information panel and went to a different platform. The barrier operator let me through to look for Ann, but with no success. I phoned her and discovered she took a wrong turning from an unfamiliar platform and got lost. One of the station staff kindly escorted her to the other end of the station, and all was well.

Apparently the conductor on her train got off at Swindon, so it had to wait for a replacement conductor to arrive by car from Bristol, forty five minutes away on the M4. The added fifteen minutes was him needing to find a petrol station en route. Due to a shortage of trained fuel delivery drivers some petrol stations have none to sell, and others have queues as a result of motorists panic buying. How soon chaos spreads. 

The first thing Ann did on arrive was make an on-line compensation claim to the train operators. She may get some of her outbound fare refunded. The procedure was understandable enough once you understood what was required, but the web page layout was tricky to negotiate, and took two of us to figure out. It requires a photo of your ticket, and either a ticket number or a booking reference. Nothing on the ticket  indicates which is which of the three groups of numbers it contains. The long ticket number (presumably) seemed to be accepted, but the web application form crashed and had to be re-started. What seems to be the booking reference, a much smaller code of letters and numbers worked. Next time we won't need to guess. Anyway, within minutes of completion Ann had an acknowledgment of her refund application, so the system is functional, and will deliver compensation to her bank account, in a matter of weeks.

Owain arrived at seven, his train from Bristol was delayed twenty minutes, so I collected him from the station, so that we could assemble ourselves in good time to walk to Stefano's for supper at eight. It was an enjoyable way to spend the rest of the day, excellent food nicely served, no mishaps, a return to order after journey chaos.