Random Thoughts — Page 80

So they can't get out and infect the forum.

But you can use the bag for other awesome things.  Like storing cheese.  It's a value added bonus!

ray_afraid said:

Akwat Kbrana said:

Email me if you wanna pizza role.

Hmmm.. a role as a pizza sounds interesting... Email sent.

lol ray!

*iz outgrabe'd by mome raths*

damn them slithy toves, anyway.

That costume is sooooooo...

...

...

...inaccurate. ;-)

It's becoming a bit of a tradition to post my Christmas travel nightmares in this thread so here we go.

The weather had already begun to turn bad when I was making my last posts here before leaving to see the folks down south.

The better half hates Christmas and opted to stay at Chateau Bingowings for the duration.

I booked the train tickets many months in advance and they had been sitting on my editing table where I would tap them and check they were still there almost every day so it came as no surprise that half an hour before the taxi was due to push through the ice to take me to the station that they had mysteriously vanished when I went to pick them up.

Cue me running around like a headless jerk checking everywhere including the fridge to see where they could have got to. Cue me being screamed at for not checking where they were supposed to be while doing this. Cue me quietly seething that being screamed at wasn't aiding me in my quest.

I found them in amongst the better half's tax forms seconds before leaving.

Loading the wheeled coffin full of presents (suit case with wheels we call Renee for reasons too complicated to explain) I cut three of my fingers on the zip and spent the taxi journey with my hand in my mouth trying to stop the blood.

A packed train did arrive (one of many miracles) to take me to Edinburgh but I had to park myself in the vestibule next to the toilet which was strongly humming of pish something that was making myself and the poor lady with a baby in a pram crushed in next to me feel very sick indeed.

When I got to Edinburgh most of the trains to London were canceled. I got into a long line at the information desk my hands still bleeding and shaking with the cold and was pleased to find that mine was still running on time.

Got onto the train and stacked my luggage onto a massive Jenga of luggage and found my seat only to discover that my train and the one before had been condensed together and all seat reservations were off and my seat wasn't my seat anymore.

I just managed to find a seat in time before the train became so full that people began to sit in the aisles.

A couple of Japanese girls didn't get the 'all reservations are off' line and gave the young lady in front of me such a grilling she burst into tears.

Went through Berwick and the Tweed was frozen solid, boats were locked into the ice and people were walking on the river.

The fine snow which covered the tracks on either side of the line we were on, was blown around the train creating the impression of traveling through a white vortex.

The winter sun was very intense and shone in my eyes for most of the duration of the journey. I saw a bizarre axe head shaped rainbow in the sky presumably created by it shining through churned up snow.

At Newcastle a large number of people got off the train but because it was late/early an even larger number were on the platform waiting to get on. It looked like a wartime evacuation film.

The train didn't move for 45 minutes because the driver hadn't turned up yet and all through that time more people were turning up and cramming themselves on to the train.

When it finally did get going not a centimeter of aisle space wasn't filled with people sitting down on the floor. I was reminded of the head shearing machine sequence from Caligula.

Obviously there was no trolley service and going to the buffet or toilet was pretty much impossible as was moving limbs and the air was getting a bit on the stale side.

The amount of coughing and ring tone noises made the place sound like being trapped in a tuberculoid arcade game.

At each stop there was a mad rush to get people off  and get some of the floor dwellers into a seat before a new crowd squeezed in.

After about nine hours we finally got to King's Cross though my case had been moved to the guard's van without anyone telling me and was now minus the wheels on one side.

I then had to make my way though the Tube to Victoria.

The tunnels had a strange smell of melted plastic and barbecued flesh and I was rather alarmed to overhear a security guard say over his walkie talkie "What exactly are you trying to tell me?".

I couldn't get out of the underground quicker.

At Victoria all the trains to Brighton were running late or canceled and none of them had the platforms announced. This went on for a few hours. Eventually a platform number flashed up and it was another mad rush to get to it but the doors didn't open for another half an hour.

Once on the Brighton train (full but not as cramped) and away the journey took on a new flavour, one of extreme slow motion.

A mixture of falling snow and signal faults meant that every train was traveling at a snails pace and some were freezing to the tracks causing sparks to fly.

The driver announced that he was trying to keep the train in motion as some of the trains that had stopped weren't starting again.

London to Brighton in over two hours was quite something.

However once in Brighton there was no sign of snow and my mum was very pleased if not surprised to see I finally had made it.

The next morning reports came in of electricity lines coming down in Peterborough and passengers having to walk along side the line to the next station because their trains had began to smoke while stalled.

On Christmas Eve I got a call from the better half telling me the water had gone off.

He had called a plumber who suggested trying the thaw out the pipe with an hair dryer and since we don't have such a device he had popped over to next door to borrow one.

A few minutes later there was a knock on the door and the neighbours had  come over with a full Christmas dinner and desert for him which just goes to show how wonderful our neighbours are.

This opened up a new chapter of Christmas horrors as between the two of us we tried to get Scottish Water to come and inspect the mains.

They were arguing that it must be a pipe in the House Of Bingowings that had frozen or burst because only the Chateau was lacking a supply.

But two plumbers including a former water board inspector were both saying it was the main the road which had frozen and they couldn't touch it.

Eventually the water tanks emptied and even the loo wouldn't flush and the only water that could be had was from the neighbours filling up bottles for him.

When I phoned up one of the suspiciously consistently Northern Irish sounding voices on the line let slip that he didn't actually work for Scottish Water and that the call had been diverted to them because of the lack of staff and the large number of calls.

When I tried to press him to tell which company he worked for he hung up on me.

We finally got an email reply seven days after the water had gone off (and after Scottish water had shipped large amounts of bottled water to Northern Ireland to help with their crisis but hadn't done anything to deal with one on their own doorstep).

They were saying the same thing about it not being their problem.

We threatened them with legal action and the Scottish Parliament and we started to get nuisance phone calls in the middle of the night (no speaking just giggling and then hanging up) coming from the same number as the mystery call centre that was taking over the phone calls to Scottish Water.

Under the stess off this I had a seisure and my eyesight is still throbbing as I write.

On day eleven a man from Scottish Water did finally turn up he located the  water point with a metal detector and dug it out of the ice with a pick axe.

When he opened it up he found a flow metre in the point (which had frozen solid) that had been there when the Chateau was first built and should never have been left there.

It was there fault and responsibility after all.

The neighbours made a chain and poured boiling water in to thaw the pipe out and the water came back on.

So another typical Christmas Panto.

I got back last night and have to make an appointment with my neurologist to see if my eye with stop pulsating.

I do hope it doesn't snow again.

As I said it's sort of a Christmas tradition for me to post a memoir of Yuletide horrors.

I only mentioned the trip down and the water outage if I were to list everything else I'd have to write a book about it.

Bingowings said:

As I said it's sort of a Christmas tradition for me to post a memoir of Yuletide horrors.

I know, I've just been looking for a chance to post that image :-)

You really get to know who the quality of friends, neighbours and idiotic jobsworths at times like this.

The journey back was blissfully incident free by comparison.

I'll have to get the neighbours some sort of thank-you presents when funds return.

I also had two weeks away from direct access to the interwebs so catching up on here has been a real throbbing eye opener in places.

QFT

Scott Adams must be a member here.

I'm sure that's been addressed to some degree at least once in this thread, but I ain't looking through 80 pages to find out the answer ;-)