Relaxed Parents

I’ve been intending to write a long, self-excoriating post about our Not Shouting campaign, dudelet’s current discipline issues and my own failures in coping effectively with him.  That can wait.

Yesterday, I went up to Nottingham to run a short workshop at a conference (I had a mixed response).  I was due back in the office at 2pm, had scored first class tickets for less than a fiver more than standard and generally enjoying the sensation of being waited on hand and foot (seriously – I was the only traveller in the entire carriage!)  Then another train decided to tangle itself up with overhead cables in North London and managed to shut down pretty much every train from Kentish Town to Leicester in the process.

The first I knew about this was when the PA system told us that our train (and my first class seat!) was terminated.  Did I mention it was the hottest day of the year so far?  We all crowded onto a tiny platform whilst a railway employee tried to explain to us what was going on.  We waited.  And waited.  A train came along.  We waited some more.  The railway lady told us to get on it.  So we did.  Then they terminated it and we got off again.  I wandered around and took some random pictures.  The railway lady and everyone else were patient with each other in a mutually aggrieved sort of way (in fact, no-one, no-one took it out on the station staff.  See?  The British still have in them to be polite in times of petty crisis.)

Finally, we all squashed onto another train (an awful lot of people had accrued by this point) and travelled on to the next station.  Then they terminated the train.  By this point, people were starting to get positively cheerful.  I saw a tall young women walk up to an old man, a complete stranger, and give him one of her bottles of water (needless to say, there was no water anywhere).  I took photos of the backs of people’s heads.

Then we got on another train and trundled off again, people practically sitting in each other’s laps.  This time, they began to add stations – Cricklewood, Hendon…West Hampstead!  Hooray! An Underground.  Everyone was freely passing around each other’s Tube maps and the London natives were making suggestions about the best way to travel onwards or the best chance of getting to Heathrow (Victoria line and change at Green Park if you’re on the Jubilee.

I and a vast crowd of fellow-travellers got off at West Hampstead and dispersed.  I was exhausted, a 1.5 hour journey had taken five and half hours but I got home ok.  And I made it to my yoga class (WOYOPRACMO for July – one day down!).