91热爆

Hi
I'm back.
About train travel. I'm a convert even though we were held up between Glasgow and Edinburgh. I sat looking out of the window from when it was almost too dark to see to when it was almost light enough; frost on the trees and the weeds that only grow by railway lines, and very Christmassy too. There was a problem with the points. The 'customer services manager' aka the ticket clipper kept us well-informed with one of those wonderful soft Scottish accents I thought had disappeared everywhere except for black and white sixties tv programmes. A man across the aisle was grumbling into his mobile, saying he should have got the Virgin train. He may have had a point as it rattled past us. But we didn't wait long, and our customer services manager with the lovely voice was very apologetic. I had a booked seat, all the seats in my carriage were booked and there were squares of cardboard on the backs of every seat saying when they would be occupied. I wasn't actually sitting in my seat as I like to face the direction of travel but I wasn't due to have any company until we got to Newcastle. Then our customer services manager with the lovely voice collected them all and I gradually worked out we had become another train. My potential company would catch another train at the time we should have been in Newcastle, rather than waiting for us to get there. This made it rather confusing for passengers getting on, as they all thought they had booked seats, and they didn't. And then, disaster. There was a crew change at Newcastle and my wonderful customer services manager with the lovely voice disappeared. The replacement English crew were very friendly, but they stopped apologising for the delay (which actually was a bit of a relief) and now I didn't know when I would be getting to Peterborough. I asked one of the English officials and he worked it out counting on his fingers. I was wondering if he would lend me his mobile as I don't have one and he just gave it to me. Then he walked off, inducing a minor panic as I'm not mobile literate, but I successfully managed to dial out and re-arrange my lift. I had the phone for about 15 minutes but couldn't think of anyone else to call. Apart from helping me all the staff were very helpful to anyone else who asked, including an elderly lady who had her luggage loaded on and off for her, and the customer services manager with the lovely voice checked her connection on to March after the delay. So I'm awarding NXEC (National Express East Coast) 100% for customer service and won't mind travelling by train again. And the cost from Glasgow to Peterborough was about the same as half the cost of driving the van the same distance, although that only helps if there is transport from Peterborough.

As part of the relative round at Christmas we were spending 2 days with my brother and family, and most of my step-family. We only see them about once every two years now so there was a bit of catching up to do. (What do you call the new man in your step-mother's life? A step-step-father?) Then my brother dumped an enormous load of Brio wooden train track on the table (just half an hour before we were due to eat). I grew up with Brio, before graduating to Scalextric. Both required similar track building skills, but it was always harder keeping control of the Scalextric from other racers. Our mission was to use every single piece of track on the table and keep my two-year-old nephew from crying (he didn't want to share his battery train). My principal fellow track builders were my step-sister and her husband. My step-sister-in-law and neice were building the zoo and my poor step-mum was left to construct Newtown. We had to keep borrowing bits of Newtown to hold up the extended flyover sections of track. We let my nephew watch the trains for a bit until some more track appeared and we had to demolish Newtown. We were down to 2 track builders, hardly any houses left for Newtown, and very little table left to put more track on, but we managed. We were left with just one curve, and unless we put in a siding, which we thought would be cheating, we had accomplished our mission. The track filled up with two battery trains and an assortment of cars and it became apparent there was a flaw in our track as eventually all the trains got trapped on one loop. My step-sister and I contemplated a rebuild, my step-mum began to build a wall around Newtown, the nephew started to cry and dinner was announced. I suspect the nephew will get some interesting new sections of track before we renew our challenge at Christmas 2009. Meanwhile I am wondering why the fairer sex were more involved in the building. In my next life I am going to consider being a civil engineer.

Last night there was a presentation from Karen the architect for our new hall. She had already shown the plans to the high school kids in Oban, the junior kids saw them this morning and she hopes to show them to the Coll Association in Glasgow next week. And they are on a website somewhere, but I can't find the address (sorry). So this is going to be a very well-consulted about hall. Last night we wondered if the kitchen was big enough and whether the car park could double up as a play area for the kids, so we are all taking this very seriously. I hope Karen doesn't disappear under too much feedback, but it is great to see some progress.
Elsewhere, the sailing club has ordered some boats and hopes to have an open day in the spring and rumour has it the airport needs a security fence, but the windsock is back. My New Year resolution is to get the cover back on the polytunnel and grow something, so I am now allowed to look at seed catalogues. Except I have just bought a book on photoshop (an amazon fix again) so I am trying to justify spending more time at the computer and less time actually doing anything. Roll on the rainy days (I don't believe I actually think that!).

I'm very nervous at the moment. The book club is reading a book I suggested. We read it over New Year while we were camping. We don't allow bed-time to happen until after 9.30, so while we wait for the clock to tick round to teeth-cleaning time we huddle round the fire (well actually we don't, we sit well back because the one thing in plentiful supply in a wood is firewood) and Nick reads to us. He proposed to read Alan Bennett's 'The Uncommon Reader'. I wasn't that impressed with the idea, I thought it was a bit literary. And it was very funny, not laugh-out-loud funny, but the following day we would remember bits, or one of us would be accused of behaving like 'Sir Kevin the New Zealander', or we would practice pretending to wave from a carriage while reading. So I mentioned it at book club and now it is official and I bought a copy from nice Dr Amazon and read it. And reading it to yourself is too quick, it needs to be read a chapter at a time, and it is definitely a book to talk about while you read it, in fact it is probably the perfect book to have on cassette. It is the first time I can remember where I noticed less the second time I read something than the first. So I am very nervous about next book club, because it is so much better read out loud!

Meanwhile, it is also Coll Magazine time so I am very busy bothering lots of people who are beginning to avoid me (perhaps no-one will go to book club) trying to get them to write articles. Putting it together is going to take even longer this year, because my new trusty Photoshop book tells me not to convert a colour picture to a black and white using the 'grayscale' button, but to go through a RGB box, and choose a red and black, or a green and black (but apparently never a blue and black, because the cones in your eyes don't see as many blues as they do reds and greens) picture and then make it black and white. And while I can see they look different, and different to the easy grayscale, I now have to decide which is better! Which takes longer! Doing is much quicker than deciding to do.
The Coll mag has its own website :- with back issues available to read online, you can even read something I wrote, although I couldn't find it with the search button.
Message for mjc. Herons do bark, honest! Muntjac deer bark too (and they are smaller than greyhounds) but a certain breed of dog doesn't, I think it is a basenji. I hope Carol can get us a pic of the cat riding the dog.