Demob happiness

Everything about today's commute went wrong. Trains from Portsmouth had been cancelled due to over-running engineering works. The train that eventually put in an appearance at Guildford was packed. I spent the next half an hour trying to read Harry Potter whilst not sitting on the rather put-out gentleman who seemed to think that just because he'd been on the train early enough to get a seat, that somehow entitled him to a premium amount of personal space. But anyhow, a most unpleasant journey it was. For once, I was heartily pleased to see Clapham Junction loom out of the mist. But the connecting train wasn't there. So I was late to work. Again. Coming home, my first train was late. I subsequently missed the connecting train. My second train seemed to get lost in the short shuffle from Waterloo to Clapham, turning up half an hour late, and I then missed the connection at Woking. I eventually got home two and a half hours after leaving work. It's a distance of 25 miles as the crow flies. That's an average speed of 10 miles an hour. Pitiful, isn't it?

For once, though, I didn't actually care. I was taking a perverse enjoyment in the lateness of the trains and the extreme rubbishness of the commute. You see, I've found somewhere to live that is within walking distance of work, and I'm moving this weekend. This means I have only eight more rubbish commutes (and five in which I need to complete Harry Potter prior to the Inaugural Meeting of the Inapub Bookclub on Thursday). I am enormously pleased. And, whilst it's hardly a pleasant walk, being a little over a mile along a traffic-choked main road, it will be wonderful after five months of commuting. In fact, I can't wait to move. I will have evenings again. I can set my alarm clock later than 7am. Later than 8am. If I'm having a bad day, later than 9am. And have heating. And, with a minute's walk to the river, it's entirely possible I can row again, as well*. In fact, I might even get to the stage of not actively loathing everything about London with the sort of passion only possible in someone who has been brought up with the unshakable conviction that it is right and proper to flee from the South East to Yorkshire in search of a better quality of life. I might even enjoy doing London things.

But it's possible that I might just the teensiest bit miss living in a crazy house in scary woodland with suspected axe-murdering pseudo midgets, a feline ginger sex-pest, a poorly toilet-trained siamese bully and a larceny-loving overgrown lap dog...

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*Having checked my nearest rowing clubs, it turns out that the captain of the women's squad at the club a mile from the new pad is someone I used to row with in a former life. Rowing is a small, small world.