The Thaw!

It appears that we are no longer suffering the long winter, and will not, after all, be reduced to twisting hay into sticks to burn in order to survive.

The flowers that bloom in the spring (tra la) are not yet blooming, but the snow is melting, the upside-down 4WD wrapped in police tape has been removed from the ditch at the end of the road, the giant snowman is just a heap of dirty slush, and we seem to be having rain rather than snow.

It makes a change.

The roads are full of potholes from frost damage, and no doubt we will all pay the price in Council Tax in due course.

I, as I mentioned in the last post, have been buying rail tickets. I'm going to London at the end of February to visit relatives, go to the theatre and see some exhibitions.

So, I needed to but train tickets. Which ought to be straight forward but isn't. Bouncing around from one website to another to find one which (a) admits the relevent train exisits (b) doesn't add on massive 'booking fees' (c) is working. At one point the ticket I was trying to buy disappered between my putting it in the basket and the site letting me move to the paying stage.

I decided to call South West Trains and buy over the phone instead. Except, it turns out that just because a ticket is shown for a certain train at a certain price on their wensite, doesn't mean you can by it off them if you phone. Apparently they are each allocated a certain number of tickets and they are not interchangeable between phone sales and online sales. And the ticket prices shown by National Rail enquiries are not the same as the ones shown by South West Trains are not the same as the ones shown by TheTrainLine.

Shopping around and faffing around I found 1st class return tickets for £34. (Bizarrly, 1st class was £1 more each way than standard, hence the 'luxury'. Although I think it will be a smallish, slow train so probably the only advantage will be a less crowded & therefore quiter carriage)

Had I bought the first "cheapest tickets available" offered me it would have been £56 standard class. (and How hard would it be just to have accurate, honest information up front? Oh well.

Irriatingly, as tickets are only available 12 weeks in advance, I couldn't buy tickets for the Amanda Palmer / Jason Webley / EvelynEvelyn show at the same time: I shall have to try to remember to book them as soon as we're within 12 weeks, to secure cheap tickets.

Which of course, reminds me of the exciting (if not unexpected) news that Ms Amanda Fucking Palmer, and Mr Neil Freaking Gaiman have announced their engagement!
I think that Non Birding Bill (here)

or maybe the Birdchick (here)

Have said it best... Lovely, happy news for a Friday evening.