Ye. Gods.
I'm on the 21:00 East Midlands train out of St Pancras. I should have been on the 20:15 but the preceding Eurostar was held up for 45 minutes by an electrical storm in France and we hadn't even arrived at St Pancras by 20:15, let alone got through customs. I've got a Eurostar business card so I know who to badger for whatever I'm due from them, but East Midlands Trains have very kindly waived the requirement for me to buy a new ticket for the journey, saving me £80 or so. Props to East Midlands Trains - I'll use them again. And the station is directly in front of a power station; it reminds me of the Fairy Godmother's house/factory in Shrek 2. Next time I'm going for the photo op.
Being 45 minutes late out of London is the least of the problems with this journey, however. It began on the Caen-Paris St Lazare train, when the heating came on in my carriage on the most humid if not actually the hottest day of my week in France. I thought I was going to suffocate - I went into the vestibule and lolled on the floor till the guard came and asked if I had a ticket, presumably in the belief that I was on something. When I got to Paris it was just as bad: there were very few signs for the Magenta metro station at St Lazare and when I finally made it to Gare du Nord all the lifts were broken and I had to carry my case up 7,000 flights of stairs.* I actually collapsed at the top of (what at the time I believed to be) the penultimate flight, something I haven't done for a long time. A truly horrible experience.
Which is all a great shame, as this morning was great :) We should have started the week with something like this morning's activities, had a good laugh and got our confidence up. The theme was Cultures, so we read and wrote poems and short stories and then acted out extracts from nonsense plays, which was awesome. We ended the session with an upstanding rendition of the Marseillaise and agreed for the purpose of international diplomacy to overlook the 'combat impure blood' bits. Fantastic :)
* My vision had blurred by this point, so my calculations may be a little out.
I'm on the 21:00 East Midlands train out of St Pancras. I should have been on the 20:15 but the preceding Eurostar was held up for 45 minutes by an electrical storm in France and we hadn't even arrived at St Pancras by 20:15, let alone got through customs. I've got a Eurostar business card so I know who to badger for whatever I'm due from them, but East Midlands Trains have very kindly waived the requirement for me to buy a new ticket for the journey, saving me £80 or so. Props to East Midlands Trains - I'll use them again. And the station is directly in front of a power station; it reminds me of the Fairy Godmother's house/factory in Shrek 2. Next time I'm going for the photo op.
Being 45 minutes late out of London is the least of the problems with this journey, however. It began on the Caen-Paris St Lazare train, when the heating came on in my carriage on the most humid if not actually the hottest day of my week in France. I thought I was going to suffocate - I went into the vestibule and lolled on the floor till the guard came and asked if I had a ticket, presumably in the belief that I was on something. When I got to Paris it was just as bad: there were very few signs for the Magenta metro station at St Lazare and when I finally made it to Gare du Nord all the lifts were broken and I had to carry my case up 7,000 flights of stairs.* I actually collapsed at the top of (what at the time I believed to be) the penultimate flight, something I haven't done for a long time. A truly horrible experience.
Which is all a great shame, as this morning was great :) We should have started the week with something like this morning's activities, had a good laugh and got our confidence up. The theme was Cultures, so we read and wrote poems and short stories and then acted out extracts from nonsense plays, which was awesome. We ended the session with an upstanding rendition of the Marseillaise and agreed for the purpose of international diplomacy to overlook the 'combat impure blood' bits. Fantastic :)
* My vision had blurred by this point, so my calculations may be a little out.
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