Well, I’m back.
Had a reasonable trip back up to Shropshire on Friday – National Express to Digbeth, and then a train down to Telford for a total of £16 quid, which is actually something like a tenner’s saving compared to doing the same trip entirely by train, even with a railcard. Will have to bear that in mind.
Long delays at Oxford, whilst we waited for a lost bus driver to retrieve himself and get to the bus stop. Huge coldness, because Britain being where it is in relation to the Gulf Stream an’ all, we don’t take people standing about for a bus too seriously, and so we all had to wait in the freezing cold. Finland or Canada, or somwhere, they’d’ve given us a nice proper heated station, but all Oxford gets is those little red seats that flap down when you stand up from ’em, and precious little of those anyway.
Still, we did alright. Train from Birmingham to Wolverhampton, after much delays becase the fog was playing Hob with the network anyway, and they’d had a power outage at Congleton, which is somewhere round there. Wolvo was its usual self, and I was just hanging about for something to Telford when they said they were laying on a replacement bus for people after the Aberystwyth service (I am so surprised…) so I hopped onto that and got picked up by my mother and sister at Telford, where a woman promptly ran into the back of the car at about 30 mph whilst we were at a roundabout.
I reckon it was thirty based on a) the heowge dent in the boot – caught us above the bumper, which seems to have saved the chassis – the angle she came at (not that of someone slowing down and following the curve in the road in the understanding there’s a whacking great roundabout six yards ahead) and the fact she got out of her car and said she was very sorry, she hadn’t been paying any attention and she was thinking about Christmas shopping.
So then it was off to the hospital to be inspected for the various forms of whiplash we’d landed ourselves, though we’re all OK in the main, just in varying degrees of pain and stiffness; my sister got it worst, because there’s not back seat headrests, and I got jerked about because the headrest that was in the front was adjusted for her head, not mine. Surprisingly tiring, and I’d never before realised how often you need to lift your arm above your shoulder until all the right side of me torso seized up.
Ah well. Could’ve been worse. Hospital kept asking me if I had a seatbelt on, though, which was a little random… But never mind. House is freezing, as usual, and my fingers are cold because I can’t type with gloves on, and I’ve lost the fingerless mittens I used to do my homework in, since moving out and living in places with more than part central heating and a twenty-year-old boiler.
Hey ho. Merry Xmas eve, and all that, and I shall make some vague post tomorrow when I’m opening my present on LoTGD…