On My Adventures In The Big City

Yesterday I went to London for the day. I had 3 meetings arranged: one chemistry meeting with a prospective client, one coaching session with an existing client, and one catch up with a dear friend who was going to give me a tour of her husband's art exhibition. I had arranged the first and last meetings around the middle one, to make the most of the day, and decided to let National Express take the strain.

So, up early to catch the 0810 coach, we left the house at 0730 on the basis that it would take half an hour to walk to the coach stop and I don't like to be late. My lovely husband accompanied me as it was on his way to work. We walked so fast it took all of 10 minutes to get to the bust stop, which left me with a half hour wait for the coach! And boy, was it cold yesterday morning! Still, never mind, I was wrapped up in coat and gloves, and it would only be half an hour.

Or would it? 0810 came and went with no sign of a coach. Then at 0817 I spied it, a big, white National Express coach zooming round the roundabout, approaching the bus stop ..... and zooming straight past with the driver looking fixedly ahead, CLEARLY ignoring my frantic attempts to flag her down. I was dumbfounded. Clearly she was late, but that was no excuse for failing to stop.

Luckily a local bus was right behind, and I thought if I hopped on that I could catch up with the coach at the next stop in town. But look! I have no money on me!! How sensible am I?!

So I rang my lovely husband and asked him to come out and meet me at the gates to his work, and bring me some money. Which he did, bless him. Then he walked me to the nearest bus stop where, as luck would have it, a bus was just about to pull in. As lovely husband turned away, railing at the uselessness of National Express and exhorting me to ring them and complain, what did I espy but a National Express coach creeping up behind the local bus. And, would you believe it, when I checked my ticket, this one actually had the right service number on it, unlike (I now realised) the one that had zoomed past me....

I was now at the wrong bus stop, but I leapt out into the road waving my ticket and holding up traffic while trying to get the coach driver to let me on board. Which he did, very grumpily and probably against the rules, but boy was I grateful!! What a good job he was half an hour late, or I'd never have caught him!!

Once I'd settled in I rang my husband to let him know, but his phone was engaged, so I checked my emails instead. There was one cancelling my first meeting, for a very good reason it has to be said. Just then my husband rang to tell me about the argument he'd just had with someone at National Express's head office and what a shower they were and how angry he was at their poor service. How he laughed when I told him about my mix up with the coaches, and how I was now on the right one! Ha!

The journey was largely uneventful, apart from the WiFi not working and the electrical socket that I'd plugged my laptop into not having any power. As we sat in a traffic jam outside Buckingham Palace I reflected on how lucky it was that my morning meeting had been cancelled, as we were so late that I wouldn't have made it anyhow.

We finally made it to Victoria and I had plenty of time to get my Oyster card, buy some lunch and saunter on to the underground to get to my next appointment. I would even have time for a cup of tea somewhere when I go to my destination. I was buoyed up by having taken a call from a journalist wanting to interview me for a feature article next week - it was a lovely day, I wasn't in a rush, all was good.

A few stops from my destination, the phone rang. My client said "I don't know how to tell me this, but..." he had a family emergency that required his immediate attention. I managed to hold off with the hysterical laughter till I got off the phone, convincing him that he didn't need to feel guilty and it wasn't a problem. I rang my lovely husband and we had a chortle together - and then I noticed we were pulling into what had been my destination and if I didn't get off there, I'd end up who knows where.

Off I got, crossed the footbridge over to the other platform and ate my lunch while freezing my bits off waiting 20 minutes for a train back in the other direction. While there I had a sudden panic - was I meeting my friend in Kingston or Richmond? Was she going to cancel on me too? How did one get to Kingston or Richmond from where I was?

Thankfully she texted me right back - I was going to Kingston, she wasn't going to cancel, and she could meet me earlier than planned. Apart from then passing through various stations 3 times because I got confused about which route to take, the journey to Kingston was uneventful. I had a lovely time with my friend, including copious amounts of tea, wine and ribaldry. To our delight, our guru, the man who taught us to be coaches, happened to wander past the window of Carluccio's as we were ribalding, so I ran outside like a thing possessed, bear-hugged him and woman-handled him in to join us. Once he'd got over the shock (I'm quite hefty, and apparently he doesn't often find himself being charged at by overweight middle-aged women dressed in all the colours of the rainbow!) he was as delighted to see us as we were to see him, so we had a lovely catch-up before we let him go free again.

I made my leisurely way back to Victoria, picking up some supper from M&S on the way, and arriving at the Coach Station with plenty of time to spare. Got on the coach, no problems, settled down, no problems, plugged in my laptop and WiFi, no problems. Went to eat my supper - a nice healthy couscous salad with roasted veg and spicy chicken. Which I had to eat with my fingers, cos I hadn't picked up a fork.

I had a lovely day out, and I hope my next trip to London will be as much fun!