06:30 En route: Girl on a foreign exchange to Germany has a small crisis phone call wih her best pal as her parents look nervous and her wee brother looks bored from the platform
07:12 Still dark. How can it still be *this* dark. Quite odd. Making progress on the assignment though and have mostly stopped receiving dirty looks from the exchange student girl.
07:14 Getting achy from my not quite perfect laptop angle (interesting seat design for a train with specific laptop power points (and no wifi - muh!). Shall I ask student girl to watch the mac for me?
07:35 Dawn is very slowly approaching. ooh the excitment. My smoked salmon bagels look like a good brekkie compared to fellow business travellers - one is starting her day with Cadbury Snack biscuits. Nice. And a metro of course. smug? Moi?!
07:44 Went to the bathroom (the exchange kid kept an eye for me and seems very nice) and 2 mins later I come out to find it almost light and the carriage suddenly toasty. Bizarre. Oh and these tilty trains they *really* do tilt!
07:48 Haiti/Arcade Fire is almost as perfect for train travel synchronisation as Star Guitar/Aphex Twin
07:54 Pulling into Carlisle I can't believe how huge the Cumbria indoor bowld park is. It's pretty big people. And just near the Eden Bridge Club for the less, er, athletically inclined. Why am i so not surprised that the spandex cyclist man and his son (wearing a lot less spandex) are getting off here? They had that borders smug glow! Wow. uniformeed school kids getting on and a whole heap of the young and the zitty are boarding. - or are they all together?! Could be... Wonder if they know that coach c is quiet carriage? Aw. One of the uniform kid was coiling in embarrassment as his dad waved him off!
08:03 First rubbish collection person does the rounds 90 minutes into journey. fairly impressive. Sheeo frolicking outside window are great distraction from policy papers.
08:08 Keep seeing frozen streams. It's definitely winter.
08:11 All the kids get off at Penrith. I remain baffled by the wacky blend of major stations and iny hops that long train journeys include. Also intriguing is the mother daughter pair at Penrith station - both look appaalled by th ehour but the mother staring at her kid judgementally is definitely more awake. Maybe she's staring cos the kids curly blond highlighted hair is suffiiciently scrubby to look like she's been dragged through a hedge backwards. Need I mention that she's wearing Uggs? Nah. DIdn't think I needed to.
08:21 Finding the dry stone walls, the bare hills and the sheep very romantic It's a shame the only non nature/farmimg objects in the landscape round her seem to be trucks, coaches and caravans. I forget how lucky I am to live somewhere so well served by public transport sometimes. And how efficient cities are at negating the need for a vehicle to get around every day. Can't imagine living alone or without a driving licence out here in th the beautiful remoteness
08:43 iTunes delivers blast from the past.. two steps back. i still like it damn it!
08:45 Wow. flooded fields
08:49 Thinking that Carnforth stations would not look out of place in Brief Encounter... oh dear. I seem to have a smut in my eye....
08:52 Stopped in a siding. never a good thing
08:57 Moving again. phew.
09:01 Finding that ham sarnies are the breakfast of choice for my co-passengers.
09:19 Putting macbook away ready for change bit. Must put track 2 of Manu Chao Clandestino into xmas cd... it's ace and pingy!
09:21 Amused at the girl oppositte. As well as topping up her make up a lot to hide one of those pesky chin zits she's now checking her face in her ipod. classy. I'm sure that's what mac had in mind for that reflective surface...
16:30 Liverpool Taxi drivers are the nicest I've met. Although mine was freaked out that a city visitor had a minicab company number until I explained that the nice man at the Anglican Cathedral (which is breathtaking and giant) gave it to me.
17:15 Met a nice couple also on the way to Edinburgh whilst we all met at Wigan NorthWestern - both seemed very nice. I feel very old telling people like this - who detect I am not a native Edinburger - that I've actually lived here a decade. It's a long time. I notice that whilst the good folks of Liverpool John Mooires mistook me for an academic the Edinburgh pair were sensible enough to know better. The husband, retired head of architecture at... I don't know... I think George Watson's College where the wife works, anyway he seemed obsessed with Pollock Halls - his son married there (I think he said) but he couldn't remember in which bit. Curious. Anyway they had been down for a Friday of culture. Apparently Anthony Gormley's permanent sculptures are quite amazing.
17:30 On the train to Edinburgh and it's bloming packed with enormous numbers of students it seems. Enormous numbers. And bags. In place of this morning's tiny children we have the 18-22 brigade and a lot of standing people. Rarely have I neen so happy about my reservation and my canny prepurchasing of nibbles at the station
17:36 The slightly dodgy looking chap next to me turns out to be charming and effete when I ask him to plug in my laptop. Virgin trains rule. All they need to do now is add free wifi and we're cooking with gas!
17:47 Preston station - a man in a boob tube and micro rara skirt and shredded fishnets is flashing his ass. Clearly a super tacky stag night of some sort. There are two of them. a lot of beer and a fair amount of regrettable photos being taken.
17:56 Just noticed the man in the standing only space next to me is about 75. I am not moving on principle - pensioners can and should book seats too. More alarmed that the non reserved folks two seats over (and indeed their not tiny but small children who are taking up a further pair of seats) haven't budged. Clearly a full train = a slightly evil inward only looking train. Hmm. Might change my mind about seats if he's still standing after the next stop. Slippery slope with the booked seats though... Why the hell are there so many folks with suitcases on this service anyway? I fear it may be a lot of students doing weekend trips home but I can't imagine doing that so it seems odd. That said the girls on the Liverpool Lime Street to Wigan North Western train who I was sat with were clearly very smart student nurses but just as clearly living at home and thinking their friends studying non vocational or debt accruing courses to be frankly a little insane. On a similar note a student I met in the audience today had come to Liverpool with 4 friends from school. I can't imagine picking university as a social adventure with a bunch of school friends. Seems like odd criteria but then I never was a typical wee student.
18:04 Lancaster - fuller train or emptier... place your bets please...
18:05 Pensionable man just about in my lap. Weird. He still seems to be without a seat but the train isn't filling too badly so who knows. He's off down the carriage - good luck mr pensioner! Does no-one book seats these days?
18:09 Wow. The studenty types just moved for a middle aged woman bearing shopping where they failed to move for Mr Frail. Eeevil. Probably it's more a fortuitous timing issue but still. Incidentally one of he scummy youth is working a a great wooden tooth through the ear and feathery super short blond haircut. It's a good look. Actually a theme of Liverpool - it all looked like a modelling test for Hair magazine. Peculiar. Explains why the hairdresser training mobile app was developed in St Helens maybe...
18:22 Has disgorged many of the passengers including a traumatised looking Mr Frail. The train is getting quieter (still rather full) but it's now freezing and there are a fair few kids running wild. Bring on the peppermint tray bake.
18:23 BTW Virgin would like you to know that it has teamed up with Orange for better mobile coverage. Why. No. Wifi.???
18:26 Would like a way to automatically tag documents in a wordle type way. maybe there is... must look when I next get on wifi
18:30 Make a bold attempt to catch the News Quiz using the on board radio. It's not working. At all. Any channels. Nothing. Helpfully though someoe has coloured in the control panel and drawn a pretty star over the C button which should flip through channels but instead navigate white noise. At least iTunes is pleasant. And there is a frisson from the screaming standing studensts who find the tilty train an entertainment in themselves.
18:35 Found a Radio4 fill in. In Our Time podcast is doing the trick - Marcus du Soutoy is explaining mathematical axioms and suddenly I feel all safe. Though a bit sickly. That mint stuff should be a controlled substance.
18:45 A man with a welsh accent is talking about going to work with a readibrek glow. Odd. I think I"m glad he's getting off right about... now. We are now at Penrith. Next up is Carlisle (very soon) and then peace until Edinburgh. This seems to be a faster route at night. But then I am half asleep and not reading policy documents right now.
18:57 The "charming" child in seat oppositte is leaping and making noise and waving a purple plastic spider around. The wman with the weird asymmetrical hair do is poking out a killer heeled ankle boot, a blonde student in front is flicking through New Scientist and I've rarely felt so tired, sickly (too much sugar) or claustrophic. 1 hour to go though and the train is really starting to clear at last. After Carlisle (just getting in to the station) they'll be no more stops till Haymarket in an hour. Carlisle looks vast and very vastly empty except on our platform.
19:22 Rang Heather and feel better and more wakeful already. Still cold though. And finding the 40 somethings making out whilst hyper on the same crisps soda and candy that their kids are consuming. It's super creepy AND their kids are being better behaved than them rather bizarrely. BTW these little creepy lust buckets are not the world's most attractive folks. I think that makes it extra creepy as unfair as that is. But if the guy must stroke his wife perpetually in my peripheral vision I'm going to get annoyed. Go small child with plastic spider! (btw this little 8 year old seems to have had a double seat the whole way through the Mr Frail episode).
19:30 Subverting the preteen and teen noise on the train by listening to Suspie Bright's podcast about Sex Addition. It's safer than any listening that might lead to stressful shouting out into the carriage. What a horribly disruptive contrast to the 6.30am train.
19:45 Wow. 2 hours into the journey kid 2 appears. that seat isn't empty. who knew. Meanwhile I am freezing. Am I just tired or are Virgin trying to sell coffees?!
19:52 Now too tired to edit todays notes and too tired to read. So listening and half asleepness for the last half hour or so. If the kid screaming dims.
20:14 That was so novel! I think someone just lit a match against the window (from outside). Shiny. Anyway pack up for me as we're about to hit waverly. I'll cut short the hugely upbeat Susie Bright Poly podcast.
22:27 Home watching QI with my wife after a lovely cauliflower curry and raspberry jelly and... adding people to the EDINA Facebook group... ah... the tasteful blue boxes are stalking me today!
22:33 Finally I get on the internet. Oh the irony of a cutting age technology day with no net. My not Tweets are posted... Bed for me!
