Snow day

If you don't want my rail rant, just look at the pretty picture, and reflect that this is enough snow to bring public transport to its knees in this neck of the woods.

So, obviously, it wasn't as easy as all that. No Definitiveness. When I got up at 6:15, the snow was about 6" deep and the rail companies were saying different things. National Express East Anglia alerted me to the 0659, my usual Friday train, being "indefinitely delayed" due to Something-or-Other at Watlington; First Capital Connect ... well, let's just say that none of what ensued was recorded on their website.

Went down to the station for the 0732 which was delayed for 23 minutes. Sat there (knitting with gloves on) bitterly reflecting that predicting in last night's blog post exactly how long the train would be delayed might give me some satisfaction if the waiting wasn't in sub-zero temperatures on a metal seat.

Got on train at 0755.

Train pulls into Cambridge station at 0804 and announces it needs to wait for extra carriages.

Extra carriages arrive at 0820 and are hitched to the back of train.

Train breaks down.

*Extra carriages are detached from back of train; we all move back 4 carriages and start again.

Train breaks down.*

Repeat pattern from * to * once more. (No, honestly.)

By this time it is nearly 0900 (when I'm due to start work 60 miles away) - we are told it will be an indefinite wait until one or all of the "units" are fixed. Meanwhile, people with WiFi are reporting that the three trains after ours are cancelled.

Hear King's Lynn train announced; leave train; change platform; go home.

Work happily until 2.30 when the power goes out for an hour. It's thawing fairly fast here and small branches are falling off even the impeccably-manicured trees round the Green, so presumably something fell on the power line. It was back about an hour later...

I'll make up the lost time sometime over the weekend, but for now I'm going to pick up my tea order from the post office and do some Christmas knitting...

Deep and crisp and drifty

This is the view from outside an hour ago. Now, I know there are people from more wintery climes who regularly read this blog and will be laughing heartily at the pathetic picture this paints (although do click to embiggen the wonderful cross-hatching the wind is creating). But at least one of them has spent serious time in this country, and realises Quite How Much Havoc this will generate. This photo was taken at the point the BBC thinks we're getting "light snow" and 3 hours before we are due to hit "heavy snow". And it's seriously blustery out there...

I'm hoping that it will all get Definitive before I have to leave for work - on the announced-on-the-radio "there are no trains leaving East Anglia" scale of Definitive; rather than my having to plod down to the station to find that there might be a train in 23 minutes and then there isn't but the screens go blank and I stand there for ages and then have to come home anyway... In that case, I already have official sanction to come back home and start on the mountain of stuff I've forwarded to myself... I'd much rather wake up, find out it's impossible to get anywhere and do some decent work, preferably in my pyjamas.

On a completely separate tack, I went to the Poetry Library today for work-related reasons, and met some really nice people. After we'd finished the main part of the meeting we heard about their Lost Quotations service. If you can help, or comment, do!

On the way back from the Poetry library, a pigeon crapped on my hat. I was so utterly and totally affronted by this that it took me several minutes to realise that if I hadn't been wearing a hat, I'd have been dealing with pigeon-poop in my hair. And also made me realise I hadn't blogged the hat yet. Another day.

Knitting and books and brrrrr....

A great combination at I Knit tonight. I finished the book half an hour before the group started (in the pub down the road), and it was really good fun meeting people and discussing it, as it's been a bit of a favourite since I first read it as a teenager. Looks as if the group will continue meeting on first Tuesdays of the month, rather than the last Tuesday which mostly clashed with KTogs at the Blue, so I might get along to a lot more of the meetings...

I have been freezing the last couple of days. Thankfully not in the office - although the one with the other half of the team in it had no heating between the 29th and today - but outside it's been evilly, bitterly cold. Realised today that I needed a hat, badly; I have one, but couldn't find it at the right time this morning or yesterday morning... So I bought a couple of balls of Lang West (not an I Knit link because they don't have it in the online shop at the moment, but I'm sure they'd be able to send some if you rang/e-mailed them) which matched the tension on a pattern I downloaded from Ravelry (Ravelry link), and cast on at around 6:10 - and cast off two minutes before the train arrived at Waterbeach at 10:15 (with a couple of yards of the first ball to spare, total cost of hat £3.95). So had warm ears on the way home...

Which was just as well. As I was walking up the road, a guy started up his car and while he was scraping the windscreen, remarked that the thermometer was showing -7C... The London free papers had photos of the fountains at Trafalgar Square frozen over this morning... I know this is nothing to people who live in seriously cold climes (although apparently we're colder than some parts of Greenland at the moment), but it's pretty shocking to me!