RETURN OF THE GOLDFINCH

Boy it is hot today.  Not as bad as further South but still not great for me.  Although the sun has now gone the heat remains.

A cooling Tai Chi session this morning.  

Avanti and are now recommending that no-one travels today or tomorrow as there is going to be widespread disruption due to the heat, therefore have had to cancel G's return.  What a kerfuffle that was.  I would have tought that as we merely want to delay it I could have rung through and simply transferred  his ticket.  NOT SO.  

First it took ages to get through, Avanti had an automated message that went on for minutes explaining about the forthcoming strikes, then you had 7 choices, nothing to do with what I wanted, so I guessed what - after more lengthy messages they then just cut me off.  So I simply tried again.  After several more minutes I eventually got through and was told it wasn't the right area and they could only give out train information!!!!!  Aaaarrgghhhh!

OK so after a futher several attempts I managed to get to the right area for cancelling his ticket.  You have to "apply"  for it first, so I've done that.  After all that I went to book him another ticket.  We decided that due to the heat there could be tracks buckled etc so to give Network Rail chance to do all the necessary repairs we decided to wait untiil Mondoau, that is two days before the strike so hopefully travel should be OK on that particular date.  Well I managed to get so far along the process of buying the ticket but then it got stuck and couldn't book a ticket  I switched everything off, then started again,  same thing happened.  So I decided to wait a while.

After about an hour I tried again,  same thing, so I tried on iPad - I got through no problem at all!!!!   Phew let's just hope that this one is OK.  The last thing you need whenn it's so hot is all this kerfuffle for something that should be so simple.

Back to normality, the finch came with a friend this time (see extra).

I hope you are all managing to get cool and our furry friends are doing well.

Thinking of you all, do take care, stay safe and keep cool.  See you soon.