Dispense

If yesterday was an adventure by the sea with lovely weather, then today was an indoor kind of day where the outcomes were - mostly - known. The omens were there from the beginning: I had to find my hoodie while sitting in my office. Although it was hardly rushed, I spent the day working and watched the skies gradually shift from mildly grey to dark and threatening. The view from the kitchen window morphed from clear, through raindrops on the stream, to torrential downpours from the overflowing gutter. 

I spent some of the day looking at prices for mesh routers because I'd looked at the internet speed we're paying for in London and realised I get only a fraction of the speed in my office. I also looked at Ikea's kitchen range. I'm trying to find a pull-out shelf for our under-oven cupboard to stop me from crawling on the floor when trying to retrieve a baking tray.

As the end of the working day approached, I started to pack. It is always sad to leave The Island. Just before we left, the deluge subsided, and we had a relatively dry walk to Subway. PY ordered a sandwich with tuna and hash browns - an odd combination - and I stuck to something with chicken. They were busy but the staff good humoured and every selection was "perfect". We managed to get to the pier head just as the rain started again, which was good as we'd contemplated taking the train up the pier and only decided against it because it was dry. I'd have been annoyed if I'd got soaked.

The coffee shop was closed, but our walk allowed us a little time to use the machine to vend our drinks. It never seems as lovely as the hand-crafted version, but that might all be perception. Wightlink's new ticket barriers were in use, which may speed up boarding, but yet again, the machinery decided I had no ticket passes left despite having a full complement of 10. Today, I had sufficient time to reload the app until it showed 10. 

Given the rain's ferocity, I imagined the crossing would be delayed, but it felt remarkably calm. PY was on edge during the journey as the connection time at Portsmouth Harbour was only seven or eight minutes, and if we were stuck behind somebody slow-moving, it could be a bit of a sprint. But there was no need today. 

The journey to Raynes Park was uneventful. My Subway sandwich was messy to eat, which was not helped by the fact that the train we travelled in didn't have tables in Standard class. I'll never know why because it's a journey not much different—time-wise—from an InterCity journey, and you'd get a better seat on a proper IC train. 

In rainy Ryde, I looked at the security camera in London. It was dry. By the time we arrived, we'd brought the rain with us. Dodging the rain between stations, we made it home by 9:30 p.m.