Always learning..........

This morning I was out of the house like a scalded ferret at well before many of you lot were swearing at the alarm and giving it the evil eye. The train left town before 7 and after negotiating the tube I arrived at Paddington to find my reserved seat to whisk me to the land of Brunel and Sherry.

Imagine then my surprise when the carriage in which my seat was reserved; carriage C, seemed absent from the train. I worked all the way back from the engine to the tail and there was a letter missing. I found a member of First Great Western staff and enquired after carriage C and felt much better informed when she told me I'd find it between carriages B and D. I spared her my "Not only do I have a higher degree but I also have teeshirts older than you pet so cut the repartee and find me an adult" stare and asked whether she'd like to walk along the train with me to see how I might have missed it. Then a couple more people joined us and they too were wearing the "I can't find carriage C" look and holding their seat reservation details. By now realisation seemed to be dawning that there may have been a bit of a mix-up in the yard when they put the train together so she went and found someone else. I now know that FGW generally don't reserve seats in carriage E so when someone loses a coach they use E for the reserved seats. Thus I rode in coach E in a seat pretending to be in coach C - as did many others and we had a jolly smile at each station when the guard (or "train manager"?) announced that for the purposes of FGW C is now E. I must also admit to wondering what happened to the missing C and whether there might be a train somewhere with 2 Cs (middle and high?).

I took my camera to take some shots of Temple Meads station because it has some lovely features including the confessionals and the Gothic arches but when I saw this lady with the white bass case. I knew I had to get a sneaky candid and here it is!

I am now officially shattered so I'm heading to the sofa for a pre-bedtime snoozle.