Tuesday 23 October 2012

Pushing the Boundaries of Time

Well, last week was quite a week! Robbie announced his new venture to the world and after spending a couple of days earlier in the week 'getting all his ducks in a row' concerning the admin side of his company he is now hard at work. It was nice having him at home for a week or two, but it is good to get back to something like a normal routine.


Unfortunately 'normal' involves some very early starts. Getting up at 4.30am on a dark and dismal October morning is a bit of an effort, but once I'm up I'm okay. Getting up is the easy bit, getting Robbie out and to the station on time is more of a challenge. He always plans well and has everything prepared the night before, but in the morning there is always a frantic few minutes with Robbie trotting around on 'fast forward' dressed only in socks in the style of Benny Hill. Then having tested my stress levels almost beyond endurance he is suited and booted and ready to go.
   
It is one of those unfathomable things about men is that they consistently over estimate length except when it comes to journey comes to journey times - then they think they can achieve the impossible! Robbie seems to forget that I drive a Ford Galaxy not a time machine. He is so precise when it comes to train planning, so why can't he cope with allowing enough time for a car journey. His habit of providing time checks during the journey does nothing to ease my stress levels, I don't know why he does it but it doesn't get him there any quicker!

Tuesday 16 October 2012

Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can fly

Oh dear, the air turned blue this afternoon! A bird decided to wish Robbie good luck from a great height - and it scored a direct hit. Thankfully he wasn't wearing a suit but he was wearing a new top and to say that he wasn't amused would be an understatement. He was more than usually eloquent, well maybe not eloquent but certainly verbal. He lapsed into alliteration on a theme of 'B'; he has been practicing practicing on the cats so he is fairly good at it now and he produced a string of expressive but not exactly original 'B' words. I don't know what type of bird it was, but judging by the mess it created it certainly wasn't a sparrow!

Anyway, back to more important matters, Robbie made his announcement on facebook today, so I am now free to reveal his new ventue

Burgess Rail Solutions Ltd

Raising a Glass

Robbie bought me the most amazing present today, it didn't cost a fortune but it put a huge smile on my face. I could hardly believe my eyes when I picked him up this evening and he presented me with a 2 litre bottle of my favourite brand of Root Beer. In terms of calories there is probably a whole month of wickedness packed into this bottle but I don't care, I love Root Beer and I feel like celebrating (I don't drink alcohol so celebrating with Root Beer suits me very well). The other good thing about Root Beer is that no one else in the family likes it so I don't have to share! Robbie is happy too because I reminded him that he still has a few bottles of Uncle Stuart's real ale stashed away, we bought them from Wroxham Barns in August while we were on holiday when today was little more than a dream. Back then it felt like a very big step to contemplate walking away from a job that he had loved and a company that meant so much to him, but deep down I think we knew that the time was right to move on. 


So much has happened since then; Robbie has said a fond farewell to his friends at Cross Country, closed the door on that chapter of his life and finally after lots of hard work and mountains of red tape the new chapter of his working life has finally begun. I think it will surprise a few people, in fact I think it will surprise a lot of people because there have been quite a few rumours about what Robbie will do next and none of them were right! I am very pleased about the way things have worked out, but it is not my news to share (and I never write in detail about work on the blog) so if you want the details you will have to ask Robbie.

Tuesday 9 October 2012

It Wasn't Me!

Well this must be the longest gap in writing since I started writing the blog. Partly it is because I have been involved with an interesting little project which I should be able to write more about in a day or two. Mostly it is because I have been feeling absolutely dire for weeks. It sounds so pathetic to be moaning about having a cough, but this really is a hell of a cough. I have had it for at least four weeks this time and I only had a gap of about four weeks free of the previous cough which lasted for twelve weeks. The doctor says that my lungs are clear the problem seems to be higher up, but we are still investigating the exact cause. It always seems to happen when I get a cold and then I just can't get rid of it. Maybe I have to accept it as a very annoying symptom of my asthma, but to cough to the point of passing out or actually making yourself sick from coughing tends to limit your social life as well as scaring people who witness it. Anyway that is quite enough moaning for today, in fact I have probably used up a whole months ration of moans!

Robbie has been at home for three weeks or so and it has been frustrating that we haven't been able to enjoy doing more things together, but coping with the 'killer cough' and the fact that I still had to go to work got in the way of Robbie's plans. It is a bit of an exaggeration to say that he has been at home, Robbie gets withdrawal symptoms after one day without trains and I start to feel exhausted after a couple of days with Robbie, so when he asks for a lift to the station I am always ready to oblige! He has spent a lot of time on trains in the last few weeks and lots of numbers / routes have been ticked off in his little book!

This is his last week of freedom and he intends to make the most of it. On Sunday he had an HST day travelling to the South West and back. I love the sea wall, but I don't love HSTs so I decided that I would be happier at home. That turned out to be an inspired decision because when Robbie got on the train he discovered that one of the cats had vandalised his best Sennheiser headphones. When exasperated with the cats he always resorts to alliteration, when Oreo upsets him he is a 'furry, blank, fatherless, feline; but this time Bernard was under suspicion so we had a rant on the theme of 'B'.  

He managed a whole day without trains yesterday but he will be heading off on a train later today and he will probably fit several in several more trips during the week. On Friday we are going to York then at the weekend Robbie is off to a special event at the Bodmin and Wenford Railway.