A Pain in the Nose!

Robbie abandoned me this weekend to go and play trains somewhere in the deep north. To be strictly accurate I told him to go - I needed some respite, wall to wall Robbie is a bit much to cope with at times. He arrived back after lunch today and talked non stop about his trip, when he finally ran out of words he started on a variety of sound effects of the train going over different types of track. Maybe they will take him for a week next time!!

Laura was moaning at me yesterday because my preferred make of toilet paper smells funny and gives her a headache. I would have thought the smell of the paper was the least of her worries, but I kept my thoughts to myself. She went on to complain that new magazines smell so bad that it makes her feel sick, she said she has to get her friends to read her magazines first to get rid of the smell! Poor old Laura, I know she has an exceptional sense of smell, but I couldn't help laughing at the the thought of her having he magazines read for her!

Lost For Words

My nephew Oliver came out of hospital on Monday evening, I hope he is going to be OK now, he is such a lovely little chap.

Robbie was a little more forthcoming about his delayed return on Sunday, apparently he took himself off on a train ride. Words fail me – but he'd better watch out because I don't think they will fail me for very long!

A Quantum Leap

It is so cold, the snow from Monday is still hanging around, and where the roads and pavements have not been gritted it has become solid slippery ice. Robbie fell over and hurt his back on his way home from work this evening, it is hurting him but he seems to be able to move fairly freely so hopefully it will not get any worse. He'd had a difficult journey to work this morning, there were delays and cancellations apparently this was due to a broken rail somewhere near Birmingham and there were diversions in place as well due to a problem with overhead lines on the Trent Valley.. I He finally got to work just after 11am! I could tell by his texts that he was totally frustrated, the word 'farce' in capital letters was used in every sentence. His return journey was equally frustrating, and he didn't get home until 8.30pm! Tomorrow looks even worse in terms of rail travel because Robbie has just informed me that there are problems on the West Coast Mainline again, this time it is overhead wire problems at Bletchley and more overhead wire problems at Watford. It looks as if Network Rail tempted fate on 14th December last year an unknown Network Rail spokesman boasted "The achievement is massive and the result will be a quantum leap in services." and Iain Coucher said "Now it is complete passengers and freight operators will reap the benefits". Well it has certainly been a quantum leap – in the wrong direction! I think George the cat has the right idea – get as close to the fire as possible and stay there!

Too Much Detail

Robbie rang me yesterday to apologise for the frying pan incident, I think he'd got the message loud and clear. He was very cunning about buying it on Sunday, I was going to wait in the car because he (allegedly) only needed to buy a couple of things. He gave me his copy of Rail Express to read so that I wouldn't notice how long he was in the shop. While he was gone I had time to read a long article about the Virgin Trains service from Euston to Holyhead, it was an interesting read, and the pictures were great, but I didn't like the writing style and it became irritating after a while. The choice of words was more 'Boys Own' than railway magazine, terms like “we spied” were out of place, what is wrong with saying 'we saw, we noticed or we spotted'. When Robbie got back into the car he distracted me again by talking about model trains and the pros and cons of buying weathered or pristine models. It wasn't the most exciting subject and I found myself wondering if this was really the best he could manage in terms of conversation, after all he hadn't seen me since early on Friday morning! As I explained yesterday conversation he last thing on my mind when I discovered the frying pan!

I was really exhausted when I got home last night and all I wanted to do was eat and sleep, but Robbie wanted me to stay awake long enough to listen to him talk about an upsetting incident on his journey to work. From his expression and the way he was speaking I thought something really bad had happened, perhaps he'd had another fall or something; he had my undivided attention. The so called upsetting incident was nothing of the kind – someone had sat in Robbie's seat! It completely disrupted his routine and he had to sit in the opposite seat and glare at the 'intruder' all the way to Birmingham. He has now decided that we have to get up even earlier in the morning so that he can be absolutely sure of getting 'his' seat! I thought I could escape to bed, but he embarked on a long and to be brutally honest boring monologue on the refitted Cross Country HST. Unfortunately I find it hard to get excited about the performance of HST toilets at any time, but it was after midnight and I just wanted to sleep! In the end I wandered off to bed leaving Robbie still talking (to the cat) about trains. This morning I felt like screaming, he got up and resumed the conversation from the previous evening!

Sweet Memories

Robbie often talks to me about people he has met on the train or people that he meets in the course of his work. From time to time he mentions a lady who sometimes catches the same train, I don't know her name because he usually describes the people he meets by the place that they get on or off the train, or by the job that they do. He must have told her about the blog at some point because she follows his exploits online. It always surprises me that anyone would find our lives interesting, but I guess it probably makes their own lives seem incredibly normal in comparison. Anyway Robbie met the lady again a few days ago and in the course of conversation they found that we live very close to each other. The blog was mentioned again and she said that she'd enjoyed reading about Robbie's favourite biscuit site and she asked if he liked any other unusual sites. I'm sure he has plenty of surprises up his sleeve, but today I am going to write about a site that I like.

A Quarter Of.... is one of my favourites sites, it sells all sorts of sweets that you may not have seen since your childhood. My particular favourites are clove balls, it is not so easy to find them these days. I love browsing through their products and remembering moments from my childhood. When I was about five I tasted bubble gum for the first time. I wasn't allowed to have bubble gum, but some came free with a comic and my dad taught me how to blow bubbles with it. When my mum and grandma got home they were not amused, but my dad just grinned at them. When I was a bit older my friend and I were allowed to cycle to the little shop several streets away to buy penny sweets. I always had to buy some for my little brother too, I liked the foam shrimps best, but he loved fruit salads and black jacks. Last Christmas I bought those storage boxes that have lots of little compartments and I made up a selection of sweets for each of my children, using sweets that had been favourites when they were young. Space Dust was always a great favourite with them and they liked milk bottles, Werthers originals and candy sticks. The boxes were a great success, they were a fraction of the price of the ones you can buy online and it is easy to refill them.