44009 – 06:57 Friday 2nd May

44009

Thank goodness for Friday trains and their surplus of seats that allowed me to luxuriate in a double seat in Carriage A and allow all the other passengers to avoid my hangover breath and hangover face.

Everything was going swimmingly, I was catching up on some much needed sleep and the other passengers were managing to evade my ugly mug, until we approached the outskirts of Slough and ground to a screeching halt. It turned out that there was, according to FGW anyway, signalling problems but this was being “robustly challenged” by the rest of the commuting twitteratti who were claiming it was down to a broken down train stuck in the station.

What wasn’t helping matters was that poor old Jo, who was manning the FGW twitter feed rather like General Custer guarding the fort at Little Big Horn, was also reporting other broken down trains stretching from Taunton to Newbury and from Castle Cary to Reading. It looked very much like @FGWDodgy_Norman ‘s orchestrated maintenance disaster plan had come to fruition and his timed “spanners in the works” were exploding exactly on cue.

When all was said and done, when the dust had settled and when Jeremy had said “at the end of the day”, I was 9 minutes late into Paddington which I guess for a Friday and without the energy to join in the FGW Twitter kicking isn’t too bad.