Here and There Again

Been on my travels to the North West again, this time to Warrington, a place I've never visisted before. Spent World Cup final evening (yawn) at the Daresbury Park Hotel which was really rather good and then had a meeting there all day on Monday. Can't say I enjoyed the "football" too much with those Dutch thugs setting out to kick lumps out of the Spanish, but it was interesting to spend the evening with future colleagues (seen in the picture, and bless you, H!) - the reason for my trip was to attend a get-together of trainers and support staff for a company which runs accredited training courses and for whom I'm due to begin delivering in November. This is a bit of a new experience for me as I've only delivered single courses before, and working with a cohort of students for several months will be a new challenge. It's all learning, though, and something I'm looking forward to immensely.

Aftert the horrible train trip to Preston reported previously, I was delighted to discover that one can upgrade to 1st class for £15 at the weekend and rarely, if ever, can I have invested £15 so well! Even though I had to go and fetch my own tea because the trolley was broken, it was bliss! The rest of the train was packed and hot, but 1st was calm and cool - I only wish I'd been going all the way to Glasgow rather than getting off at the first stop in Warrington. I travelled back on Monday evening in standard class and was dreading it, but it wasn't too bad. I've given up on quiet carriages now, though, because people can be so horrible - it's better to expect and accept noise in the non-quiet zone than not to expect it and have to accept it in it, if you see what I mean.

Anyway, although I passed very close to home on the way back I wasn't bound there - I was en route to sunny Sussex by the sea because I was working in Brighton the following day. Had a marvellous haddock and chips supper in a great little restaurant called The Regency which was adjacent to the Holiday Inn where I was staying. The latter really wasn't much cop at all - nice staff but tired and a bit worn round the edges and not really worth £120 when the Tickled Trout in Preston was half the price. I guess that I shouldn't really be bothered when someone else is paying my bill, but I am. The work went Ok and I repeated it on the Thursday, although I drove there and back on that occasion - a nice 40 minutes down the M23/A23. On Friday I was up at 0500 to join the 0600 shift at the local office of the postal services company for whom I'm working - a really worthwhile and fascinating morning, although it was weird looking at the clock at 0900 thinking I'd been at work for three hours .....

Spent the weekend in West Sussex at the caravan (although I believe I'm meant to call it a mobile home) and was joined for Saturday by our friends Tim and Jo who had a great time - they used to own a towed caravan and we met them years ago when we were both holidaying with Canvas Holidays at Lake Garda. They only live a few miles from us but, of course, we'd never have met except for the Garda trip. Managed to get a few more bits done in the van - hanging curtains and so on, and am looking forward to spending a bit more time there in a couple of weeks.