I've never in forty years!

I was parked at the end of the London-bound platform at Chatham yesterday evening, waiting to catch the train into St Pancras, along with the passenger assistance guy with the ramp. As we're standing there the train to London Victoria heads out, and then we chatted for a minute before hearing an announcement about my train being delayed, despite it being at Gillingham station, which is only a couple of minutes away.

We're just wondering what the issue could be when a train pulls into our platform, but heading coastbound. Passenger Assistance guy's eyes bugged-out and he mutters something and then turns to repeat it to me: "I've worked here for forty years, and I've never seen a coastbound train come into this platform! Excuse me while I go and find out what's happening."

Turns out he still hadn't seen one, it wasn't a coastbound train, it was the Victoria train reversing back. Apparently a freight train had broken down alongside the platform at Rochester (two minutes up the line London-bound) and they'd sent the Victoria train back to Chatham to wait while they got things sorted out.

We were only delayed 20 minutes, which wasn't too bad because I was still five minutes early for meeting the university crowd for pre-Christmas drinks. And as we're now using the Betjeman Arms inside St Pancras station it was much more convenient for me than our get togethers used to be as I now just wheel from one end of StP to the other and don't need to haul myself and the chair down to Ye Old Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street. (We swapped pubs a couple of years back to make things simpler for me, but this is the first time I've been able to get there since, OTOH it also makes things easier for another two out of the five of us).

We'd booked a table, and because they were using their dining room for a Christmas party we were put in 'the study', so effectively had our own wood-panelled private dining room for the night. Very swish! (As well as the big dining room and a big bar they also have an 'outside' patio area looking out across the Eurostar platforms, the place must be doing a bomb). Given how crowded it was at the bar when we arrived (I only maimed one ankle, and we'd told him to move), I let one of my friends get the beers in sight unseen, which is how I ended up drinking 'Hazy Pale'. You know how some wheat beers are slightly hazy? Well this is a bit like that, but hazy to the point of being completely opaque. Not something I'd drunk before, but would definitely drink again. Though I might have paced myself a bit differently if I'd known it was 5% ABV. 

The food was mostly good - I thought the mushrooms on toasted sourdough was a bit bland, but the fish and chips I had were done to perfection, and the other choices around the table - chicken pie, Cumberland sausage and Lancashire Hot Pot - all got the ex-Lancastrian seal of approval.

I packed in at 9:30 in the hope of catching the 9:50, as my neck had suddenly decided to become very unhappy, only to discover when I got to the platform that there isn't a 9:50 anymore, so I had to wait on the platform for about 40 minutes until the 10:20 arrived. Fortunately it was a fairly amiable crowd, I was even offered a beer by the guy sitting next to me - 'No thanks, I've had quite enough already'. There were one or two sparkly party frocks and jackets wandering past in the crowd, but style points had to go to the woman wearing the Snow White dress and tweed hacking jacket, both of them adorned with large cardboard and tinfoil stars.

Into Chatham by 11, in bed and asleep by 11:30!