(New) Friends in the North

[davidgillon]

Made it to my mother's without incident, though sadly I wasn't upgraded as I'd thought I would be - 225s had 1st class wheely seats at the end of the train, standard in the middle, turns out the new Azumas have both at the ends, so I was reading to much into Coach A. OTOH I did get a free (mini)coffee and (mini)danish at Kings Cross - a promotion for reopening their concourse shops, so I can't complain too much. The announcements claimed the Azuma service was busy, but I'd have said it was no more than a quarter full. Masks required on the East Coast Main Line, advised on the trip from Kent into London, not even mentioned on my Northern connection to Bishop. Guess which area has the worst Covid stats.

It's definitely a relief to see everyone in the flesh after 18 months of phone-calls and video-calls via Alexa. They keep you in touch but face to face has an extra layer of something. And I got to meet the newest member of the family for the first time, Poppy the puppy, who at 3 months old is all paws and ears and hyperactive greetings. She was so excited to see me on Sunday she wrapped her lead tight enough around my legs she popped herself out of her harness.

It must be a law of nature that whenever you're away from home you open Windows to have it announce that it's in the middle of an update and would like to finish now. Especially as my wifi dongle isn't playing ball, so I'm restricted to using my sister's wifi at the moment. At least the update seems to have finished without issue (so far)