Toddler opposite is watching cartoons

<Cartoon singing voice>

"Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, 

Ah, not the Agatha All Along version ;)

Hope everyone's Christmas/winter festivities are proceeding to plan. My post Christmas Day meal Facebook post was simply "F'lup", good job cooking by my sister.

My journey up to Durham last Tuesday was mostly smooth, though my heart sank when I arrived at King's Cross and it was 1) packed and 2) nothing was moving. Fortunately as soon as I reported to Passenger Assistance they whipped me aboard my train (well, after several minutes of "How did you spell that again?" and "Could it be booked under someone else's name?").

OTOH we did have the following announcement as we set off a couple of minutes late: "I'd like to welcome everyone aboard the 12:00 Highland Chieftain to Inverness. I'd also like to apologise for conditions aboard today as due to the earlier failure of a train near Grantham we're the first train out of King's Cross in two hours and we have four full train loads of passengers aboard. And unfortunately that means it's standing room only and some of you will be standing all the way to Inverness, in eight hours."

Only I don't know the password for that - I don't even know if I've ever used it, rather than had emails sent to it.

But it's my email and my account, so just throw in a forgotten password request, wait for the email to my phone and update it from there.

So back to the PC, change the login to the .com address, enter the new password and

"Too many login failures, this account has been temporarily locked."

*Headdesk* 

And I didn't get the password wrong, it had the option to show what you'd typed and I'd gotten it right.

*le sigh*

 I've been putting off going down to the station to pick up my ticket to go see my folks over Christmas, given last Sunday's snow has shown no sign whatsoever of melting. I'd pinned my hopes on today given a forecast of a distinct upward tick in temperatures. What we got was 3C and sleety rain, which will get the job done, maybe, but not quickly.

But needs must. So off I toddled, once I'd found my most solid pair of crutches (they were in the car). The paths on my estate were completely treacherous, compressed snow and ice. The roads were a bit better, the cars have worn a couple of good ruts down to the tarmac, so once you were on that you were okay. Of course that option doesn't work on the main road, but the footpaths there were better. Not perfect, there were still places you had to pick your way around rutted ice, but better. Which is important considering how steep that road is.

Could have done without: walking under a bus shelter by the station, first corner, big drop of freezing water falls, clears my hat and glasses, lands in my left eye. Second corner, big drop of freezing water falls, clears my hat and glasses, lands in my right eye. *rolls eyes*

So I got into the station and you feed the machine the card you used to pay, then enter a booking reference onto the touch screen. So I'm trying to juggle wallet, phone with the emailed reference, and trying to look over my glasses to read the damned number because I wore my old glasses in case I fell over. And I get in entered and press confirm. And it asks me to press confirm. And it asks me to press confirm. etc. At which point the guy checking tickets comes over and rams the full width of his thumb across the confirm button. "That one's a bit tricky," he says as it starts to print out tickets. No shit, Sherlock!!

Walking back was much the same, except uphill. It does look like the rain is starting to make some progress on the hard-packed snow, but that didn't stop me slipping twice, though I saved myself both times. (Kudos to the Merc driver who waited for me to finish walking along in the ruts before pulling away).

If it doesn't freeze overnight, then I think this should finish the snow, if it does freeze overnight, it'll be an absolute ice-rink tomorrow!

And that's why I always order my train tickets delivered by mail. Except when I don't get the option.

 

Sunday was not particularly productive, in the I don't think I was awake for longer than two hours at a time sense. And for most of the afternoon and evening, 10 minutes at a time. I seem to recall Saturday as similar, but not quite so bad. I'm not quite sure why, while I've not been sleeping great, there was no major sleep-fail preceding it. About the only positive was that sort of interrupted sleep seems to be good for me dreaming, or perhaps remembering that I was dreaming. OTOH  not so good for actually remembering what the dream was about. About all I remember is waking up from one and thinking 'wow, that was complex,' before falling asleep again and having no idea what it was complex about when I woke up.

And all of this sleep wasn't great for sleeping through the night. I ended up noodling about on the computer until about 7AM, finally got to sleep at 8AM, slept soundly through my alarm and woke up at 1PM. Hopefully I can do slightly better tonight.

I was finally awake enough this afternoon to trust myself booking my ticket up to my folks for Christmas. Bizarrely (1), the fare was £13.50 (c25%) cheaper than when I checked 10 days ago and that was already lower than some fares I've been charged. Bizarrely (2) I couldn't book my return as the online booking system is claiming there are no fixed fares (specific train) available for the first week of next year. I could book a flexible fare for three times the price, but understandably I'd prefer not to. And bizarrely (3) I got three texted confirmations for my passenger assistance request within 5 minutes. It's normally two, 'we got your request' and 'we've actually looked at it', but this time there was an additional 'we've really definitely actually looked at it' as well. Not sure what was going on there

... on (disabled) Passenger Assistance on the railways.

It keeps demanding to know if I had passenger assistance to get to "the wheelchair area". I have no idea what "the wheelchair area" is, I'd assume they meant the wheelchair space aboard train, but context seems to suggest it's something that comes before boarding. Someone suggested it might be the sort of wheelie cattle pen the less clued in airports use, but I can think of precisely one UK station which has one (Euston I think, or maybe Liverpool St?).

And why are they demanding to know how my booking worked at Chatham when Chatham is a turn-up and go station and would handle me even if the booking didn't work, to the point of not being able to tell if the booking worked or not.

And in any case I always turn up an hour early at Chatham, so I never use my booking.

Which made me realise that I turn up an hour early because LNER's online booking system, the one I use to book both my ticket and my passenger assistance on the same form, inevitably books me on a train getting into St Pancras at 12:06, or later, to catch a train leaving London KX at 12:30, and that gives me 24 minutes, or less to:

Wait for the ramp to turn up, get off the train and off the platform, c150m, through the ticket check and down the lift: 5 minutes, minimum, 12:11

Cross to Kings Cross and get to Passenger Assistance Desk: 180m, busy multi-lane road with traffic light controlled crossing, 5 minutes minimum, 12:16

Book in with KX Passenger Assistance 20 minutes before departure (ie 12:10):  Um, not happening, but call it 5 minutes because it's also the inevitably busy passenger info desk: 12:21

Wait for assistance guy to turn up: varies from instant if there's one standing there, to ten minutes, call it 5 minutes on average: 12:26

Get to train: slightly dependent on which platform, but call it 350-400m (far end of a nine-carriage train), and 5 minutes: 12:31

Deploy onboard ramp, undoing three separate locks, get me aboard, check wheelchair space is free, evict anyone sitting in it or using it for their luggage, make sure I'm okay, put ramp back and relock all three locks: 5 minutes, minimum, 12:36

Which is a bit unfortunate when they closed and locked the doors at 12:28.

Some Passenger Assistance problems start with "Computer says ..."

Obviously the booking form is treating everyone as an ambulant passenger and there would be time for most people to make it, though with very little leeway. But that same form also includes my request for passenger assistance. You don't even need to parse the contents, there's no way even a world class sprinter is getting from a 12:06 arrival at St Pancras over to the passenger assistance desk at KX by their 12:10 check-in deadline*. If there's a passenger assistance request, that train combination is not viable.

* They don't enforce the deadline, Darlington regularly handle me with 8 minutes between trains, probably 5 by the time I've gotten to the assistance desk if they aren't waiting for me off the incoming train, but it's a useful marker of how long _they_ think is necessary.

... you answer a knock on the door at 11PM to find a policeman on your doorstep! Apparently someone had reported a little old lady wandering around the estate, they were trying to find her to do a welfare check, and wanted to know if I'd seen her. I told him no, but I'd check my back garden. No idea what came of that, though they were wandering around shining torches into all the bushes for a while.

 I picked up my tickets for my trip north earlier. Annoyingly my right shoulder* seems to be finding pushing the chair irritating at the minute, though fortunately I don't have a great deal of pushing to do en route. Particularly annoying is that it was fine when I was out on Friday. I mentioned it on twitter and someone noted that EDS is clearly evil and stores up these things for when we most need our bodies to work.

* AKA my good shoulder

I considered booking 1st Class for the trip, but the difference in price was over 50% and looking at the seat plans (I've not yet travelled standard class on the new Azumas) there's not much to choose in extra distancing from other people in the wheelchair spaces between 1st Class and Standard Class. But looking at my tickets, my reservation is definitely in coach A, which is 1st Class. All upgrades gratefully accepted!

Ongoing Bujold Re-read

Komarr Miles goes to Komarr to investigate a space disaster, which turns out to be political sabotage. This is the book that introduces Ekaterin, the future Lady Vorkosigan, and the book's portrayal of someone squeezed down by an abusive marriage is some of the best writing I think she's done.

A Civil Campaign More of a comedy of manners than Vorkosigan stories usually are as Miles tries to woo Ekaterin without actually letting her in on it, all complicated by Emperor Gregor's impending marriage and Vor shennanigans. I'm not happy that Illyan's short term memory loss is used to drive the fatal spike into Mile's initial stratagem, and I've belatedly realised that we should be looking at Mark's disabilities as perhaps even more serious than Miles', despite the colourful language used to describe them. And on top of that there's the disturbing Lady Donna/Lord Dono sub-plot - gender identity is not something you change for convenience. (I'm only halfway through, so perhaps more later).

I've yet to find my copies of Cryoburn and Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. I think I'm going to have to dig into Amazon to find out what format I bought them in. My Kindle denies all knowledge of them, but I'm not convinced.

I've had several dreams in the last week, including at least one micro-dream in a micro-sleep, where I've been doing things like get on the train to head up to Durham for Christmas.

Sorry, dream-brain, but that ain't happening this year, get with the programme.

Anyone monitoring my webfeed over the past few days is potentially going to be concerned.

I'm back to working on my WIP post US-election, I've finally got a model for the political landscape that should work with however things finally turn out. Well, at least as long as it's short of absolute coup. And a major plus point is that it's one that works simply by changing the President's pronoun to 'she' (though it's only the Veep who makes it on stage). I'm at the point in the plot, neatly dropping exactly on midway, where terrorist attacks are escalating. Which means I've spent hours over the weekend looking at major US airports in Google Earth and Google Street View, and particularly at where their fuel-storage tank farms are. What's scary is how many are set right up against the perimeter fences, often right on the roads past the airport. Is there such a thing as your scenario being too believable?

In other news, I've started discussing the potential I won't make it home for Christmas with my family. My sister raised it first, and then it just came up by accident when chatting with my mother. If I don't make it it'll be the first time ever. As things stand, we won't know if I'll even be able to travel until the end of lockdown, and any change in Tier-based restrictions that replace that. Particularly as Durham is a hot spot - currently infections are 518/100k where they are, vs 234 where I am (though this is only 37 cases/week in their MSOA* vs 23/week in mine). And then for the six days after the end of lockdown (Dec 3rd to 9th), the students are supposed to head home, and there is absolutely no way I'm travelling until that's over. So if I do get home it's likely to be done in a rush. Must start doing some more practise in the chair, not going anywhere for 10 months means my pushing muscles are totally shot given I don't use it in the house. I'll definitely be travelling by train, the advantage of needing the wheelchair space is social-distancing is pretty much built in.

And in other Covid-related news, my sister is currently self-isolating. They had a teaching assistant test positive on Saturday, and while she hasn't spent any time around her, Andrea has had a chest-infection, so she got herself a test at a local site yesterday, and got the result at lunchtime today. Which was negative, but in the meantime she'd started running a temperature, so she rang 119** for advice and they've told her to continue isolating until it drops to normal. I'm not sure if I'm amused or exasperated that they told her they don't define what 'normal' is. So her school has now got an entire class out again, and I think it's four teaching staff on top of that currently self-isolating, plus a dinner lady who tested positive in the middle of last week. I'm not surprised the normally so mild-mannered she's ineffective head has started snapping at people.

* Census version of a postcode, about 2500 households.

** The Covid specific version of 111, our NHS helpline/triage service.

Trouble free journey home.

Today I will mostly be sleeping....