Consider it pure joy……

Yesterday (Monday) I went to a conference in London, no big deal you say? well some of you will realise that there were several factors that made this a big deal for me.

firstly, the last conference I went to was not a happy experience for me, I basically found it too much to cope with, being around people etc, no space and lots of other factors, when I was at a very low level myself, the result of going to that conference was to put me back off sick, having just got back a few weeks earlier, only this time I was off sick for several months rather than the few weeks I had been off before.

As if that wasn’t enough, I have a huge phobia of London, the underground, the railway, the streets, the business the traffic, nothing about London inspires or encourages me to want to visit, I steer clear as much as possible, the last time I went to London was with our daughter, for an appointment at Great Ormond Street, it was pretty early so we went down very early and got breakfast in their restaurant, but afterwards we decided to take her to see one or two of the sights, well we managed to get a little disorientated on the way back to the car which didn’t help but then the journey back home was a nightmare, traffic everywhere, the journey down was good and took a little under an hour and a half, the return journey, middle of the afternoon so not rush hour, took about 3 1/2 hours.

OK that wasn’t too bad but the previous visit to London was me on my own, by train/underground, for a specialists appointment, resulting in me getting thoroughly lost and disorientated, to the extent that I asked a Police Woman how to get to the station, I said Kings Cross, she checked my ticket to establish which Kings Cross I needed, as there is more than 1! and she then decided, rather than give me directions, she would walk me there and make sure I got on the right train before she left me, I must have looked in a bad way!

So with that as a backdrop you can understand why going to the conference was a big deal for me, anyhow, this was a 1 day conference for Administrators, we are all supposed to be efficient enough to manage to pick everything up in 1 day! I decided I was pretty safe going as I was going with the Parish Manager (my equivalent post) at Christ Church (his name is John) down the road from us, I get on really well with him and it was pretty safe going with him as he used to commute to London every day, although he also has a phobia of the underground but as this trip, by train, would not require the underground at all we were pretty safe.

John  did all the timetable checking and booking of tickets, we had to catch a  train from Bedford (7.48) to London Bridge, then a train from London Bridge to Waterloo East (1 stop) followed by a short walk across the covered walk through to Waterloo station to catch one to Raynes Park, I still don’t have a clue where Raynes Park actually is! The church where the conference was held was a couple of minutes walk away from the station.

The first 2 trains were like sardine tins but the last one was pretty empty, as I said we got a train at 7.48, had absolutely no delays and hardly had to wait for connections yet still only just arrived in time for the 10.15 start.

However we arrived, and in one piece, the conference was a resounding success and I thoroughly enjoyed it, I managed to cope with chatting to people and sat through the different sessions, it was in all a very good day, and the conference kept pretty much spot on time, finishing only 10 minutes later than the scheduled 4.45 end time, which was pretty impressive considering how much was packed in and how many people had contributed to the day.

I have come away with lots to process and think about and a fair amount of reading material.

Anyhow, at the end of the conference we headed straight off, got to the station and immediately leapt on the train to Waterloo, no delays again got off at Waterloo, picked our way through the crowds to the Waterloo East Station and noted, next train for London Bridge, was from Platform C, down the stairs to the platform, there stood the train so we leapt into it, just as the doors closed and the announcer on the train said well I didn’t catch any of the words except that the first stop was Tunbridge! WHOOOPPSS! we got on the wrong train, it was at the right platform but was the train before the one we wanted!

I pressed the exit button but too late the door didn’t open as the train started to move. gosh, how far was that? well it was a 40 minute journey, followed by a 2 minute dash over the bridge to the other side jump on another train to head back to where we came from, stopping just long enough to double check this train would take us to where we wanted to go to.

The things that saved me feeling really stupid were, firstly, I had got on the train with someone who had some experience of London Trains so it wasn’t just me that was being stupid, secondly both the ticket inspectors who spoke to us, one on the way out and one on the return, just said something like, ‘your not the first and you wont be the last’ apparently we were not even the only ones on that train to have done exactly the same thing, we escaped any excess journey charges.

So, as a result I didn’t get home till just after 9pm.

Fortunately Joy had no real problems with the kids, they seemed to cope pretty well with me not being around and were in bed and fast asleep by the time I got home.