Bloated plutocrats. Coffee.

[whatho]

Here's me guilt-tripping my holidaying parents like a big 'un.

Text from Mother: Have just passed the Arctic circle. Big pointy mountains in distance.
Text from Me: Great! Am just going to Tesco to buy an onion.

I do feel slightly ashamed. But I am properly happy that Mother is pootling around in the Arctic circle zones and seeing amazing things. She writes highly amusing texts too. She wrote one in which she called my father a 'bloated plutocrat' because he'd booked first class tickets on the train to Gatwick (so, much deserved censure in my opinion). And she informed me with glee that the toilet in their cabin had a notice on it that said 'PLEASE DO NOT THROW STRANGE THINGS INTO THIS TOILET'. Presumably boomerangs and the like. Star fruits.

I'm very tired, you know. I brought it all on myself. I went to bed at around 2am and then the small lady cat beast came at woke me at half hourly intervals by bouncing on my head and saying 'Brrrrrrrroooooow' until eventually I swore at her and she went to try the same treatment on my brother. Then I got up at about 8am. And now my head is all swimmy and I'm drinking coffee, which is not a thing I do very often, but it's kind of fun and makes me feel like a lowly reporter on a biggish newspaper. Huzzah.

Comments

[whatho.livejournal.com]

Oh! Wheeeee! I am watching 2.14 again tonight to see if I can make it redeem itself. I am nervousness indeed about next Tuesday's episode (which is 'Maternity Leave'), though the very brief synopsis looks potentially okay.

Tiredness is a bit weurgh. I'm fuelling myself with chocolate. It seems to help. How is your vile itchiness now?

[aldenmacrae.livejournal.com]

Ooh, yay! I... I will not be spoilery and tell you what I think of 'Maternity Leave.' ~virtuous~ 2.14 IS a very strange episode, though, so I do not blame you for being all unhappy with it.

Oh! Also, I meant to tell you in a previous comment that about eight years ago when my parents and I had a big holiday to England and Wales and Italy, my Dad bought us each a great big first class Britrail pass, and I felt like SUCH an idiot tourist. :(

However, after the first train journey or two, I decided that I really kind of like first class because they have comfier seats, fewer screaming children, and there are porters who BRING YOU TEA. I admit it was actually the tea that made me fall for the first class wastefulness, though.

I think within a week I had a horrible sense of entitlement and I was actually quite pissed off when I had to travel from Llandudno or Bath to York by myself on a train that had no first class section. No tea on *that* journey... though there was a lovely little girl-child in a Teletubbies t-shirt, and that made up for it a bit.

Also I went from Durham to Wolverhampton first class once when I was really ill, but really I think the general bleakness of Wolverhampton made up for the opulence of my journey. Maybe.

I have babbled so much!

[whatho.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've been a bloated plutocrat myself. You can get first class upgrades on the weekends for about a fiver sometimes. They have big seats and free tea and newspapers and biscuits and really there's a lot to love. Except, you know, classism and all that. But it is jolly fun....

2.14 makes me cry slightly.

[aldenmacrae.livejournal.com]

You can get first class upgrades on the weekends for about a fiver sometimes.

Wow! I never knew! This convinces me even further that James was a completely USELESS companion, for he never told me interesting-and-useful stuff like that!

I do think everyone should get tea served to them on trains, though. And I really, really want to ride on a train that has individual compartments... but possibly they don't exist anymore except for the Hogwarts Express (which is not real) and one or two old trains they use for period pieces on telly. Hmm.

2.14 makes me cry slightly.

I know; everyone is an arse in that episode. I have to tell you that I hardly thought about it when I watched it for the first time, though... I just went all irritable and grumpy because WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN? I am much too passive with my television viewing.

[whatho.livejournal.com]

Very occasionally I see some Hogwarts style train carriages on the line near me, but it's extremely rare. They were pretty much the norm in the early eighties though...I remember them fairly clearly. And they still use ones like them on some of the decorative steam railways like the Ffestiniog and the Tal Y Llyn. They're a bit lovely.

[aldenmacrae.livejournal.com]

Ooh, decorative steam railways with lovely Welsh names! I have been somewhere called Tal Y Bont, but I suppose it is nothing to do with this Tal Y Llyn railway because I got to Tal Y Bont on a scary-but-regular sort of train service. Nothing decorative at all.

Anyway, I am very impressed you have been in trains with compartments!