Monday 10th January 2019

I have a bad back.

Also, I work away. A lot.

So, fitting in appointments when you spend four weeks in a row away, is difficult, so when the hospital offers you, a two day's notice, a scan to check your back out, you have to jump at it, even if circumstances mean having to use public transport to get to Ashford hospital and back, and as soon as you get back, you have to leave for the airport, on public transport.

Again.

So, there you are.

I caught the bus out of the village at eight, into town to the station, and from there a short wait before the train to Ashford left.

At Ashford, a bus to the hospital, delayed by roadworks, all to be there in time for the appointment at ten, which was delayed as all hospitals were for over an hour.

I go in, take my shirt off, lay on the scanner table, it rattles and hums, and done.

Results in a few weeks.

Back outside to wait for a bus to the station, then wait twenty minutes for a train to Dover, a taxi back home to collect my case, and back to the station for the quarter to two train to London.

And all the time it was pissing down.

Hard.

And getting harder.

I get into London, and have an hour to kill before going to the airport as they will only accept your case two hours before flight. I go to St Pancras, then over the road to Kings Cross, and finally after two years of visits, I see the new Azuma trains, the next generation Javelins, really, but three lines up under the iconic train shed.

I snap them, have a coffee, then go to St Pancras for early dinner at the Italian place looking on at another iconic transhed, this time with added Eurostars.

I catch the first train to Stratford, the DLR to the airport, where the lady manning the check in desk let me check in the case ten minutes too ealry and made it like she had done me a huge favour.

It was still pissing down outside.

Matched my mood.

I found a place to sit and begin to read the book I had bought on the history of Stiff records.

I now how to live.

Time passes.

The flight is called, and we walk down to the gate, to squeeze onto the flight, mostly Lego executives who seem very serious indeed about their job.

We take off into the teeth of a gale, lifting up into the low clouds, and the plane is thrown around like a bronco for ten minutes before we break through the clouds and into the evening light.

I have another dinner.

And relax some more until we drop down into Billund, where it is actually warm and bright, though the sun was setting.

I just had a 40 minute run to Esbjerg, and all was going well until I came up behind a Siemens turbine tower section, on a double wide trailer, taking up the whole road. No way past it, so I sit in line for half an hour whilst we all trundle in convoy down to Esbjerg before we were allowed past.

It was half eleven, dark and I was tired.

I would have to be up again in under seven hours, and was wide awake.

And the bar was shut.