Friday 12th February, 2016                 1700

Two days of doing nothing bar a daily shopping trip. My, how life must be when you are retired!

At least now the supermarket have replenished my wine and Guinness supplies, although I must confess I was becoming rather fond of the weissbier. Doing my mental arithmetic, at 10y a can and double in both size and ABV it is not that much more expensive than the cheap cans I normally buy (but can’t because they haven’t got any at the moment) and are far more enjoyable, even if they do pack a decent punch. I tend to use the cheap Snow stuff for slaking a thirst. The trouble is, when you put four large cans, two bottles of wine and a bottle of jing jo into your shopping, when you are taking the bus it’s quite a heavy load to bear. When the weather steadies down to be warmer again I may have to pluck up the courage to use the bike for these runs again, I can take so much more and a cab costs 30y.

These past two days the weather has been great, pleasantly warm in the 20s although at some point before I got up today (at noon!) it had been raining with more expected tonight and tomorrow. The scaremongers at the local met office have revised their Mystic Meg impressions, now they are merely saying it will be cold but not freezing over the next few days. Although I have come to abhor the cold since I came here, it is the rain I really hate and then chiefly because it is a royal pain when you are riding a scooter.

Mum is now expectantly awaiting my return each afternoon because naturally she is expecting some food from me. Yesterday she even came up the stairs. She has never done that to my knowledge in any building, albeit she stayed at the top of the stairs so her escape route was open, not because of me, I hasten to add. I splashed out a bit on her today, instead of skin and bones I bought skin and meat at double the price. I know she’s not my responsibility but I have known her longer than I have any other dog in my life now. Still, in two weeks the students will be back and she can forage for her own tucker. The mystery of her disappearing pups is solved though, I am almost certain they have migrated to the library area near south gate, for yesterday Mum ran all the way down after my bike to keep me company and it was there that two of them came rushing from the undergrowth to join the chase. Quite where they are finding their food is still a mystery to me, unless of course the guards are bunging them some. They often do.

So with just a fortnight to go, at some point I need to address the revamping of my CV and also prepare my class attendance book before we start. Other than that I guess life will be pretty undramatic for the foreseeable future (but then this is ME we are talking about) and the most exciting thing I can envisage is another possible pizza run before term starts.

Talking of which, it took me three years to steel myself to take a train in China (aside from the Maglev in Shanghai but that’s a different breed of fish) because I had visions of the Indian method with pushers and people riding on top of the carriage. With hindsight of course that was arrant nonsense but CCTV news showing trains full to bursting and tales of travellers standing for 24 hours on trains to get home for spring festival did nothing to allay my aversion.

Then of course I ended up taking my first train (not in spring festival) with a ticket for a “hard seat”. There is no way I would buy a standing ticket unless I was absolutely desperate and it was a journey of twenty minutes or less. Now these seats are not particularly comfortable but I have endured an eight hour trip on a couple of occasions. They can be as boring as hell or if you are lucky to have fellow travellers with two packs of cards you can while away the time by playing Do Di Ju, which I love. On the whole, provided there are not hundreds of standing passengers clogging up the walkways the trips are passable, plus as they are slow trains, you can smoke between carriages.

Since the new fast trains appeared I am a convert! Even second class (I still haven’t mastered the art of asking for a first class seat) is really comfy. For me the bugbear is no smoking but I get over that by leaping out at each stop to grab a few puffs before reboarding. The ride is smooth, the carriages clean and the speeds reach up to 126 mph. When I read about a Suffolk-London season ticket commuter who was reduced to sitting in a cleaning cupboard every day on his way home from work (after paying £6,000/60,000y a year) I realised that would never happen here. As far as I know there is no such thing yet as a season ticket but if there were I would bet a pound to a pinch his ticket would be for the same seat number every time he took a train.

There is one thing I would like to do at least once though. The idea of taking even a soft sleeper train is off-putting because even with two of you travelling together there will still be two strangers in the berth and for some inexplicable reason there are no privacy curtains on the bunks. Sod that. But there are certain trains that have luxury sleeper compartments for two with their own private bathroom. Now THAT would be ok. If only they didn’t cost three times as much as it does to fly!