Walking up the steps to my sleepy unmanned village station I passed a gentleman I see every morning. I won't say we exactly exchange pleasantries, but as fellow commuters we do exchange the British 'nod'.
Half way up the steps (OK, this is a long story!), the platform speaker stirred into action with the mechanical disjointed announcement that the, next, train, at, platform, three (oddly numbered as there are actually only two platforms) is, the, 9.02, to Huddersfield; my train.
Three steps higher (bear with me....), and I could see the train pulling into the station. I shouted back down the steps, 'it's here' to prompt the aforementioned gentleman to get a wriggle on.
I leaped on to the train, waved my customary wave to my hubby as I passed our house (it's getting very Enid Blyton today isn't it?) and settled down to send a few texts and e.mails.
Ten minutes later I looked up and had that awful heart-sinking realisation that the landscape out of the train window was not the landscape of my usual route to Huddersfield.
Indeed, two minutes later the conductor confirmed my error by announcing our imminent arrival in....Brighouse, not Huddersfield.
The blood drained out of my face and as we pulled into Brighouse I was crossing every finger and toe that the gentleman had not heeded my erroneous holler and followed me on to the train like a lamb to the slaughter (well, OK, Brighouse).
As I waited for the train doors to open on a drizzly Brighouse morning, a familiar nodding head popped up from a seat further down the carriage, looked around in shock and confusion. I shrugged my shoulders and hung my nodding head in shame.
I could not have been more embarrassed and apologetic and in the space of a few minutes we moved from sharing a train to sharing life stories as we jogged around the streets of Brighouse trying to find a taxi, calling bosses and cancelling meetings on our mobiles and eventually sharing the final leg of our eventful journey by road.
Having bared my story of idiocy with the world (world, four blog readers, potato, potato), I will now segue seamlessly to other journey stories from the mouths of, yes, you guessed it, my very own babes / angels.
Daniel, 15 minutes from the end of a 14-hour-journey to Cornwall involving four feature-length Disney films, two MacDonalds, one Little Chef, four wee stops, a dozen games of Eye Spy, six car colour counting competitions and seven rounds of 'I went to the supermarket and I bought...': "Mum, I'm bored, are we there yet?"
Bless.
Teddy, on the journey of an ebay sale from my 'things to ebay' box, half way around the world to the ebay purchaser in Australia: "Mum, will they send a whole plane just with your jacket in it?"
God help us!
