A long and eventful day

  

• Get up before the 5 a.m. alarm to ensure no chance of sleeping through it

• Open the bedroom curtains and note the lousy weather - it's raining heavily

• Spend far too long searching for an umbrella 

• Consequently there's no time to have a cup of something hot before leaving the house

• Realise during the drive to the railway station that my mobile phone is still at home, plugged into the charger

• 2 minutes later it dawns that this means I can't leave the car in the usual car park as payment has to be made by phone text

• From under the umbrella, make several attempts to pay at the station's alternative car park's ticket machine with a £10 note and eventually read "Coins and credit cards only"
  

• Go back to the car to find there aren't enough coins in my purse and return to the machine with a credit card but somehow only manage to pay for 1 hour's car parking

• Try alternative machine and same thing happens.  Now have 2 rather wet tickets giving me an unusable total of 2 hours' parking

• Hear ominous "ping" after which the umbrella collapses on my head

• Eventually fathom the instructions in the relentless pouring rain and breathe an umbrella-less sigh of relief when the machine issues a parking ticket for 24 hours

• No time to buy coffee on the platform as my train pulls into the station

• Once on the train, hang my rain soaked linen jacket on the thoughtfully provided hook and cross fingers it will miraculously dry in the far too cold, air conditioned carriage

• Hope that the damp linen shirt I'm wearing doesn't crease too much

• Try to re-style previously straightened but now very wet hair with fingers as the hair brush is inexplicably missing from my bag

• An hour into the journey am relieved to see a refreshment cart being pushed into the carriage

• Get out purse in readiness to pay for restorative coffee and KitKat

• Observe the somewhat unsteady person pushing the refreshment cart spill entire contents of large cup of coffee over 2 business suited passengers 

• Decide it's probably best to put purse back in bag

• Arrive at destination and dash to check out appearance in station loo mirrors

• Reel in horror at reflected image

• Apply heavy eye liner and lipstick in hope that delegates' attention will be diverted by non too expertly applied maquillage

• Arrive at event venue to find hot water flasks for tea and coffee are empty

• Deliver presentation with apologies for wild hair and assurances that, despite looking otherwise, the clothes I'm wearing really haven't been slept in

• Lots of discussion after the presentation means a dash to the station to catch another train to meet up with the Gorgeous Girlie

• En route manage to grab the smallest/cheapest looking umbrella from display in Boots

• Reluctantly hand over 13 quid to a very smiley cashier and tell her no, I don't have my Boots Advantage card with me

• GG is waiting in her car outside the station we've arranged to meet at and the tears flow as we remember my dad who died a year ago today

• 3 p.m. and I get the first drink and food of the day courtesy of GG and her kitchen

• Attempt to re-straighten my hair with GG's GHDs

• Re-iron my, by now, rag of a shirt

• Heavy traffic on the way to the station 4 hours later means there's no time to buy a drink for the journey home.  The train's refreshment trolley it will have to be, whoever's pushing it.  (I will have that KitKat)

• Arrive at the platform with minutes to spare to find  "an incident " in progress and the train I need to get on taken over by police

• Eventually a replacement turns up and at last we're moving and heading north

• Announcement on the train that sorry, there will be no refreshments available for the entire journey.  Didn't fancy a KitKat anyway

• Half an hour from my destination there's another announcement that, due to severe flooding, the train has been forced to reduce its speed to 5 mph

• More than 18 hours after getting up this morning I arrive home

• And once inside I can't help smiling as I unpack the pre-budget treat of an Osprey handbag I somehow managed to buy on this eventful day