Trundle

Life There was a terrific thunder storm last night and I was woken up this morning by thunder so loud that I actually rose out of bed swearing. Because we live at the top of a tower block we are much closer to such things and today I actually think the building must have been hit by lightening. I looked out the window and couldn't even see the new circus tent (the fourth this year) which has parked in the field.

I visited Manchester today to meet my old course mate Emma who's working a placement in a theatre there. As the train trundled out of Lime Street, it became apparent that it would be circumventing the usual route, skipping Widnes and Warrington because the storm had reached across the area and a lightening strike had hit the rails somewhere.

When I asked the guard, politely, what was going on, he said that actually local services would still be using the usual route, but we, that is us, would be using the 'urban' service. I like the 'urban' description, it reminds me of the service in Paris that actually travels outside yet directly within the city, although I think as he stumbled over it he was actually substituting for the usual 'express', because we were crawling along the rails because (oh irony) we were stuck behind a local service that used the line we were using.

There's something fundamentally itchy about going through any route that's not expected and isn't familiar. You might have a book in your hand but you simply can't read because your unable to ignore the new sights that you're passing even though they're not actually all that different to what you know, with all the houses, bushes, fields and power lines. We reached Manchester twenty minutes late, which at least gave me even more time not to catch up on my not reading.