Went down to London on Friday for a weekend of wedding shopping with lucy_pointycat. 

It all started rather inauspiciously...

I had decided on Thursday night that I would catch the bus to the station rather than a cab, as a) it would be a lot cheaper and b) my experience with cabs in this city has been somewhat patchy... i.e. half the time they don't turn up at all, let alone on time.

So I set off to catch the 120 at 7.24, which should have got me to the station at about 8.05 - my train was due at 8.27, so this would give me plenty of time to collect my tickets, get a bottle of water, etc.

I was at the bus stop for 7.20, but no 120 turned up by 7.30. The 41 came along, and I thought, shall I get that, but then decided not to, as it doesn't stop at the station and I'd have a much longer walk down the hill. Anyway, I thought, the 7.34 120 should be here any minute.

Of course, 7.34 came and went with no sign of the 120. At this point I was starting to freak out and thinking, should I just phone a cab now? but hampered by that dilemma of "If I do, the bus will turn up immediately, plus the cab will get stuck in traffic and we'll probably end up following the bus into town..."

Finally a 120 turned up at 7.42. I don't know if it was the 7.24 really late, the 7.34 eight minutes late, or the 7.44 two minutes early, but I didn't stop to ask. I am guessing it was the really late 7.24, because we then picked up multitudes of passengers at every stop, to the point where we stopped taking any more passengers at Manor Top because the bus was full! So of course that slowed us down again.

Eventually we got to Pond St at about 8.20, so I forced my way to the front, jumped off, and legged it to the station. Of course, there was an old geezer in front of me at the FastTicket collection machine dithering over the buttons, but the good news was, the screens were showing that the 8.27 to St Pancras was standing at platform 8. The bad news was the platform 8 is the furthest one away. 

Finally the old geezer finished dithering and I swept him aside, banged my credit card in the machine and punched in my reservation code. The machine spat out three tickets - my outbound, return, and receipt, I assumed, so I thrust them into a pocket and legged it over to platform 8.

Of course, by the time I'd finished barging people out of the way, the platform was empty. I went to the Information kiosk, where I was informed that yes, I had missed the 8.27, but not to worry, there was another St Pancras service leaving at 8.36. Just one small problem - my ticket, being an advance booking, wasn't transferrable. I would have to buy another ticket. Argh! With the prospect of having to spend about another £100 or so, I asked if there was anything they could do. The nice information lady advised me to speak to the "train manager" when the St Pancras train arrived and see if he would let me travel.

So a couple of minutes later the Train Manager was examining my tickets and looking at my earnest, pleading face. "First class, eh? Alright love, on you go," he said, which was frankly amazingly lucky! I scrambled on and plonked myself in the plush first class carriage (first time I've ever been in one) and tried to catch my breath.

The train set off, and about 10 minutes later the train manager came round to collect the tickets. He asked for mine (even though he'd already seen them) but then said, no, this is your return ticket, where's your outbound? Puzzled, I searched my pockets, but lmew I'd already given him everything the machine had given me. I said, "But there's two tickets there, aren't there?" It turned out one of them was my seat reservation and the other one was my actual ticket. 

I worked out afterwards what it was - the reservation service had given me two collection codes, but when I'd put the first one in, because it spat out three tickets, I of course thought that it was being intelligent and had given me both. And being in a mad panic to get to the platform, of course I didn't check them all over.

Anyway - the very nice Train Manager obviously decided that since he'd let me on in the first place, and hearing my pathetic "But that's all I was given!" cry, that he wasn't going to worry about it, and with an "Oh well, never mind love" he went off to check on other customers' tickets!

As the attendant who served me my (free) tea a few minutes later put it, "I should count yourself lucky, love, because the train manager I travelled with yesterday would have definitely not let you travel!"

Anyway I will have to finish this later as the data I've been waiting for has just become available and I need to do some work!