Farnham to Battle

Left Farnham for Battle as the rain started sprinkling down, a sprinkle which followed me all the way it seemed. A quick change at Waterloo for Waterloo East and I was heading back south. It’s the old spoke thing.

If you imagine London is the centre of a bicycle wheel, all the transport links head in towards it. It could just as easily be any big centre (Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, etc) but London demonstrates it best. What this means is that if you want to travel around the rim, most of the time it’s only possible to go via London. This doesn’t actually apply to Farnham as I could have travelled via Havant and across the bottom to Brighton but this would have meant about six trains and taken about 4 hours. And so I went in to Waterloo and then came back out again. At least I didn’t have to cross London.

And so I found myself on a train heading to Battle (where the tussle happened in 1066) and John’s place, laden with rucksack and netbook, phone and iPod. Looking forward to a jolly good pirating week, I’m listening to a collection of pirate shanties recorded by a few famous rock stars. It’s called Rogue’s Gallery and is definitely putting me in the mood.

So I was first to arrive at John’s. We had a good long chat, catching up, just shooting the breeze, over coffee and then beer, naturally. The rumour was that Lorna, Darren, Bev and Matt would arrive more or less simultaneously. There had been no news from Sean. This is not unusual.

Bev & Matt were next. I’m not sure why but it appears that Matt is not talking to me. He’s gone all sulky. Strange, but then he is, really. It does make things a bit uncomfortable. I did attempt to talk to him a few times but he’s not really up for it so I stopped and just kept being incredibly funny, to force him to laugh. Which didn’t really work.

Lorna and Darren turned up shortly afterwards and, eventually we all sat down to a lovely chilli and sticky rice dinner, expertly prepared by John and accompanied by beer. At some stage we had a text from Sean, saying he’d arrive at 9:30. A while later (at about 9:30) we had another text from Sean saying he’d arrive at 11:30. We decided not to leave him any food and ate it all.

We sat in the lounge listening to a bit of pirate music, eating Lorna’s yummy cake, until Darren was sleepy enough to go to bed. We have to leave the house by 2:30am so the drivers (Darren & John) have to be in bed early. This prompted everyone to retire early as well. I, like a fool, am staying up to work on my dissertation. I shall sleep in the car. I’m very good at that. I am also going to meet Sean at the station. I don’t know why but at least I’ll get some fresh air.

The train arrived slightly early but I was there to meet them and escort them up the very steep hill to John’s place. They were very grateful, if somewhat exhausted. They had a laptop with them. I mention this because Matt has also brought one. Just can’t get away from them! And of course, I have my netbook.