This post is being written on Christmas day because the site has been down for the past few days. While I took some notes, most of the post is from memory. I take little responsibility for the reliability of that memory.
As I said yesterday, my decision to not go shopping impacted on me today in a couple of ways. Firstly, I started to feel better but, secondly, today I was drenched from the torrential rain. I mean, seriously wet. I couldn’t have got any wetter.
Thirdly, Waitrose was the worst I’ve ever seen it. Like a swarm of locusts, desperate looking last minute shoppers darted around giant stacks of fruit and vegetables, huffing and puffing as their trolleys grew heavier and heavier. It was awful. There were also no Jerusalem artichokes, which there may have been yesterday.
I also tried to get some at the Frensham Food Hall when we went to pick up our turkey. I thought they’d have some. I was wrong.
Back at the Waitrose check out, I was standing behind a woman with a very distinctive shopping list attached to her trolley.
I have no idea why the number two is in brackets. And I didn’t ask, as she was looking a wee bit flustered. During my usual chat with the woman on the check-out, I pointed out that when I generally come in and shop, it’s usually just her and me. She agreed, it was pretty bad and she’d be happy for the day to end and her three days off to begin.
I slowly sploshed home, every bit of me drenched. Still, it saved me having to have a shower. We resumed preparing for our guests.
Sophie, Tom and Boris turned up in the late afternoon. Boris caused mayhem with the girls though he quite happily showed Freya how to chase squirrels properly when they all went for a walk around the park.
As I wrote last week, on our way home from Pulpo Negro, we saw the Steam Illuminations. Well, we bought tickets for tonight so, after having a lovely linner at Côte, we headed for Alton station and an insane evening of steam train travel. Incidentally, Côte was remarkably busy for 17:30. I guess everyone had the same idea as us.
We arrived at Alton station to find a goodly amount of the car parking was taken up with the dreaded Heras fencing (someone is burying some sort of services under the car park and, I suppose, the same someone figured a train strike was a good time to half the available parking). Because, I guess, the Watercress Line is completely unimportant. It’s all run by volunteers, after all.
Anyway, enough of that. We arrived at the station, managed to park and headed for the train that was just pulling into the station. And it looked amazing. Dressed in flickering lights, unloading groups of excited people wearing wristbands…actually, most of the people looked like they hadn’t enjoyed themselves at all. Or, maybe they were sad that it had ended.
Eventually, we boarded and the train set off for Arlesford.
We travelled through the dark Hampshire countryside, no doubt frightening sparrows and waking up cows as we chugged and sparkled. We were also entertained by the ‘voice over guy’. He was our DJ. His jokes were straight out of cheap Christmas crackers. The songs he played were cheesy. He also controlled our wristbands, making them flash different colours at various times along with the music.
While we didn’t stop anywhere on the trip down, Voice Over Guy let us know where we were almost every step of the way. His jokes didn’t get any better. For example: How do trains listen? With their Engine Ears, of course. Good, quality humour all the way.
At Arlesford, we all disembarked and watched the engine going from the front to the back…which then became the front. We soon retook our seats and the train chuffed back to Alton.
The whole thing was seriously mental. And we loved it. Well, Mirinda and I loved it. I think Sophie and Tom were somewhat mystified.
I hope all of those crazy Waitrose early shoppers had as great a Christmas Eve Eve as we did.
