train luck?

We got up at 4:30 this morning in order to get to the airport at 5. Good thing we were there early because it was BUSY! Got to Heathrow by 8ish and my colleague and I parted ways. She went to meet her partner and go to Oxford and I returned to Paddington, then Victoria to catch a train back to Maidstone. Somehow I got on the wrong train. I think I might have mixed up the 10:24 to Canterbury East with the with the 10:42 to Canterbury West. Or vice versa. Or not that at all. I blame the early rising. I started to notice I was in an unfamiliar landscape but there was noone on the train to ask. I leaned out the door at Rochester and called to the signal person. He was most helpful. He told me to go to Gillenbury and then get a train back to Strood and then get the train to Maidstone. Okay then. When I disembarked, a young woman came up to me and said, "You are Canadian, right?" Wow! She gave me some more good train advice and told me that after 10 years in England she still misses Calgary and the wide, open spaces.














Strood was quite desolate and windy on a Sunday mid-morning and there was something squeaking rhythmically ... I started to feel that Lee Van Cleef might saunter up any minute. Lee Van Cleef in the wilds of Kent.














Everything worked out fine and I was back on Belmont Close only an hourish later than originally planned.