London by Virgin

Breaking my Virgin train 'virginity' was certainly a mixed bag. On one hand the trip down to London was full of disappointment. As the train pulled up in Carlisle I stepped on the something more reminiscent of a Scotrail from Dumfries to Glasgow. Apparently due to some last minute problems they had to replace the train that was supposed to run the service with this older model. The heating on the carriage I got onto was broken but thankfully the conductor let us know the front carriages would save us from 4 hours of toe chilling comfort. Roll on a couple of hours and there's an announcement that there's no hot water and further still we're delayed at our next station. Throw into the equation that this rust bucket was 10mph slower than modern Virgin trains and I end up in London 35 mins late.

Anyone who's heard any previous tales of my train 'adventures' will just say this is a typical Andy Wu train journey - Alan says I'm a real life 'Jonah'!

Thankfully (to say the least) the return journey has been the complete opposite. I'm sitting here in a much nicer carriage with my laptop plugged in to the graciously provided socket in the table. I've got everything I need. I even managed to grab some headphones from the onboard shop so I could fire up iTunes. Well if they could let me borrow a phone charger for my dead phone then my life would be complete. Beyond that, some internet time would be good...

Only problem I do have, come to think of it, is I have no excuse not to be getting on with some work. Oh well, can't have everything.

[Update] the train ended up being 35 mins late due to "children playing on the line" (haven't they got xboxs and ps2s they should be playing?!)