Thursday 7 December 2023
It’s 18:42 and I’m sitting in the living room with the balcony door open, and I’m still a bit too warm. I am most definitely in London. It is a lot easier to appreciate and sort of prefer this warm flat in winter compared to the bitterly cold house in Scotland.
I came down by train yesterday. I was booked on a 09:10 train but realised that -7°C on wet roads wasn’t a good idea to drive at 08:00. Then I found out that that train was cancelled anyway, ditto all previous trains. It took ages to scrape ice off the car, though it all looked beautiful. When I walked to the road, it was white with black-ice tyre tracks, but no signs of anyone having skidded. I felt reassured to see a couple of normal, two-wheel drive cars driving past. So I set off an hour later than planned, having discovered that the next train was also cancelled.
To cut a long and unexciting story short, as I really should know by now, we live in a microclimate. The roads were only that bad for about two miles. Then, pretty much fine. My train was a few minutes late, fine. The train from Carlisle was a few minutes late too, but then had to stop a lot en route so ended up taking about an hour longer. Annoying. And extremely hot and stuffy. And also quite busy. Then of course, my trains to Lewisham weren’t running due to strike action so, with two suitcases and a rucksack, I caught a tube and DLR home, fairly uneventful. I left home in Scotland at 09:10 and arrived home in Lewisham at around 16:00, which was probably quicker than had I driven. I wrote Christmas cards, listened to music and a podcast, read, ate and huffed and puffed a lot from being too hot (I was dressed to scrape ice off a car at -7°C).
As ever, it’s good to be back in London, though all I’ve done is chores, had my hair cut, two clothes washes, unpacked, packed, been to the shops and had a walk with my friend Rachael before work (her), coffee at a favourite café and tomorrow morning I’m meeting another friend. I say “all I’ve done”, that was actually loads. Tomorrow, I’m due to fly to Qatar for work. I have never looked forward to sun and temperatures of 20-26°C so much, even though there’s a very high probability I won’t be outdoors in daylight for five days. I have just found out it might be hotter, which slightly flusters me clothing-wise. I’ve never been good at imagining temperatures massively different to those I’m currently experiencing. How hot is 29°C? Hmmm, minus 7°C in Scotland yesterday morning. I think I’ll be fine with thin trousers rather than jeans …