Pollyanna Penguin’s RA Blog

The great outdoors

I had a very outdoorsy day yesterday, and it was a good job too as the indoor start to the day really did NOT go well. My friend Weeny and I had arranged to go on a guided botanical walk in my local area (some hour’s drive away from her), and she was picking me up at about nine thirty – or that was the plan. I got a call from my friend at eight thirty, and that’s when things started to go pear shaped; Heck, I thought, something’s gone wrong and she’s not coming.

Weeny: Hello?

Penguin: Hello?

Weeny: Well… are you OK?

Penguin: Fine thanks.

Weeny: Well … I’m waiting to leave!!

Penguin: Erm … jolly good.

Weeny: HRUMPH!!

Penguin: Oh … was I supposed to ring you and say I was OK?

Weeny: Well I thought you were!

Oops – I thought we’d agreed I’d ring her if I wasn’t well and she thought I was going to ring either way. Bad start as at this point she was already running slightly late, having waited for me to ring.

So before she arrived, and feeling fine, I thought I’d make myself useful for a change and put some washing in the machine. A bit later on I went to make a coffee, slipped on a small puddle of unexpected water on the kitchen floor and fell over enormous cat, who was less than impressed! Having established that I was still in one piece and so was he, I thought I’d better see where the water had come from. You guessed it – the washing machine. The door seal appeared to be leaking. I pressed the door and it stopped – let go and it dribbled again – pressed the door and it stopped, let go and it dribbled again. O-K, so I stand here all morning leaning on the washing machine, or I bung a few towels under the door and forget about it and leave it for poor hardworking hubby to sort out when he gets home. Well, since at this point my friend is due to arrive any minute I decide on the towel option.

Once that was sorted, and enormous cat apologised to, I thought I’d better get some suntan cream on, as although the weather didn’t look all that promising, I didn’t want to risk it. The suntan lotion leaked too.

OK, I’ll be honest, it didn’t actually leak but somehow I managed to squirt it all over me and all over my t-shirt. Expecting the doorbell to ring any second I frantically scrubbed at the t-shirt, realised it was hopeless, changed rapidly, reminded myself I was supposed to be having a fun day off and managed to calm down and de-stress, only to realise that Weeny was now fifteen minutes late! Round about this point the doorbell did finally ring and there she was, standing there going, ‘Come on penguin, mush-mush, we’re late!’

‘OK, OK,’ I said. ‘Don’t panic. I’m ready. Got my camera. Got suntan cream on, got my jacket, got my notebook and pencil, got my RAC card … keys … erm … where are my keys?’ I think Weeny thought I was joking since there’s a longstanding joke relating to her and lost keys, but alas, I really couldn’t find them. Five minutes later they turned up … in the door.

Needless to say we got stuck behind every slow-moving vehicle in Norfolk and neither of us had thought to bring the mobile number of the chap whose walk we’re going on, but dead on ten o’clock (which was when we were due to meet him) we rolled into the car park … and we were the only car in it! Right – so is it the wrong day, wrong place, what’s going on? Weeny was just about to phone her hubby to get the mobile number for the walkies chap when I had a flash of inspiration.

‘Weeny … you know his instructions said “go over the level crossing and it’s the car park on the left”? Well … what if we went over the level crossing the other way? Then it would be the car park over the other side of the crossing from this one …”

“Oh yes,” says Weeny, “there was a car over there…”

Sure enough, we turned around and went back over the crossing and there was a much larger car park with one solitary car in it and one solitary man scrabbling about on the ground with a huge camera trying to photograph a small plant. That’s got to be our man, we thought, and sure enough it was.

After that the day went much better! We spent a fascinating three hours learning about and looking at a variety of plants with fantastic names like Smith’s Pepperwort, Tower Mustard, Stork’s Bill, Shepherd’s Cress and Mouse-ear Hawkweed … and we had Mr Expert to ourselves, which was a bit of luck! (For us – not for him, from a financial point of view, but he never made us feel that we were wasting his day!) Best of all, my RA was totally quiescent – the idea of me spending three hours on my feet a few months ago would have been quite laughable (in a depressing sort of way, rather than a ‘funny ha-ha’ way!)

After a splendid morning we headed back to my place for lunch – both starving after all that fresh air and exercise. Of course we got stuck behind all the slowest moving vehicles in Norfolk AGAIN, and sat there hurling abuse at them and shouting ‘Oy – can’t you see we’ve got an emergency here. We want our LUNCH!’ A very nice lunch it was too, and then off for another stint of outdoorishness, this time butterfly-spotting on another local nature reserve. We didn’t have much luck with that – we were looking for three particular species which we know for sure have been in that area over the last few days. We didn’t see the faintest sign of two of them. The third, Green Hairstreak, we caught brief glimpses of flitting high up in the scrub – and I mean brief. Just enough to go ‘It’s definitely green!’ Still, even though we didn’t see what we were looking for, we had a lovely afternoon in the sunshine, and did see a few other interesting things.

Then I headed home to hubby, who said, rather woebegone, ‘I suppose that means you won’t want to come out for a walk with me this evening?’ So out we headed again – to yet another local nature reserve, for a brisk walk to our favorite bench and back before dinner.

I must say I felt SO much better yesterday evening than I generally do after a day in the office, and I slept like a log!! Still, something has to pay for the days off. And although I did find myself getting pretty stiff today, back to being stuck in the office again, apart from that the RA has remained blissfully quiet. Long may it last. I don’t know if it’s the change in the weather or what, but I’m making the most of it. We’ve been out almost every evening this last couple of weeks, and a fair bit over the weekend. Who knows, at this rate maybe I’ll even lose a bit of weight in time for THE wedding. Then again, given that Weeny brought some rather yummy Greek Salad for lunch … maybe not.

The Railways Move in Mysterious Ways … but they move

Well I have to say it’s a semi-thumbs up to the ex-British Rail – no train was more than ten minutes late, and that’s out of eight trains (excluding the Underground) that I’ve been on in the last five days. It wasn’t all good news though – on the way to my friends in Wales, having had an excellent one-night stop with Maggie and family (taking in a surprsingly good school craft/Christmas fair), I had to go from Reading to Cardiff on a train that I had been told there were no reservable tickets for. I assumed this meant that they simply weren’t going to have reserved seats on that train, which does happen. Wrong!! Just about every seat on the train was reserved, but not for me: for just about every Welsh Rugby fan on the English side of the Severn … and one lone Australian. Yes, Wales was playing Australia that day in Cardiff! I have to say they were all incredibly well behaved, especially since most of them had obviously been drinking since pulling out of London at around nine-thirty in the morning. Being train-savvy I found myself a seat – one that said it was reserved from London and had no one in it – but there were plenty of people who had to stand, and if I hadn’t had years of experience of train travel before I started driving just four or five years ago, I would probably have been one of them.

Anyway, I got there, and very pretty it was too:

The Brecon Beacons

And then I came home again … eight hours it took me, door to door. If I do it again I shall certainly take Maggie up on the offer of staying a night with her both ways. By the time I got home I was about ready to cry. I thought I’d been rather clever in booking First Class, because the First Advance was only a few quid more than standard and I thought if I traveled home in the lap of luxury then I’d be less exhausted. Well … if I HAD traveled home in the lap of luxury I probably would have been less exhausted! The first part of the journey was great – no first class on the little valley line from my friend’s house to Cardiff, but that was OK – the train wasn’t busy, it was warm, and the guard was friendly. Then at Cardiff I found the First Class Lounge – a lovely lady in charge, providing free coffee, water etc. and a chat, and promissing to let me know when the train arrived on the platform, which she did. They also had a rather nice second-hand book stall in the lounge and I bought a book to keep me going for the next  two hours or so until London. Then onto the train – a lovely, comfy seat with loads of leg room and a charming stewardess who must have come past at least six times offering complimentary coffee, orange juice, water, cake, biscuits and possibly even sandwiches – she certainly had sarnies, but I’m not sure if they were free or not. The guy opposite me couldn’t believe his luck. Every time he saw her coming he asked for a coffee and an orange juice and bicuits or cake, and then he squirelled the biscuits about his person for future use! Anyway, that was a lovely journey, marred only by being one of the two ten-minute late trains. Then across the Tube, which was thankfully uneventful and over to Liverpool Street to get the train to Norwich.

And that’s where it all started to go wrong. The reason I expounded on the First Class advantages so much just now is so that you, dear reader, can compare them to the next ‘First Class’ leg of my journey. This was National Express Trains. Name ‘em and shame ‘em, I say! Due to ‘a shortage of rolling stock’ there was no catering on the train. There were also no toilets, no ticket collectors and no working heaters in the ‘First Class’ carriage. To add insult to injury the first class carriage wasn’t actually a carriage but just a few seats tacked on to the end of an ordinary carriage, and when I say a few that’s what I mean. It was absolutely full. I was lucky to get a seat in it at all, because the other thing it had none of was reservations. Although I’d reserved my seat, they hadn’t put the reservations in so instead of getting an ‘airline’ seat, which actually has plenty of legroom, I had to sit in a ‘foursome’ which didn’t really have enough leg room for four!

So instead of arriving home relaxed after a nice sleep, which was my original hope, I arrived at Norwich station frozen to the core, not having slept a wink and stiff as a board from lack of leg room!

Still, moaning aside, and traveling aside, it was a really good trip. I’m glad to say that on the one sunny day that we had I had virtually no RA symptoms and could enjoy the lovely views across the mountains. (I won’t dwell on the state I was in the previous day, when it rained for 24 hours non-stop, but that’s Wales for you!)