next stop Manchester! but not yet…
I’m back! Finally, after a delay at York en route cost me a full forty minutes and reminded me of why regular rail travel teaches one patience and tolerance for the bewildered and even the downright thoughtless – take a bow, people who place small bags in the lower luggage space so that passengers with large and heavy suitcases containing nearly a weeks’ kit and a Nutribullet can’t use it (remedy – grit teeth, adopt a beaming smile and kindly offer to lift their teeny bag up onto the shelf for them). Not forgetting those who take a full five minutes to dither about where in the luggage rack their mini wheelie case from Matalan would be best placed so they can see it from B17 rather than just take it with them and put it on the shelf above the seat (remedy – count to ten, beam as before and say your line: ‘No no, love! You take your time.‘)*
Twelve days on, a week and a half back at HQ and I’m now fully recovered from FrightFest and its associated backache, sleep deprivation and general overload of everything including a disgustingly excessive consumption of the (unutterably foul but in a good way) Pringles, which were half price at Tesco, a weird breakfast at Leon, a celestial one at the Wolseley plus a failed one at Breakfast Club when the queue was too long and to wait would have meant missing Pod, so I had to settle for Pret porridge and a muffin. C’est la vie.
Also worthy of mention was a superior (if a bit small) burger with rosemary-salted chips at Honest Burgers; as may be plain from the above I decided to while away the break times doing something useful in learning my way around Soho, which may well not become useful until next years’ FrightFest but was fun all the same. The biggest hit of the weekend was undoubtedly Tokyo Diner (the only time where I’ve ever felt as if I was in Japan, rather than in a Japanese restaurant) which was so good I forgot to take a picture of it. I also got to see some films (25 I think, not including TV ones) – yay!
Despite the odds being well and truly stacked against it, I even managed the bleary-eyed stagger up the road for a refreshing (if that’s the right word – yes it is) 7am dip at the Kings Cross Pond, beautifully timed to coincide with staying up until 3am watching crap on the Horror Channel the night before. Pond is definitely on the chilly side but still no match for a North Sea aficionado, although if I summon up the courage for a return swim during my post-Christmas London trip I suspect I might find myself backpedalling a bit (assuming I can still move at all, which is debatable).
As of today, I’m settling back in a for a nice, peaceful month with the Scarborough faithful before heading off to Manchester for GrimmFest on the 30th (to catch up on lots of stuff I didn’t get to see at FrightFest because I was asleep in another screen watching something else), and about time too. Hot on its heels is the Celluloid Screams weekender in Sheffield from the 23rd to the 25th of October – yay! Two horror festivals in three weeks is quite a lot even for me, but the lineup is unmissable and I like Sheffield a lot.
An unexpected extra field trip the week after that – I’ll be back in London for a couple of days as Other Business (at the Houses of Parliament, no less) beckons – I will be about for the usual incall shenanigans on the 1st and 2nd of November before the really sordid stuff on the 3rd, and then home for a few days before heading off for – badumtish – New York the following week! It’s long overdue.
As ever, details of all that can wait until later – it’s business as usual here for the next couple of weeks! It’s been said a couple of times this week; it’s definitely getting a bit back-endish and a spot of hibernation will do me fine.
More soon.
* In other words, if complete strangers on trains are often super friendly and helpful in assisting with your luggage and you’re not very old or heavily pregnant, then you’re probably behaving like a cunt.
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