Missed Eurostar!!
What a morning. Pleasant leisurely breakfast (bacon roll with HP) with Dave Cargill at the Hilton and then a taxi to the train station. I was doing my usually piece to camera in front of the departures board when a soldier with gun came up and asked to look at my picture. He thought I’d been videoing him. He went away happy and of course almost certainly appreciative of my vid:)
Eventually found the train – not easy because they only give you the final destination and not the interim ones. Had to ask at the information desk. Sat on the 09.54 on platform 2 I then realised that I should have caught a train an hour earlier. Doh. I was only going to have 14 minutes to make my Eurostar and check in closes 30 mins before departure. Fail. Had to call Eurostar and change my ticket at a price that was marginally less than buying a new one.
So now I’m sat in an empty departure lounge in Brussels with a two hour wait until my train. It’s too early to start on the beer so I have a bottle of water and a laptop.
On the plus side I’ve just been called by the Jury Service people and told that my services were no longer required as they had too many people lined up for the two weeks I was down for. Gave me the option of still turning up on the 3rd, deferring it to another time or being taken off the list completely. I opted for the latter. The letter I originally had said there was no way to escape but obviously this isn’t entirely the case. Result.
Now sat here feeling I should be buying something. A drink or something to eat. There isn’t anything there I want other than the bottle of water I bought when I got here. I had a good breakfast and will also have a meal on the train, albeit not really being up to much.
A mum and two kids have just sat down at the next table in the Coffee Club Caff. She is speaking a very dulcet French to them which sounds very nice. The kids are speaking both French and English in appropriate accents. Tres impressif.
The wifi in this caff is totally naff btw. I’ve used it to upload the two vids below as they will have been biggish files but am going to have to switch back to using my phone as a 4G hotspot.
The great thing about this Eurostar trip is that I will have connectivity all the way, having purchaysed a 500MB data bundle from EE for £3. great stuff.
Wearing my headphones again btw. There is a bloke behind my seat whose conversation is really annoying so it’s a way of shutting him out.
…
Two out of three of us around this table with headphones on. The other guy is reading a novel. tend not to read novels myself. It’s called the fifth gospel. Doesn’t sound like my kind of thing. I’m ignoring him anyway. Listening to Life in the Fast Lane. The annoying bloke is still talking…
Tags: diary