Saturday was time to head down London way again. I was planning to go into Ilford while in town, to see my old pal Tim Bateman, but got caught in a rainfall and had to give it a miss. Although I had a nice, long chat with him on the phone, until he started worrying about his bill and rung off! Then I wandered round Waterstone’s for a while and bought a couple of books I couldn’t afford.
The train home was screwed. Surprise! The rail service has become shambolic. I had to get a train into Watford Junction and wait there for almost an hour to get another one into Brum. Then the train at Brum to take me back home was delayed. And since my feet were by then killing me (it was almost midnight), I decided to get a taxi from the station too. Costly, time-consuming and tiring.
One thing I’d like to add to this rambling… as everyone knows, something terrible happened in New York on September 11th. I guess it depressed me as much as anyone else, but commenting on it here seems almost redundant—I can’t really say anything that hasn’t already been said a million times. The day it happened, I had just got back from an interview and mom called, telling me to put the TV on… just in time for me to see those towers start to collapse. It was a spectacularly horrible thing to see happening, live, just like that. None of us will forget it. All I really hope, now, is that nothing even worse happens as a result of this madness. I think that’s the extent of my coherent thoughts on the subject.
Oh, how am I feeling? Better than I have been. Hopeful and hanging in there. Good things can happen, and do occasionally… not very often, but there’s hope. Maybe I’m not a hopeless case!