Taiwan 2007

A lot of the snow had melted by yesterday evening, but it was snowing again as I walked to the station this morning. The train was on time and half empty for a change. This can only be a good sign. Everyone left work early yesterday because the roads were expected to freeze. Maybe they did, but I didn't notice it. I managed to get the 17:26 train instead of the 17:41. Only two trains leave Didcot Parkway in my direction between 16:59 and 18:41, and they are 15 minutes apart, great timing.

Did anyone notice that the snowman featured in yesterday's drivel had garlic for eyes? Said snowman was constructed by the dragon, a trained artist, and apparently the garlic was used deliberately to give the face an Asian appearance. In case you were wondering.

I have always been astounded that First Great Western Trains find it necessary to post three, yes three ticket inspectors at the entrance to the platform every morning. I was therefore quite pleased when I saw that they were installing automatic ticket barriers. They finally turned them on this week, and guess what, now there are three ticket inspectors, and automatic barriers to get past.

I was wondering this afternoon just how smart the automatic barriers are. So I fed it one of my old tickets. It turns out that they're actually pretty stupid. It let me out and gave me the old ticket back.

There was a fight in progress outside Debenhams department store as I walked home today. Two large men were rolling around on the floor. A third was standing over them and appeared to be acting as a referee. They seemed fairly evenly matched, they may have had a perfectly good reason for a fight, and all three were much bigger than me, so I decided I didn't care if they killed each other, and walked on. In fact many other passers by appeared to be of the same thought. Then three teenage girls showed up and decided to try and break the fight up. What were they thinking? They just made it worse. It'll probably be in the papers tomorrow.

The weekend will be busy. We have to get things ready for the Taiwan 2007 tour. We leave on Wednesday.