I’m off on the night train tonight. I go to sleep in Edinburgh and wake up in London. A bit like a very scary stag night but without the booze and the confusion as to how I got there.
I daresay the experience will be akin to sleeping on a baby changing table and a shoogly one at that. There will probably be an all pervading smell of wee and sick from a nearby train toilet (why do they always stink) and my breakfast will consist of a stale roll, strawberry jam and a cup of tea where the teabag is attached to the cup by a strange piece of silver foil.
I chose the sleeper train option because it allows me to still be at home this evening, spend time with my wife and son, see him off to bed and then travel down. The other options were either to fly down after work tonight and spend the night in a hotel, or get a silly o’clock flight tomorrow morning which would have resulted in me being up at about 4am. Sod that. I’ve done it too many times. Trying to present a course whilst yawning dramatically is just a horror story of a day and I’d rather do without it.
Anyway, wish me a nice sleep on the train. Fingers crossed I’ll reach London’s Euston Station in not too dishevelled a state.
on Jun 10th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Good luck sleeping. At least you get breakfast in bed in the morning.
on Jun 11th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Back in the early ’90s, when I lived in London and it was before cheap flights, I got the sleeper between here and London quite a lot. I really liked it apart from the fact you had to share a tiny cabin with another pesron, so if that other person snored ..! But I always found it really easy to sleep on them, maybe because of the motion of the train, or maybe because the beds were so comfortable. The breakfast, hmm, well it was okay, nothing special from what I remember. Mindy you, I was in my early 20s then and more easily pleased