This Train is My Life/Signing away the royalties

Sleeping towns joined together
By the steel of the rails
Parallel lines
Parallel lives

I’ve booked another two train journeys today. I’m on holiday from work next week but the two following weeks will see me spend the majority of my time on one train or another as I travel around the country giving training courses or presentations.

I don’t mind the train. It’s so much less hassle than flying these days. You are virtually down to your boxer shorts with the contents of your laptop bag scattered all over the security desk being swabbed before you get through to the departure lounge. Quite irritating.

Two of my journeys are overnight sleeper trains. Regular readers will know the love/hate relationship I have with the caledonian sleeper. The love aspect is the convenience. Spending a night away from home when you have a young child is not ideal and the sleeper allows me to avoid that inconvenience by still being able to go home, spend some time with the family and then head out of Waverley at midnight, using the dead time to travel and sleep at the same time. This is preferable to being away from 4pm in the evening, flying to London and then tubing it to the hotel.

On the flip side though, it’s no privilege to pay £152 for a ridiculously narrow single bed in a room which resembles a cell on a prison ship in the 1970′s. Quite often the tap doesn’t work, so you can’t even have a wash in the morning and you spend the whole night waking up with every jolt and clank on the line.

Never mind, I’ve got a week of no work to help me get used to the idea.

In other news, I received a letter yesterday from the Scottish Book Trust, telling me that the short story which I submitted to the ‘Days Like This’ project had been selected by the judging panel to appear in a book of the same name to be published early next year.

Enclosed in the envelope was a contract (in duplicate) which stated that I would be paid £10 and receive a free copy of the book. I had to sign the contract to state that I was handing over sole publication rights to the Scottish Book Trust and that I understood that I was not eligible for further royalties from sales of the book.

I’m quite chuffed really. I submitted the story for a laugh really on the basis that I was really getting into writing as a result of this blog. It will be good to see my story in print.

Have a good weekend.

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