On Friday we had a day out to Windsor. This was my idea as I wanted a railway experience day and a trip to Windsor would involve a tube journey to Paddington and an overground railway trip to Windsor from there. Amazingly, the other two decided they would go along with it. Express trains leave from Paddington on a regular basis, many of which stop at Slough and this is where you change onto the branch line train to Windsor & Eton. The station at Windsor and Eton is a small terminus station so you can’t go on anywhere else from there except back where you’ve come from. But you can get your photo taken with Harry and Megan on the platform. As you walk out of the station Windsor Castle is there, right in front of you.
Windsor is like a tourist honeypot on steroids, so we went for a walk along the Thames and had a bit of lunch in a riverside caff. Erm, on this occasion, in contrast to the previous evening, we were on e.g. Fish fingers, chips and baked beans. Bloody marvellous.
The best bits of this day were the train journeys and the walk along the River Thames. On the return train journey, while waiting at Slough, I was reminded of a series of TV programmes I often watch on channel 5 called Paddington 24/7. The programmes are ideal for people interested in railways as they highlight the work going on behind the scenes and the workers behind the scenes who keep the trains and station running at Paddington. There is a very articulate train controller called Graeme Parker who explains the difficulties faced when delays occur on the approach lines in and out of Paddington and what he has to do to sort them out. And he was only waiting for the same train as us at Slough. I recognised him immediately. He was on the phone the whole time. I got a sneak shot of him on the train. This is Graeme on our train:
And this is Graeme on TV at Paddington Station Control.
One of the best bits with Graeme was when he explained he had to disable the smoke alarms over the relevant platform when the steam train Flying Scotsman visited Paddington. It was his job to disable the relevant alarm only and he showed us quite a complicated control panel and which switches did it. The TV program then cuts to the Flying Scotsman pulling into Victoria Station later the same day, only at Victoria all the fire alarms went off and loud automatic station announcements could be heard saying ‘Evacuate the Station Immediately’! Cut back to Graeme witnessing the film footage and keeping a straight face. “That wouldn’t happen at Paddington”!
Oh, I almost forgot. Slotted Spoon Update 2. Earlier that day at breakfast there had been an incident. The poached eggs incident. We were making poached eggs to have with toasted bagels and were looking for a means to fish six poached eggs out of a large pan of boiling water: No slotted spoon. Imagine the panic! We should have looked earlier, but in the crisis we couldn’t find a slotted spoon or a handy sieve anywhere. Surely such a kitchen would have a slotted spoon somewhere. Were we just not looking properly? or was there, could there, actually be no slotted spoon at all?? We had to manage without one. And we weren’t happy. What happens next?
Next up: A visit to The Houses of Parliament and more on the Spoon.
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