Flowing with the flow

You know the phrase: “Going with the Flow”?

Yesterday I felt like I was “flowing with the flow”, allowing myself to be relaxed while various setbacks happened on a travel day, then seeking to “guide” the flow only subtly.

My day was a regular monthly trip by train for a face to face meeting with a client for about three hours. However, when I say “by train” we are talking four trains in each direction and a long day of over 12 hours. Yes, it is worth it for the quality of time spent.

In years of making this monthly trip I’d never missed a train but today, hey, it happened. As I left my house all trains were on time, but within minutes the first train I was taking got delayed, and that delay grew to the point I knew I’d miss the longer train journey to the north.

Now, those long-distance trains in the UK have crazy fare systems. A one-way flexible fare is £156 for a two-hour train journey. Naturally I, like most others, look to be more reasonable with travel costs and buy advanced tickets, though that means if you miss your train, well, it is expensive. Even for an advanced ticket, I had paid over c£75 one way, and now that ticket wasn’t valid for the next train (only 16 minutes later than my originally scheduled train).

The train company had recently made an allowance such that rather than write off the…