De wife and I took the kids to see Lil Chris at Islington Acadamy last night. Apart from the fact that I can't remember the last time I was so bored at a Gig (The Kids Loved it thankfully) we had mixed service from GNER.
Firstly came the cost of the tickets. Obviously I have my season ticket so I only needed 1 adult and 3 childrens return including tube. Despite the fact we have a family railcard I was still expecting a bill in excess of £50, so I was pleasantly surprised when it came to a little over £31. This I thought was very good value.
I reserved 4 seats on the 16.46 which arrived into Tinsel Town only 2 mins late. I then took great please kicking the 2 dorks sat in our reserved seats out and sat on my own while De wife entertained the wee ones. We finally arrived into KX bang on time and even though it's only 1 stop to Angel, we decided to avoid the rush hour tube and walk up. Bad move as my daughter decided she was busting for a pee when we were half way they and proceeeded to remind us of the fact every 30 seconds.
After the monster show put on by Lil Chris, we walked back down to Kings Cross and then had to wait for an hour with 3 very tired children for the last train home. About half an hour before it was due to leave I decided to take a quick walk to see if I could determine which of the 3 GNER trains in the station would be the 23.30. Needless to say for a season commuter, it wasn't too hard. The only thng was De Wife didn't believe me. 'What if it's not our train and doesn't stop in P'boro' She says. 'Have a bit of confidence woman' was my reply. 'I do this journey every day so I know what i'm doing. Besides it's the last GNER train out of here and there's no lights on the other 2 so this has to be the 23.30.' After a 5 minute debate she finally decided to trust me and we boarded just as the tannoy confirmed my suspicions. One nil to me.
We sat down in coach F and waited for the final 20 mins to departure time. At 23.28 the kids and I started the countdown to take off. Big mistake as we were still counting at 23.30 + 6, +7 and +8. 'Sorry for the delay folks, said the guard, 'There seems to be a problem with the signals out of KX and engineers are working their bollocks off to fix it as I speak.' The kids got bored of the count down and settled down for a kip. We eventually left just under 10 minutes late which was less the ideal to say the least.
We got back into Tinsel Town about 8 mins late, De Wife carried the youngest to the car while I paid my rip off £10 parking fee (why the misses insists on parking in there is beyond me) and we got home at 12.45. God I was happy to be home.