I survived...

...my first day back at work - just!!!

Not a good day.

With gale force winds there was no way an umbrella was going to be very effective so I headed out in my hooded Winter coat. It is exactly half a mile from my door to the station and you would have thought I'd swum every inch of it...

The pavements and roads were awash so it was like wading through ankle deep running water whilst being bombarded by the torrential driving rain - great fun (not).

Arrival at the station didn't reveal any problems - the indicator board showed my service to be on time (3 mins to wait) - half an hour later and three trains that had just disappeared from the indicator board...no announcements, no warnings...it was obvious there was a problem but at last a train turned up - luckily a semi-fast service (missing out some of the stations) so I was going to make up some of the lost time.

I finally made it into the office with 10 mins to spare...I had a telephone conference that I needed to take part in...so having squelched to my desk, dumped my coat & bag, I grabbed a couple of plastic carriers to sit on and made it in time for the conference.

What joy, sitting there with soaking wet feet and trousers - yuck.

I then spent most of the day trying to dry out...

The hand driers in the 'Ladies' proved to be useless so I dug out one of the fan heaters - I was dry by early afternoon but my coat took a while longer (glad there were no H&S reps about because the fan heater was balanced at a rather strange angle so as to aim the warm air at as much of my coat as possible).

The journey home was much less eventful.

So, I'm back at work (grrr), I survived my first day (just) and now I'm heading out into similar wet/windy weather.

Oh the joys - what a great start to 2014.............................................................