Overnighter

Yesterday afternoon, I went to Woking to visit Ben. All good. We had lovely food from Sainsburys and an 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' marathon.

This afternoon, I attempted to get back. Not so good. I arrived at Woking station to discover that all the trains from Waterloo were either cancelled or delayed owing to a 'police incident'.
In the case of any incident that involves inconvenience to gathered Brits, the Dunkirk spirit immediately comes into play.
Of course, I don't mean that civilians turn up in small cars to ferry you wherever you need to go, rather that the camaraderie rolls out.

A man told me not to take his word for it, but, that the police at Waterloo had been chasing a man who ran onto the tracks. An oncoming train's brakes failed and thus the man was fatally injured. He then gave me an alternative version that he'd also heard, but was mostly the same as the first. In any case, his story was corroborated by a British Rail employee and a woman whose daughter had found it online and then phoned her.
I walked back to Ben's flat and sent an e-mail to Kevin.

When I arrived back at the station an hour later, the body of stranded passengers had reached critical mass. It was like a solid form that moved forward as one when a train finally arrived on a different platform. The beast rolled up the stairs, across the bridge and down again.

On the train I soon discovered that on one side of me was a young woman from Toronto, who had been travelling around Europe for a while and was excited to talk to someone about Canada.
On the other side was a man who was visiting for just two days, from Israel. He thought Bibi's government were in dire straits due to the Foreign Minister's indictment and that they'd be gone within six months. He was still gloomy about the prospect of Israel getting anything but yet another right wing government.

The temperature tonight is supposed to drop to zero, and it certainly feels like it could.