Not much better a day

Today I travelled for two hours to view a flat which turned out to have a north facing terrace
(no bloody good), a pocket handkerchief of a garden, also north facing and... wait for it... not even attached to the flat! You had to go outside, walk a few yards and open a door in a fence. Plus, a lane down the side led to a building at the back which was a hardware warehouse, hence an endless stream of builders' vans. So much for the nice, quiet writing pad.

Had a very nice lunch with friends, got back as far as Kings Cross Station with no trouble, was waiting for the Met Line train which takes 50 mins to get to Uxbridge when whaddya know, an announcement comes over the loudspeakers informing us all that the trains had stopped because a tree had fallen across the line at Farringdon. Oh joy! There was a stampede towards the few tube lines that were still working. I galloped towards the Piccadilly Line platform. And waited... and waited... Five trains came for Heathrow and eventually an Uxbridge one turned up. It was packed and roasting hot. I had begun my journey this morning when it was cool and raining and was wearing a PVC mac with two layers under it. Phew!

Then a stroke of luck happened in the form of a nice youth who took pity on an old wrinkly and gave me his seat. What a gent! That saved me from having to stand for 29 endless, boring stops. I reached Uxbridge one hour and 20 minutes later and for some reason my footsteps carried me into M&S and right up to the wine section where I treated myself to a nice bottle of Californian Zinfandel. I felt that I deserved it.

Oh, forgot to mention that I had a free health check at the local chemist on Tues - height, weight, body mass, blood pressure, checks for diabetes and cholesterol and was pronounced fine and only at medium risk of stroke or heart attack. 'If you'd had the same results and been 15 years younger, I could have put you in the low risk category,' the pharmacist said. 'So what happens in ten years' time?' I enquired. 'Oh, we don't test you at all because however well you do in the tests, we'd still have to put you in the high risk category, just because of your age,' she said. Hmm. Something wrong somewhere. I think they need to re-categorise their tests and use different age-brackets, so you can be low-risk for 60, 70 or 80, even if compared to a 45-year-old, you're done for!