Liverpool nil!

I was so looking forward to it but because my stomach problems are always worst in the morning, I left it till 11.30 before deciding I felt fit enough to set off. I got to my local station with my backpack, queued at the ticket office, asked for an off-peak return and was told that if I couldn't specify that I was getting the 13.07 (which I couldn't as there wasn't enough time to get there), it was going to cost me £89! I almost fell over. The website had quoted £51, which was bad enough, but I was prepared to swallow it because it was my fault (or my stomach's) that I hadn't booked in advance.

By now there was a line of impatient people behind me so I said, "That's too much, I've changed my mind, I'm not going," and stomped tearfully off. Then I rang Mr G who had dropped me off and asked him to come and get me. He was nearly home (I live 3 miles from the station), and I had to wait on the corner where all the drug dealing goes on until he appeared.

It was only when I was almost home again that I realised what I had done. Completely forgotten that I had a Senior Railcard! It arrived a few days ago, I put it in the safe and remembered to get it out this morning, but somehow hadn't registered the fact that I even had one, let alone had it on me. That would have cut the price down a bit. He asked if I wanted to go back again, but it was too late. The last off-peak train leaves Euston at 14.07 and I would barely make it, as it takes an hour and half to get into London from here.

It's really hot here today and I am sitting by an open window feeling a total idiot, a miserable failure. And no, I can't go up for the day tomorrow as Mr G will be out, so bang goes my lift to the station. That means leaving at 7 am, taking two buses to the local station, fighting through the rush hour into town, then rushing on foot from Euston Square to Euston, then having to pay a fortune to get a train at around 9, which is peak time. Anyway, my stomach is always terrible till around 11, so I can never go anywhere first thing in the morning. I had to cancel a 9.30 am dental appointment last week because I was in awful pain and couldn't leave the loo. This happens to me every day and the pills from the doc don't seem to be working.

Once, you could buy a nice,. cheap day return to anywhere - and buy it on the day you were travelling. That was pre-nationalisation, of course. Now, they just want to squeeze as much as they can get out of us. If only, if ONLY I had passed my driving test years ago. Then I could have hopped into my car and set off when it suited me, not had to get a train at a certain time as dictated by a rail operator. I am so fed up and instead of being sympathetic, Mr G makes it worse by telling me there's no point in my ever arranging to go anywhere because, "You know you won't go." I want to... I really, really want to. I just need to get my stomach fixed. But how? I think the doc has given up on me, too.

I started with stomach problems when I was four years old and was taken to hospital with suspected appendicitis, but they decided it wasn't that and I caught dysentery while I was in there and had to stay in isolation for a month. When I was a teenager, I was taking a bottle of Milk of Magnesia tablets every two days (I took an overdose of aspirin when I was 17, so that probably wrecked my stomach). In the 1970s, I was told I had IBS but no solution was offered other than to eat a bland diet. In the '90s, they found inflammation of the stomach lining and ulcers in the duodenum. I took pills, had the helicobacter antibiotics and felt a little better, but not completely cured,  But since I hit my late fifties, it's got an awful lot worse. Any bright ideas, anyone? I just want to be able to lead a normal life and not wake up feeling ghastly every day.