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Lost in Leighton Buzzard
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I've been without Internet access all day--with the exception of a couple of not particularly interesting sites--and, man, has this been hard to deal with. Not that I'm an addict, you understand. I could give it up any time I wanted to...
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We travelled down to London on Friday with Steph's aunt and cousin. Steph and I hardly ever go to London. I lived there for only about 6 weeks many years ago, and that was enough for me. I'm not a crowds person. Anyway, we had a great time. We wandered around Covent Garden, had a good Italian meal, then went to the Savoy Theatre to see Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward. As we sat there waiting for the performance to start, reading through the programme, my blood started to boil and people sitting near me where scalded by the steam coming out of my ears. See, there's a whole section in the programme where Coward goes on about how he wrote the whole play in 6 days and that he didn't revise it at all, except to fix a few typos and to remove two lines. I was ready to strangle him (well, if he wasn't already dead--strangling dead people, it just doesn't give the same satisfaction).
The play was great. The performances were wonderful and the set was really good. It was very funny. We had a great time (thanks Marcy).
BUT. Even though it was a really fun play, it just didn't make any sense. The plot was a mess. There were contradictions. The rules for the ghosts seemed to change all of the time. None of it was enough to ruin the play, because there were enough jokes and the characters were compelling, but nonetheless, it wouldn't have been difficult to fix the problems and make it even better. My conclusion at the end, Noel Coward should just, well, have revised his play a bit. Even if that meant it took more than 6 days.
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Our trip back was a bit of a nightmare. We were travelling by coach, and doing well, until about an hour into the journey, the driver got a call to say there had been an accident up ahead and the motorway was blocked/slow moving. He was advised to take a diversion. So, off he went, winding down a relatively small road at half the speed. Which wasn't too bad until we hit a town and the traffic pretty much stopped. Still, it wasn't that big a town, and we wouldn't have taken that long to get through it.
Sometimes, you need to know when to cut your losses. Some people just don't know how to. So up comes this passenger and starts telling the driver that he knows a better way. And so off we turned onto another, even smaller road where we drove even slower. Until we hit the next traffic jam. When the passenger decided he knew a better route around this problem. And off we went again. I've never been to Leighton Buzzard. Until Saturday, I didn't even know where it is. Now I do. Nice enough small town, but I'm really hoping not to go back. Particularly not in a coach.
An hour later we were back on the road we had started on. Which was flowing beautifully, fast with no signs of holdups.
As almost everyone on the bus was English, no one said a thing about it, but there was steam coming out of ears again.
Still, that was only an hour late, and we'd allowed a lot of time extra in the return journey so we could pick up Nika from her kennel in plenty of time. Then the driver announced that he had driven five hours, which was the legal limit he was allowed to drive without a break, so we were stopping for 45 minutes. Personally, I think that's a good rule. Drivers shouldn't have to drive for longer without a break. But why the hell didn't the coach company have a second driver on board when the journey was planned to take nearly 5 hours and there's almost always delays.
In the end, we just got to Nika's kennel before it closed, close to two hours late and after over 6 hours on the coach. Next time we're going by train. It's less than 2 hours by train, and it's comfortable.
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Reached about 43,000 words on The Sleepers so far. My character has been knocked around so much that I'm not entirely sure how he'll get through the next 6-7,000 words and fight the band of heroes at the end. But that's part of the fun of writing. Right? Right?
We travelled down to London on Friday with Steph's aunt and cousin. Steph and I hardly ever go to London. I lived there for only about 6 weeks many years ago, and that was enough for me. I'm not a crowds person. Anyway, we had a great time. We wandered around Covent Garden, had a good Italian meal, then went to the Savoy Theatre to see Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward. As we sat there waiting for the performance to start, reading through the programme, my blood started to boil and people sitting near me where scalded by the steam coming out of my ears. See, there's a whole section in the programme where Coward goes on about how he wrote the whole play in 6 days and that he didn't revise it at all, except to fix a few typos and to remove two lines. I was ready to strangle him (well, if he wasn't already dead--strangling dead people, it just doesn't give the same satisfaction).
The play was great. The performances were wonderful and the set was really good. It was very funny. We had a great time (thanks Marcy).
BUT. Even though it was a really fun play, it just didn't make any sense. The plot was a mess. There were contradictions. The rules for the ghosts seemed to change all of the time. None of it was enough to ruin the play, because there were enough jokes and the characters were compelling, but nonetheless, it wouldn't have been difficult to fix the problems and make it even better. My conclusion at the end, Noel Coward should just, well, have revised his play a bit. Even if that meant it took more than 6 days.
Our trip back was a bit of a nightmare. We were travelling by coach, and doing well, until about an hour into the journey, the driver got a call to say there had been an accident up ahead and the motorway was blocked/slow moving. He was advised to take a diversion. So, off he went, winding down a relatively small road at half the speed. Which wasn't too bad until we hit a town and the traffic pretty much stopped. Still, it wasn't that big a town, and we wouldn't have taken that long to get through it.
Sometimes, you need to know when to cut your losses. Some people just don't know how to. So up comes this passenger and starts telling the driver that he knows a better way. And so off we turned onto another, even smaller road where we drove even slower. Until we hit the next traffic jam. When the passenger decided he knew a better route around this problem. And off we went again. I've never been to Leighton Buzzard. Until Saturday, I didn't even know where it is. Now I do. Nice enough small town, but I'm really hoping not to go back. Particularly not in a coach.
An hour later we were back on the road we had started on. Which was flowing beautifully, fast with no signs of holdups.
As almost everyone on the bus was English, no one said a thing about it, but there was steam coming out of ears again.
Still, that was only an hour late, and we'd allowed a lot of time extra in the return journey so we could pick up Nika from her kennel in plenty of time. Then the driver announced that he had driven five hours, which was the legal limit he was allowed to drive without a break, so we were stopping for 45 minutes. Personally, I think that's a good rule. Drivers shouldn't have to drive for longer without a break. But why the hell didn't the coach company have a second driver on board when the journey was planned to take nearly 5 hours and there's almost always delays.
In the end, we just got to Nika's kennel before it closed, close to two hours late and after over 6 hours on the coach. Next time we're going by train. It's less than 2 hours by train, and it's comfortable.
Reached about 43,000 words on The Sleepers so far. My character has been knocked around so much that I'm not entirely sure how he'll get through the next 6-7,000 words and fight the band of heroes at the end. But that's part of the fun of writing. Right? Right?
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