Traumatic Travel

So on Friday morning, I was rather worried about the weather forecast:

STORM EUNICE!!!

I left my little nest even earlier, at around 6:55am. The weather forecast suggested that the winds would pick up in London between 7-10am. The tram journey was fine, and then we boarded the double-decker. This driver drove normally, but there was a lady who was talking on her phone, and as the bus took a corner, she went flying across the bus and I had to catch her! I arrived in the office at around 8:20am, so I probably did not need to work so early, but I was just glad that the journey was not stressful.

But at the end of the day, when it was time to leave, everything had changed when it came to the London commute. Even the walk towards the station was terrifying. I had to walk past a construction site, a multi-storey huge building site. Of course there was no work going on. But the whole side of the site, the expanse of mesh that is a safety net had blown away, and there was debris being blown around. Even more scary were long scaffolding poles, that seemed to be fixed at one end to something, however, they were being flung around into the air, and clanging like giant wind chimes….in those powerful winds. I was absolutely petrified. I rushed past as quickly as I could, envisioning the most awful of calamities.

At the station I was told that all of the trains were cancelled and at a tree had fallen onto the tram line, so the only option was the buses. So the TFL man told me to catch a bus going west, and then to switch onto another bus that would take me closer to home. It was the oddest journey. It took three hours to get home. (When I checked on Google Maps, it said it would have taken two and a half hours to walk, so how the bus journey took even longer was a mystery to me.) There were roads closed along the whole route. The bus driver was speeding along, people kept on pressing the button and asking him to stop, but he ignored them. One lady asked him if we were being taken hostage. I started to giggle to myself because it was all becoming so weird. We were driving through parts of South London I have never heard of.

I eventually switched bus, but even the second bus took almost an hour and half to make a journey that is normally half an hour (well, when there is no traffic) with police blockades meaning we had to take the strangest route.

I cannot tell you how glad I was to finally make it home. I was cold, wet and exhausted!!! I had a hot bath. I climbed into bed and I slept and slept and slept!!!