Shortbread and Stratford

My two greatest accomplishments at the weekend involved shortbread and tooth picks.

I made shortbread on Sunday which was really scrummy. Semolina makes all the difference!

Saturday morning I found that Tesco does cheaper versions of those very expensive tooth pick/brush thingies. Saturday afternoon I discovered exactly why they are cheaper. They are two weak to get through the gaps between teeth unless you have the kind of gaps that cargo tankers can get through, and the little brush filaments come off as you brush so you need three or four brushes per attempt. Phooey!

I went to darkest Essex on Tuesday, which was an adventure - by train. The super-slug (aka HS-1, Javelin, Hi-speed train), was very civilised and I had a nice chat with a chap who works in greetings cards.

When I got up to debark at Stratford, the entire carriage looked at me like I had three heads - apparently no one gets off at Stratford!

Which is a building site, by the way. There is no way from Stratford International (which seems to be made entirely of concrete and is very grey), to Stratford mainline, so you have to take a shuttle bus which negotiates the building works.  For those who have seen Harry Potter 3 - think Knight Bus. The driver drove like that, and I *swear* had the Lenny Henry voice.

Negotiating the building site included navigating reversing cement mixers, mini-vans full of construction workers and tractor, none of of whom were using the highway code. We had a different driver on the return, later that day, but the style and situation were almost identical and the driver of the return bus turned out to be the cousin of the driver on the way out.

While Stratford International is sterile, empty and grey, Stratford main line is completely different - dirty chaotic and completely confused. Looking for the right train is like looking for the needle when no one knows where the haystack is.

Staff gave me conflicting and mostly wrong information, the sign for the 11.05 train to Ipswich which had departed on time was still up when the 11.35 Norwich train came and went, and again as the 11.37 Southend train came and went.

Fortunately, not being run by Southeastern, the trains were all exactly on time, so having ascertained that I wanted the 11.45 from platform 10, I just got on the one that turned up at 11.45, which Doris (the formless voice that announces stations) confirmed was the one I wanted.

 The inside of some National Express trains are stunningly purple, which was a shock to the eyeballs.

On the return journey there were two points to note. The first, that Chelmsford station has the most dilapidated looking signal box(?) ever.

 And the second, that Stratford International, in the middle of the rush hour has to be the emptiest station in the history of railway stations.