I’m a little cross today, as I’ve just had confirmation that our rules course is to be delayed by a week. Added to the week that we are already behind because of the corporate induction at Ipswich , we have lost two weeks in as many months. Next week should have been the second week of our rules course but instead we will be getting an extra week of front end turns.

I guess it’s understandable that someone wants to take some leave, but it does grate a wee bit when we’ve been told that we can’t at least until the classroom phase of the training is over. My view is that what’s good for the goose is surely good for the gander, and that we should have been presented with the option of also taking some leave. Not a happy bunny.

In an interesting twist on life imitating art, I was subjected to the worst delays so far. ( Liverpool Street signallers should look away now.) For some reason that neither of us could fathom we were delayed getting out of Stansted Airport on a slow ‘up’ train and were put inside virtually everywhere to let every man and his dog pass. Five late at the airport had grown to almost twenty late by the time we arrived at Liverpool Street with a train groaning with people. This then became ten late on the way ‘down’, and even then a slow train was let in front of us as we were stopped at Bethnal Green, at which juncture my driver made an apt comment (the exact phrasing of which currently escapes me) that evoked a picture of the two of us being forcibly made to participate in an unnatural sexual act with a salad vegetable.