Ticket hell, The Quireboys & Rufus and BUSTED! (plus a visitor)

Ticket hell! Left for the station extra early this morning to get my season ticket. I always leave early as the queues after the start of the month and bank holidays are always crazy. Met Chris who returned my memory stick and then he chatted to me in the ticket queue. As usual SWF station was blessed with the hatch for all ticket types and one guy with a handheld machine for daily and weekly tickets. I wanted a monthly so had to wait for the booth but everything was running SO slow. I decided I would get a weekly instead and as the train game in the ticket guy told me to get in the rear cars and he would come through. I did, he didn't! I got off at Wickford as usual and saw him hotfooting it over the bridge to the other platform. The queues at Wickford are always bad so I decided to continue my journey with a view to blagging my way through the ticket barrier and buying my monthly ticket at Shenfield. This was fine except Shenfield station was in chaos with the queues for all three booths snaking all the way back to the ticket barriers. At this point I decided that I would just head on to work and pop back at lunchtime to buy my ticket. It was madness, I have never seen it so bad across SWF and Shenfield stations, hope it was a one off as I don't want to have to start leaving even earlier just to get a ticket.

Musical backdrop for today was provided by new CDs from The Quireboys and Rufus Wainwright.

The Quireboys "Halfpenny Dancer" is an acoustic album with a number of their classic songs reworked and a few surprise cover versions thrown in for good measure. It's a nice relaxed CD and well worth a list if you are a fan of The Quireboys and/or Rod Stewart and The Faces.



Rufus Wainwright has delivered another masterpiece going by the name of "All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu". Rufus has taken a solo approach to this CD with it just being him and his piano rather than a full band this time round. The CD contains a wonderful blend of melancholy and joyous melodies delivered in a way that only Rufus can deliver. Every Rufus album is a joy to listen to and this one is no different. File under classic along with the others. His music remains a constant source of inspiration to me.


After a hectic day at work I arrived home and could see shoes and various other bits strewn on the kitchen floor. It was a bit of a surprise to find a complete stranger laying on the sofa watching a film who introduced himself as one of Sam's friends younger brother. I could hear giggling upstairs so went up to say hello to Sam. The giggling was coming from Sophie's room so I pushed the door open to be confronted by the sight of Sam, two girls all semi naked and holding cards of some sort. I wonder what game they were playing, no wonder they were giggling! I was not so impressed that they were playing such games leaving a younger brother on his own downstairs (an act for which Sam HAS been chastised!). I explained that I had no real problem with the three of them playing whatever games they wanted to but they shouldn't do it with a younger brother about. Turns out they had completely lost track of time hence me catching them! BUSTED! Following much more giggling they finished getting dressed and went and tidied the kitchen up and then the girls beat a hasty retreat, younger brother in tow!

Sam and I did our usual wrestling catch up tonight and then when we did the washing up after dinner we found this cute little chap just outside the front door. We didn't get a chance to get a decent photo as he scotted off really quickly: