The season of Mists and Mellow fruits

In some ways autumn is my favourite time of year. Everything is so mellow in the natural world, leaves are turning brown and falling. Day time temperatures are still reasonably pleasant and even though we know colder days are on there way everything seems so pleasant.

The fact that winter was on its way was rather dramatically brought home to me yesterday. Firstly I had better explain what I do for a living, I work as a finance auditor for London & South Eastern Railway (Southeastern) and my job involves visiting each and every one of our stations on a regular basis. Yesterday I went to Broadstairs on the North Kent coast and when I left Maidstone at 07.15 it was blue sky and bright sunshine so I decided on a light coat. As Southeastern is the worlds busiest railway I had a choice of routes, I could either go via Ashford and Canterbury or via Rochester and Faversham. I chose the latter and the further we got along the coast it got cloudier and distinctly chillier. In fact when I had finished the audit it was my intention to get some fish and chips for lunch but it was so flipping cold I decided not to bother to wander into the town but jumped on a train instead.

I decided to return home via Canterbury and Ashford as services on the Chatham main line were being disrupted by a signal failure at Herne Hill. A bad decision! All went well until we aproached Ashford when it was anounced that a tree had fallen on the line at Pluckley. This was added to by a failure of a freight train between West Malling and Borough Green. All in all it took me four and a half hours to get home and even than I had to write a report and e mail it off.

In a way this job is a bit like a well known TV comedy sketch, yesterday Bradstairs, today Sevenoaks and tommorow somewhere else.

Anyway today we have clear sky and sunshine so maybe its not so bad after all.

Andy