First Class (by alaric)

Once a week, I go to London for a few days, almost always by train. It costs £42 if I buy a ticket from the station on the day - or, if I book in advance at TheTrainLine, as little as £16. Tickets ordered in advance are cheaper, but it seems there is a limited allocation of each price grade - as the more popular routes quickly sell out of £8 each way tickets, then the next level up (£11.50), then the next level up (£18).

However, when I booked the tickets for last week, for the return journey on Saturday, only the £18 ones remained - but, unusually, there were still some £19.50 first class tickets left.

I'd never travelled first class before. So, I decided I'd give it a try. £1.50 isn't much to spend on an experiment.

And my conclusion is: first class equals a comfier seat and the offer of a free biscuit and tea or coffee.

Which, if I drank hot drinks, would definitely be worth the extra one fifty, at the going rate for such things.

As a non-hot-drinker, I think I about broke even with my experiment, but on a journey of more than an hour, the better seat would be well worth a similarly small price increase.

But travelling first class is nowhere near worth the more than doubling in price (£116 rather than £42) it costs if you buy your ticket on the day. That's a total ripoff.

Twitter Poetry (by sarah)

I have found a home for all those tacky rhymes I came up with about everyday stuff - and that is twitter. I started typing the poems into tweets and found that there is actually a communitee of poeple tweeting poetry which is interesting - Ella who has just joined pointed out that it was something that occured to her straight away although she was thinking hikus not the tacky dross I produce.

Mainly they are the sort of thing I make up to entertain Jean but I am chuffed that one of them has been pilfered (with credit mind!) onto my friends blog - I just couldn't resist making something up about the cat who had too many kittens (and yes I am going to keep on about baby animals - between pregnant cats and guinea pigs and people I seem to be surrounded by an over load of cuteness at the mo!).

Poetry is the one thing that I have had published multiple times - I think actual anthologies/peotry collections that have a poem (one has two in) from me is now at 4 and then a couple in newspapers (nationals 🙂 ). I haven't actually sent any poetry off for a long time last attempt was Myslexia which was a no go though I got a lovely letter from them.

I have been submitting short stories but have found this a bit of a struggle as the stories want to expand them selves into novals and this has obviously been evident in that the responses I've been getting are 'we loved the imagery and the characters but it needed to be a longer story it read in places like a summary' etc...

I'm taking the fact that people are responding positively about the writing even thought it is ultimatly a regection as a good thing?

Poetry quiet frankly doesn't pay enough for me to pay out the postage costs and the like. I have been unable to go to many poetry readings since christmas becuase of my course and stuff but found that was far more rewarding - plus I was reading it out so didn't have to worry about the spellings and gramma - I know what its supposed to sound like so that is how I read it.

Most of my poetry is also niche - it is sciencetific/technical so arty peeps tend to not understand what the poem is actually about and the science peeps go - why are you writing the concept in an unclear way? Sigh.

Short stories just quiet frankly don't want to be short - I am thinking that I need to face the fact that I am a novel writer. This is a bit depressing as when I was writing the Drs Wife I was obsessed with it and could not leave it alone - I have perposly not started another noval becuase of this - for a start I have seen 0 back for the invested time - I hope purely becuase I wrote the whole thing in long hand and have only typed up the first 30, 000 words! That was all pre-flood and I haven't typed up a single word of it since which is disgraceful - its a short novel at 85,000 words approximatly - obviously this is a guestimate I have avearged words on lines etc... I did this for all the different note books its in and there are alot of them :/

But why am I writing about writing again? I am concidering my future yet again - if I am just stressed out then I need to think about academia seriously thats if I can go back after ending up in hosptial a second time on them :(. The same goes for business plans - stomach ulcers and IBS are both apparently acted up by stress so I need to actually look at my life and not fall apart.

I want to achive something with my life but writing is a gamble - especially as I can not spell for toffee and I do try (well most of the time my blog posts on here are a bit erm... I just want to write what I'm thinking and send it live and so is often not spell checked). The spelling is my bottle neck - I have missed submission deadlines waiting for people to spell check things for me which is frustrating and not their fualt they are busy people and there's no way I can pay for proper proof reading at least on shorts.

This has turned into a bit of a ramble hasn't it?

Small World (by sarah)

I went in for my blood tests today and was a bit confused that I didn't have to drink the horrible sugary drink like during the pregnancy for the diabetes test but otherwise it was pretty much just more blood being taken into those test tube like vials.

I have to say I've noticed that some nurses (like today) managed to take blood with there really being no pain what so ever where as others hurt and leave damn great big bruises (the ones from the hospital still haven't faded :/).

Anyway the nurse first off all took a double take at my surname and then discuessed its origin with me - then she took a double take at the address - it turns out she is the nurse who used to come and look after Alarics grandmother - used to bath her and stuff!

She asked me about the Mill and Barbara and said she hadn't seen my father-in-law in a long time and she got very nostalgic.

Then I bumped into Barbara signing in for her Cholesterol check - she was going in to see the same nurse 🙂 and was looking forward to it as she is the only one left who did stuff for 'Mummy'.

Knowing I have stomache ulcers - explains the random pain I get in my side - but god does it not like it when I haven't eaten which is odd :/ It was being a right little so-n-so as we went off to the pharmacy to pick up the rest of the prescriptions.

Again we went into the Christain Aid thing and had coffee and biscuits and Jeany managed to meet another Jean who was excited as you don't meet little girls called Jean anymore! And then the guy taking the money bought Jeany a cake - again she manages to get people to give her food :/ I think it must be a human instinct thing to give small children food!

I also bought Jean a little white heart tin made of metal with a pale blue flower on it - it was 25p and she can keep the beads from her broken braclets in it 🙂 She likes it anyway.

Back to the Drs (by sarah)

Today I went back to the Drs to talk about my results and the hospital visit - he was please with how much better I am looking compared to last week but concerned about the energy level thing, the obvious run down-ness and sleeping all the time. We discuessed that it could be stressed and that things could have gotten ontop of me and then he gave me list of blood tests I need to have to make sure.

My bloods from the hospital where not normal but weren't not 'seriously' so - I have no idea what this actually means and I hate the amiguaty.

I forgot to mention the skin thing that's not getting better and the fact I am waking up with pins and needles in my feet and hands each morning but I did find out that I have stomach ulcers and was given another batch of pain killers and stomach liners.

I then had to fill in a questionaire and arrange to have bloods taken and a follow up appointment to discuess the results of these. The bloods are for diabetes, thyroid, celeic's disease (no idea how to spell that! but its an allergy to wheat or something) - I think there was another but can't remember what it was.

We also had to sort out an emergancy prescription for dad as he didn't have enough insulin with him - as he takes porcin instead of any of the synthetic insulin's it was a bit of a drawn out process as most places do not stock it anymore - Dad unfortunatly can only take the pig extract one as his body reacts badly in mirade of ways with the synthetic stuff - a rare occurance but one that does evidently exist.

Then it was to getting the prescriptions and me being a bit worried that my prescription costs are now out weighing my food budget which sucks big time 🙁

I had had an early morning appointment but the dr was running 1/2 hr late when I arrived and then we had to wait 1/2 extra for dads appointment when i came out and then I had to wait for my prescription at the local pharmacy in Painswick (dad's stuff wont be in until the morning) so we were finished about 1 o'clock by which time it was urgant Dad eat.

Fortunatly this is Christian Aid week and one of the Church Halls was having a fund raising lunch - so we went and eat a nice lunch there.

I am now currently fasting for the glucose intollerance test tomorrow and hoping that chewed finger nails don't count as food :/

Kittens!!!! Galore!!!! (by sarah)

Our friends cat Sookie has given birth to 8 kittens - 8 for a first litter - that is a lot! and they have started up a blog about them with cute pics and things 🙂

I've also added it as Kittens Galore! to the Friends Blogroll down the side of the page.

🙂

Alaric says we have too many cats even if they are cute and very small little baby cats 🙁 Plus they live far away from us and Minni struggeled with the journey from London too here and we had to stop at the services for her to have a stretch out of the box (this was had to be done very carefully to make sure she didn't run away).