Crossing a snowy country
Nov. 28th, 2021 06:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWe are at a B&B in Bristol, chosen for convenience of reaching the Quaker Meeting House tomorrow, and therefore not central. Our host recommends the local takeaways, and shortly we will investigate.
I should not have been dismissive about yesterday's snow: I was impressed that it was falling at all, so early in the year, but there wasn't much of it. More fell overnight, enough to settle, but the thinnest, laciest of coverings. By the time we were settled in our seats on the train, only traces lingered in the corners of fields, and we thought it was all over. In fact, it hadn't begun yet. Leeds was elegantly frosted with snow, Sheffield was thickly blanketed, and then it's Derbyshire and snow drifting horizontally past the windows... As long as the light lasted, snow fell, but then it got dark, so I don't know where it ended. There's no snow to be seen here in Bristol.
When I say "by the time we were settled in our seats," though, I should admit that this wasn't until south of Darlington. Of the various possible difficulties I had worried about, I had neglected to consider the one we actually encountered, which was getting into the right carriage in the first place. We had booked seats, and knew which carriage we needed, but where once the platform was marked to show where each carriage would pull in, now they have numbered zones, and if you are lucky the station staff will know which zone corresponds to which carriage. We weren't lucky, and by the time we realised that the attendant's best guess had not been good enough, we were on the wrong half of a train composed of two halves which did not communicate: we had to get off at Darlington and rush along the platform to get on again.
I had thought the train was very busy when we got on, but that was nothing compared to how busy it was by the time we got off. There was not an empty seat, and people travelling in the luggage spaces. It's not the end of term, it's November and there are severe weather warnings, why are so many people travelling? Not for Thanksgiving, surely? Even allowing for an earlier cancellation... Despite everything, the journey was very smooth, and only slightly delayed, and I read my book in comfort.
Something odd. I was reading Susanna Clarke's Piranesi (thank you,asakiyume), and reached the end of it shortly before we arrived. The end of the text - there's some advertising for 'other books by', but this is the end of the book itself - is a note on the type. The book is set in Perpetua, and the note talks about this typeface, ending with "the italic was originally called Felicity." So the last word in the book is "Felicity" and Felicity is the person for whose funeral we have come to Bristol.
I should not have been dismissive about yesterday's snow: I was impressed that it was falling at all, so early in the year, but there wasn't much of it. More fell overnight, enough to settle, but the thinnest, laciest of coverings. By the time we were settled in our seats on the train, only traces lingered in the corners of fields, and we thought it was all over. In fact, it hadn't begun yet. Leeds was elegantly frosted with snow, Sheffield was thickly blanketed, and then it's Derbyshire and snow drifting horizontally past the windows... As long as the light lasted, snow fell, but then it got dark, so I don't know where it ended. There's no snow to be seen here in Bristol.
When I say "by the time we were settled in our seats," though, I should admit that this wasn't until south of Darlington. Of the various possible difficulties I had worried about, I had neglected to consider the one we actually encountered, which was getting into the right carriage in the first place. We had booked seats, and knew which carriage we needed, but where once the platform was marked to show where each carriage would pull in, now they have numbered zones, and if you are lucky the station staff will know which zone corresponds to which carriage. We weren't lucky, and by the time we realised that the attendant's best guess had not been good enough, we were on the wrong half of a train composed of two halves which did not communicate: we had to get off at Darlington and rush along the platform to get on again.
I had thought the train was very busy when we got on, but that was nothing compared to how busy it was by the time we got off. There was not an empty seat, and people travelling in the luggage spaces. It's not the end of term, it's November and there are severe weather warnings, why are so many people travelling? Not for Thanksgiving, surely? Even allowing for an earlier cancellation... Despite everything, the journey was very smooth, and only slightly delayed, and I read my book in comfort.
Something odd. I was reading Susanna Clarke's Piranesi (thank you,
asakiyume), and reached the end of it shortly before we arrived. The end of the text - there's some advertising for 'other books by', but this is the end of the book itself - is a note on the type. The book is set in Perpetua, and the note talks about this typeface, ending with "the italic was originally called Felicity." So the last word in the book is "Felicity" and Felicity is the person for whose funeral we have come to Bristol.
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Date: 2021-11-29 02:04 pm (UTC)What do you have planned ? I'm simply being nosy because I'm a Quaker! :o)
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Date: 2021-11-29 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
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