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The Christmas Season has arrived
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2010-12-19 22:47:47 - Graham Ellis
Remember that song - "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas". Well - in many ways it feels like it's already the Christmas holiday. There's snow on the ground, traffic is quieter, and it's bitterly cold. Phones are quieter (that's largely because we've changed our phone company and our number is no longer being sold to thousands of salesmen!), lights are up, and Santa has already been seen on the train and in town. I went out shopping for some food supplies to build up some stock for the next fortnight yesterday, and found Lidl surprisingly quiet; something to do with the snow keeping people at home, I suspect - I know from a phone call that Dad's not been out for a couple of days - unusual for him - and he warns us that the drive up to his house is treacherous (that's not new, mind you - you skid on leaf mould in the autumn there too!)
This coming week we *are* running a course - Perl for Larger Projects. Systems are already set up, and I did a station run to pick up a delegate a few hours ago; fridge is set for breakfast, and it's going to be a fun (and I rather suspect busy) week. We're hunkered down for three good days, although I *will* be out of town - up to Swindon - on Wednesday evening, weather allowing, for a pre-christmas meetup of some of our First Great Western Coffee Shop regulars. A strategic decision has already been taken to leave Melksham by car that evening even though it's a public transport gathering. The only train from Melksham would get up there after the group had moved on from the meeting point, and the bus 'connections' at Chippenham would leave us hanging around there on the return for up to 80 minutes. Yes - I'm a great fan of public transport (and would love to let my hair down and have a pint), but without properly integrated services, the opportunity is denied me.
I'm expecting to be surprising busy on the rail / public transport side over Christmas too - there appears to be windows of opportunity and political will that's a considerable improvement [note British understatement] of what's been there up to this point. In fact, I'm feeling rather overawed by the prospect, but at the same time thinking that we may just end up with all our ducks in a row at the same time, and that will open the combination lock so that - next year - Santa can open our new service, and we'll be able to get back from Swindon to Melksham when we want - even those of us who aren't fortunate enough to have our own private cars, or the health to be able to drive one of them.