This week I'll be mostly on the ferry

Welcome aboard the Hythe Ferry.

At ten minutes past six every morning, there's a clatter from the train as it trundles up around 600 yards of track to the end of the pier.  Five minutes later it clatters back, and on it goes, every twenty minutes until late in the evening.  It's a relatively interesting way to wake up; it's up there with sheep, church bells, Jersey cows and peacocks (Oakridge, The Rectory, The Croft and Bywood respectively); it's way more pleasant than the post train or crows (Old Stables and Oakridge).

This week I'll be mostly on the train

"Leaving on the midnight train,
Leaving, never gonna come back again"
- Rossi/Young

It's been around 10 years since I last did a regular amount of commuting on the train.  Back in the early 90s I was getting the Brimsdown to Harlow for a couple of years.  It was a nice little half hour journey, and I didn't appreciate how good I had it.  By the mid 90s I was doing Broadstairs to Tonbridge, one and a half hours on a good day, two changes, one at Margate and one at Ashford.  It was a nightmare, but not quite as bad as driving.  By 2001 I was getting the 4:30 Margate to Victoria, which took two and a half hours to get into London, two and three quarters to get out.  When 9/11 happened and we all emptied out of London expecting to find planes flying into Canary Wharf or whatever, I had a carriage to myself.  The train at platform 5 was due out already and people were quite literally fighting to get on.  Me and handful of other people just went and sat on the later train on platform 7.  When our train left on time with a dozen passengers on it, the platform 5 was still bursting at the seams and the guards still couldn't get all the doors closed.  Since then, I've driven or flown to every place I've worked at.  But we digress.