My latest on National Express and the weekend round up

National Excess appear to pour most of their publicity budget into promoting their ultra cheap fares. Go to London for £14 - that sort of thing (the return fare not included!) "Minature prices" they call them. More like minature victory if you manage to lay your hands on them. When I tried to get cheap, or even modestly prices tickets for last Friday to get out of London and today, to go back there, they were as common as good news economy stories in the press. I ended up getting a ticket home on Thursday and took Friday off.

Getting a ticket for this morning was equally tortuous. The cheapest I could get for a single to London was first class advanced costing £69.50. And it leaves at 9.30am, much later than I normally pick up the train. I decided to get the bus in rather than get David to do his chauffeur routine. And since he is chairing the magistrates bench this morning, I don't want to make him late for all those criminals!

So on arrival at Central Station, with over half an hour to spare, I headed for the waiting room and spotted the first class lounge. "That will do nicely," I thought to myself. Errr, actually it didn't. My first class tick didn't let me into the first class facilities. Apparently, as I only paid an arm and a leg for my ticket, I clearly have not provided sufficient body parts to let me through the door! So I headed for standard class waiting room instead!

Anyway, rant over and so to my weekend activities. Mine focused on the long running saga of building the greenhouse. We are only partly further on. And oh, how I so hate the sound of breaking glass, especially when specially cut panes of glass are dropped in the kitchen. So another weekend goes by in which we set ourselves the target of completing the building job the following weekend. The video I am making about it for my allotment blog just keeps getting longer.

Good news: I was contacted over the weekend by an American looking for photos taken inside the ex-Soviet, formerly top secret nuclear submarine base in Balaklava, the Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula in the Black Sea. He runs a website promoting holidays to the Crimea but had no photos of the inside of the base. The video I shot in the base has been viewed over 100,000 times on YouTube and has appeared on various websites but no one has, up til now, asked me for photos. Fortunately, I took over 150 when I was inside the base, just over 2 years ago, shortly after it was first opened to visitors. Needless to say, the Russian navy has long sinced stopped using the site. The photos will have to be sorted but some will be heading over to America by email shortly.

I guess that had this been 20 years ago, the CIA would have been asking for the photos as well!

And so to the bad news. 2 family members have been taken ill, one of whom has been rushed into hospital in Jamaica of all places for an emergency operation. The other is in hospital in North Wales.

And we are concerned about Freda, our cat in Sunniside. She is 20 years old so for a puss, she is seriously old. Last night she fell off my lap, having some kind of fit. She had another 4 during the next couple of hours. She has been booked to go to the vet tonight.

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