024/366 – Toy Fair, Trains and people are funny?

Today I travelled down to London again to attend as I had been invited in a ‘working’ capacity. It meant that I had to get up and away quite early (which is never good for me) and the traffic was against me so after a sprint to the train station I made it onto the train just as the doors closed.

Before receiving my invite I had never even heard of the Toy Fair, I guess in some capacity I knew it existed because there are ‘fairs’ for everything else so why not toys too. It was a child’s paradise which Little Bean would have loved if she hadn’t had to go to school. As an adult I’m not sure we ever really grow up, although perhaps I’m just speaking for myself because I would happily have come home with the majority of the toys on display.

Today was also an opportunity for me to meet with some of the PR’s who I have had the pleasure of working with through my blog, it’s funny how you build up a picture of a person in your head and yet when they meet you, they are the total opposite. I wonder why that is?

I had to be mindful of the time to be sure that I made it back to my train in time to get home to Little Bean who was being picked up by my lovely neighbour Mummy Bird and for once I made it to the train station early. Upon checking the timetable I saw that I could get on an earlier train and get home half an hour earlier than planned, perfect – what a great end to a great day?

WRONG! My train broke down three times on the way home and was eventually pulled out of service at Hitchin. Apparently there was an issue with the brakes and the air supply? Basically every time we picked up speed and hit a bump in the rails, the brakes came on and we came to an abrupt halt then had to wait for them to power up again. My ‘early’ train finally got me home half an hour later than had I caught my previously planned train.

Having spent a LOT of time on the trains and underground today I had to get into the mindset that you mustn’t look at or talk to anyone, which I personally find quite difficult because I often have a chit-chat with people if something grabs my attention and let’s be honest, there are lots of sights on the underground which can grab your attention. But it’s funny how a situation can suddenly change things. When my train first pulled out of Kings Cross, it was the typical avoiding eye contact scenario. Don’t encroach onto the person’s space next to you, but as the issues with the train became more apparent, people began to ease up and start talking to each other. All along the train you could see little conversations breaking out, hear people laughing as we joined together in our ‘situation’. Isn’t it strange how a situation can change things so much?