Settling to Work

After three weeks of constant travel it was nice to get back to London and have some time to do nothing. After a few days of this I soon started hitting the pile of work that I had been thinking about throughout our travels. Emmas agency was not having much luck finding her work but this did not bother Emma as Jess was staying in London and the thought of going straight from touring Germany to an English hospital was a little too much. On our return we have found the weather in London to be much improved and there is a definite feel of spring in the air. There is lots of flowers in the parks and gardens and from nowhere hundreds of funny little squirrels have emerged.

Last weekend we headed up to Billericay to catch up with friends of the family who I stayed with last year when I was in London. On the train ride up to Billericay we were busted by the train police for not having a valid ticket. In the past I had purchased travelcards from Billericay that took me from Billericay to London and back. We bought the same tickets in London to get to Billericay thinking we would be okay. But it turns out a ticket purchased in London is not the same as a ticket purchased in Billericay. For all intensive purposes it is the same ticket; you press the same buttons on the machine and get the same words on the ticket, but as we soon discovered it is NOT THE SAME TICKET. Nowhere is it ever mentioned that maybe there is any difference and no clear boundaries are ever pointed out when boarding trains. This disjunction of logic perhaps explains why everyone seems to be so annoyed with the London transportation system (plus the fact most trains are late and smell of urine). For our misdemeanor we were both fined 10 with no option of just paying the extra 4 required to extend our valid tickets.

Visting Billericay in very early spring

Apart from that our visit to Billericay was very good. It was a little colder there than in London but after a week in the city it was nice to get out into the country a bit. Emmas agency finally found some decent work for her in Ipswich for four days. Ipswich is east of London by the sea so she will be staying out there for most of the week whilst I potter about in London doing work and visiting a few friends who have just arrived in the country. One of the newspapers is running a promotion for half price Eurorail tickets to Paris and Brussels so I think a bit of my time will be spent buying (and reading) papers in an attempt to get some really cheap transport to France in early May before we pack up and head back home via Thailand.