Another weekend, another long journey

It was a close thing; I wanted to go away for the Easter weekend but at the start of the week I had a car where the vital hydraulic systems had suffered a large leak. My usual reaction is to sulk and spend an excessive amount of time avoiding the issue. This time I leapt into action, on Monday I arranged for the car to be towed to the garage who I asked to remove the offending component. By Tuesday I had a new pipe ordered and coming in the post. Wednesday was a little fraught as I had hoped the pipe would come from Citroën specialist Pleiades overnight. I started looking at the cost of train tickets but the prospect of engineering works disrupting the timetable meant it was a last resort. I even contemplated coach travel, almost half the price of rail travel but with a limited service. On Thursday the pipe turned up, was fitted and everything was well. Listening to the news on Good Friday I was glad I had a working car, every bulletin carried tales of missing trains and long delays. Having seen the level of train service on the West Coast Mainline (the service I’d have used if I was going by train) on Saturday, Easter Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday if I’d managed to get away then I would never have got home again.