I've apparently been driving past the rusty cannon in somebody's front yard for years. Granted, it is cleverly disguised as a bit of rusty metal in the middle of a lot of other rusty metal, but still. Yeesh. I just noticed it today.

I also saw a powder-blue hearse today.

Might be Jade Goody's funeral - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7982970.stm Thank God I'm back in Exeter.

Probably, then! I couldn't really escape it, living where my parents do.

And in reply to your post about Virgin - the London Clarets used to use them, but once it got to the point where you were leaving Euston at (approximately - very rarely on time) 8am and couldn't guarantee getting to Burnley for a 3pm kickoff. I remember going to Stockport for a match once, a few years ago. After the match we got to Stockport station to be told that the lines were down around Euston. They could get us as far as Rugby on the train, then we'd be put on a bus to Milton Keynes...After that we were on our own. So we got a train across to Sheffield and got a Midland Mainline train. However, we had to get off that at Leicester because there was a fault with it, so we stood on Leicester for half an hour. Eventually we got back to London (St. Pancras, to be specific). *Before* our *direct* Virgin train was scheduled to have arrived at Euston. *sigh* Since then we've been going via Leeds - no regrets!

The London Clarets is the supporters club for London- (and vaguely south-eastern - a couple of our members live on Mersea Island) based Burnley FC supporters, a branch of APFSCIL (Association of Football Supporters' Clubs In London).

Oooo, I can really sympathise with the doors being shut - I went up to Sheffield in 2005 for an open day at the uni and my train was in when I arrived at the station, so I ran down the stairs (this is well before allthe fibro stuff kicked off, when I was still very able-bodied) onto the platform, shouted "hold the door for a few seconds coz I need this train" and just as I got there the woman shook her head at me and closed the door. So I got a train across to Doncaster and then one from there to London. *sighs*

Not being able to read on the train must be decidedly annoying. I'm fine on trains - I can read in pretty much any transport except cars, where I'm violently ill if I try to read. I am SO glad I can read on planes - I've been out to the west coast of Canada several times and it's a 9-hour flight. Back in 2006 we were flying out from Gatwick a week after the major terror alert/plot, and up until about the day before we were due to leave you weren't allowed to take books into the cabin. Sooooooo glad that was lifted by the time we flew!

One of my mum's college friends emigrated to BC not long after they qualified as teachers, so we've been out to see her and her (now late) husband on several occasions. There is also the element of loving it out there to it, too! I do sometimes seriously consider emigrating there as well, but I'd have to learn a completely different sign language (I'm semi-fluent in British Sign Language but in Canada they use American SL, which is about as different from BSL as English and Chinese). That said, if I work on my Cued Speech and look into qualifying as a CS transliterator as well as a BSL interpreter, which is what I'd like to do, it would be eminently more useful.

Northerners do tend to be more relaxed about stuff generally - it could be that the guards are Southerners (not that I'm at all biased, no, not me, I'm not vehemently and proudly Lancastrian...). The one I said about in my previous comment was a Southerner. I'm going to resist the urge to make some anti-Yorkshire comment...