Friday, October 20, 2006

Eats, Shoots and Leaves - a new experience for this Returning Officer

Last night, to Maidstone for a meeting with the Selection Committee tasked with finding an opponent for Ann Widdecombe (or her replacement, if rumours are to be believed). When someone allocated train services to the area, they clearly assumed that the locals were all attached by umbilical cords to their cars, so I wisely left plenty of time to get down there. I needed it too...

The meeting itself was a fascinating experience, with as much attention given to tense, sentence construction and punctuation as to the actual content of the documents under discussion. Fortunately, I'm sympathetic towards good grammar, so I joined in with enthusiasm. We now have all of the necessary paperwork, a schedule and an agreed division of labour. The only potential catch is that I'm now committed to handling two hustings meetings in a day, one in mid-Kent, the other in deepest Berkshire... and I don't drive... ah well, it'll be all right on the night...

Getting home was far less enjoyable. Simplicity itself, I thought, catch the train from Maidstone West to Strood, connect to the London Bridge service and then onto the last train to East Dulwich. In principle, it should have worked. In reality, the train from Strood ran twenty-five minutes late, leading to a three hour crawl from door to door and an arrival home at 12.40 a.m. The cats were not pleased...

What sort of town is it when there is only one direct train service into London after 9.30 p.m.? I'm not impressed...

2 comments:

Peter Black said...

Where is London again?

Stan Bull said...

Somewhere near Maidstone apparently.