Aquarionics

Bath Time

A report, and diary entry, by Nicholas 'Aquarion' Avenell. Moron, of the order of St. Astrid.

Well, That sucked.
Went to Bath.
This sums up, in three words, four hours of travel, decided completely on a whim at 11 O'clock in the morning. I decided that since it wasn't every day that RR was in the country, I should be there.
Life began to suck as soon as I got to the station just in time to see my train leave. Caught the next one - 15 minutes later - to London, Charing Cross -> Waterloo -> Bath Spa.
Where I arrived exactly 15 minutes late.
So the people I was looking for had left. Yay. Rah. And other expressions of sarcastic joy. Together with someone else in the same situation, we wandered around Bath until, quite by accident, we ran into someone who had just walked out of the pub where the Meet was happening.
I should have known this wouldn't last.
It was suggested that finding a cheap (£10) hotel would be an improvement on going home at 20:45 (My last train), so we went to the local Backpackers place, which was totally full.
Bad.
They, however, were very helpful and booked me into a similar place, giving me a leaflet with the name and address of the hotel on it, and gave me the check in time, which was "before midnight".
So, Back to the meet, by way of most of Bath. We asked two people how to get to the pub. When the pointed in opposite directions, we realised this was going to be fun.
Anyway. Meet, Drinking, Geeking, Vommary galore. *fun* stuff.
At 10, LC had to wander off with parents.
At 11:15, I decided to go find my hotel.
Actually, At 11:15, I discovered that the leaflet with the address and name of this hotel had gone. Completely.
So, I spent 45 minutes wandering around where I thought the map had said, with no success, before realizing I was screwed. Next train home was 08:00. It was now midnight.

The Long Wait:

Spent about an hour at the station until they locked it up.

At this point I got as far as "How..." of "How could this possibly get any worse" before it did.

And it started to rain.

Spent another hour sitting beside the river, explaining my life story to it (More vocal exercises than anything else). Attempted to sort my life into some kind of order. Wandered up the riverside path, sat around for a while.
Wandered back again.
Found a bench with a street-light above it, finished my book.
Wandered back to the weir I'd been talking to earlier.
Wandered to the bus-station in search of a chocolate vending machine I'd seen earlier, and by this time it was about 4am.
Started writing in my (Physical) diary, which, as it will *always* do, even at 4am in a deserted bus station, prompted someone to come up and try to talk to me.
Shot the breeze with him (name unknown) on the State Of The Transport Network, and how terrible it was that he had to wait a whole 45 minutes for a bus home.
You can hear the sympathy oozing from me, can't you?
At 4:45 his bus left, and so did I.
Wandered back to the wier (It was nice there, shady from the rain, the noise of the water keeping me from sleeping and either being robbed or arrested for being a vagrant or something) and watched the sun rise. Wandered around Bath for another couple of hours, caught the train to Reading, Grabbed coffee, Train to Redhill, Train to The Fictional Town of Paddock Wood, Walk Home.

Get home ~12:00

*sleep*