Optimism

Part of a mural in the underpass leading into Middlesbrough station. It's beautifully done, telling the story of Middlesbrough's transformation from a farm in the early 19th century to a boom town running on steel and chemicals in the Industrial Revolution. Its glory days are definitely behind it, and the town centre has slid into a slough of despond. It's a dismal place to spend time in and there is currently no rescue plan in sight.

Anyway. Today's travel experience involved trains (no rail replacements this time). An hour into our journey we were already onto our third train, and there were two more to come. First: Middlesbrough to Darlington. Then a nice comfortable LNER Azuma to York, with heating that actually worked. Another Azuma to Doncaster. The fourth train was by far the worst experience. We finally picked up the TransPennine Express that was supposed to have taken us directly from Middlesbrough to Manchester airport. We had reserved seats on this, but we had no chance of reaching them. See extra for what the carriage looked like once everyone had got on. People sat where they could, and packed into the aisle like sardines if they couldn't. We did both get a seat quite quickly, offered by younger people -- S's walking stick (knee still dodgy) probably helped :) But it was like this for the whole almost two hour journey to Manchester Piccadilly. It arrived 20 minutes late, because it took so long to get people off and on at every station. But we caught the final train to the airport with a comfortable four minutes to spare. So overall the journey was efficient, if exhausting, with only short waits between trains, and we got through the yelling chaos of security in only 10 minutes. We won't be trying to do this trip at a weekend again (S normally does it midweek).

The flight, by contrast, was smooth and trouble free. The plane was full, but at least no-one had to stand in the aisle, even on Ryanair. In Carcassonne, we whizzed merrily past the queuing Brits to the EU passports counter, picked up the car, and were on our way home within 10 minutes. Oh, and it's a lovely sunny day :)

Arriving at home, we heard someone call to us and were surprised to see our former neighbour Lucienne's son C waving to us from the window of her house, which he inherited and which is now a second home. We haven't seen him here for over a year, because he's been seriously ill, and we knew he'd been hospitalised. He and his wife D invited us in for a drink (well, it was 7 pm), and we had a catch up. It turns out he has myasthenia, an auto-immune disease which attacks muscles. He spent four months in hospital, and a total of eight months unable to eat, drink, or talk, losing 18 kg in the process. It was a long haul, but you wouldn't know he'd been so ill now -- he's gradually getting back to normal life, albeit less active than he used to be, and managed to drive here for the first time from home in Salon de Provence. It was a pleasure to see him in such a positive frame of mind.

Back home I got some comfort food out of the freezer -- perfect when you are tired and hungry!