Getting to Bahrain was easier than this

Original plan - leave work early, get train all the way to Ebbw Vale, stay with Dai overnight, go to Newport tomorrow for memory competition.

I just about managed to get away from work early enough (leaving myself ten minutes to pack a bag before having to leave for the station), only to find that the first train on my journey had been cancelled, for no reason that anyone at the station saw fit to share with the travellers. Since Ebbw Vale is an almost impossible train station to get to, and now I wouldn't be able to get there till about half past ten, I re-evaluated my plans and decided to just get a hotel in Newport and turn down Dai's kind offer of hospitality. So all went well until we were in Gloucester at half past eight, and the tannoy announced "I'm sorry for the delay and any inconvenience it may cause. We're now moving to the end of the platform to wait at the signal, and we'll be there for some time. It seems a cow was struck by a train, and a vet's on the way to see what can be done about it."

Half an hour later, the conductor came down and told us that the situation with the cow hadn't improved, and our best bet might be to hop on the 9:15 to Bristol, then get another train back down to Newport and Cardiff. It'd take about two and a half hours, but it was probably better than just waiting here in Gloucester. I was inclined to agree with that, since the woman in a nearby seat had spent the whole thirty minutes talking to someone on the phone about the situation (spending ten minutes of this time telling her friend how to spell Gloucester - I think the idea was that the friend would look up on the internet how long it took to get to Cardiff, but the conversation didn't go beyond repeating "G-L-O-U-C-S-T-E-R" over and over again). But then the conductor returned to his little compartment and thirty seconds later announced that we were moving again. There was no further update about what the vet had been able to do about the cow.

So then I just had to (shudder) take a taxi to the Holiday Inn on a road inexplicably called "The Coldra" - do a search on this blog for "The Wardwick" to see my feelings about roads like this - and hope that I was pronouncing it right and the driver wouldn't realise I'm a foreigner and take me the long way round. I thought I was safe when the driver turned out to be Asian, but then he turned round and said "You did say the Coldra, right, guv'nor?" in the broad Welsh accent you can only get by living in Newport your entire life, and pronounced it differently to the way I'd said it, so then I had double feelings of guilt for a) secretly harbouring racist views, and b) offending a Welshman by not pronouncing place-names right.

Still, I eventually made it to the hotel, and now I suppose I should get some sleep in preparation for the competition tomorrow. Because, after all, I've done no other kind of preparation, and at least a period of unconsciousness might help a bit...