Miraculous

As I sat on the 17.12 to Troyes, I was very pleasantly surprised how organised the french train strike was.

My previous experience of a train strike was a hastily thrown together tannoy announcement advising that ‘The next train to Maidstone would be leaving from platform 10’, which was immediately followed by hundreds of commuters pushing their way onto an overcrowded train in the hope it would get them home. After being squished together in the carriage for 20 minutes or so and, if you were one of the lucky ones with a seat, being leaned on and glared at with a stare that said ‘How come you are sitting and I’m not’, we then heard another announcement saying ‘The train for Maidstone will now be leaving from platform 11’. At this point hundreds of people then scrambled to get off of one train and onto another. If you had a seat before, you definitely would not have one now. Then the overcrowded train, that was probably leaving 40 minutes late, staggered its way out of the station, across London and into the Kent countryside, a sweaty, angry, mess of a journey. The experience was horrendous.

But this was different. I’d watched the boards, as the smartly dressed man had told me to, then made my way to platform 9 when the details were updated. I was soon sitting quietly in the carriage, waiting for the train to leave on time.

The journey took about 90 minutes and, to my amusement at Nogent-sur-Seine, a seat opposite me became free, and my new train companion was a young cat, who I have to say was excellently behaved. It certainly made me smile.

This morning the journey is just a memory, and we are enjoying a delicious cup of coffee outside, catching up on our days apart, with the changing vines, which have become a beautiful rich orange and gold, as our backdrop.