A chance encounter between our exhibition manager and a representative of the Bodmin and Wenford Railway led to a promise of favoured visitor status at Bodmin. [Are these meetings really chance? – discuss.] Our thoughts then turned to the coast, for it would be at least nominally summer, and our buckets and spades were well overdue a trip to the seaside. Dartmouth looked nice, and, imagine our surprise, we could get there on a preserved railway from Paignton. All the while we considered, beer was never far from our thoughts, until some mental giant made the obvious neural connection [beer = Beer = Pecorama = not really that far from Paignton = very near to Seaton = trams]. And so we were decided.
Booking of trains and accommodation proceeded along familiar, well-worn lines. Virgin offered their usual incomprehensible pricing and illogical timetables, with Mozart symphonies heard in their entirety whilst waiting for Customer Service to serve our particular customer, whose call was valuable almost to the point of providing someone to answer it. A host of landladies expressed their eagerness to accomodate six, sorry only five now, adult males in their home-from-homes ('Are you with the sewage convention? – we’re fully booked that week'). The only hitch was Paignton, where so many ladies thrust their wares in the direction of the Society’s hapless booking clerk that he quite forgot which one he had eventually settled on, metaphorically, so to speak. A study of the list was not promising. At least fifty to choose from, with no clue from the memory as to which one it might be. Back to the phone, grateful for the foresight in subscribing to Telewest’s Talk Unlimited payment plan. In the event, the correct one was struck only fifth time lucky, and it wasn’t even on the list. I am available for lottery number predictions.
As to personnel, it looked for a while as if we would, for the first time, field the same team two years running. However the Middle-Aged Pretender put paid to that novel circumstance. Yet another reason to vote Republican.
The journey