This is England

I had to go to England for my friends wedding. I thought it was going to be an ideal way of also catching up with my family there and also to close down my house which I had put on the market around Easter this year. The sale had been dragging on whilst small proceedural points were made by the purchasers solicitor. [More of this later, it deserves its own posting].

So the trip started off pretty bad. The plane was delayed on the runway at takeoff for 3 hours. Naturally they turned off the a/c and didn't serve any water until at least an hour into the delay. All in all it was fairly distressing but we did eventually take off. I watched a great film on the plane called 'This is England' which is set in the grim early 80s. It recounts the struggles between a gang of skinheads who start out peaceful but after the return from prison of a former gang member the lighter mood soon darkens.

Then we arrived. It was raining and grey. At first we were relieved since NYC had been suffering 100 degree/100% humidity. Then we discovered that our advance train tickets to Leeds were invalid because we had missed our pre booked train because of the delays. They charged us 220 pounds for the privilege of taking their crappy train. Bastards.