The NNPC conference was a delight: great invited speakers, great contributed talks, great poster discussions (and I'm not just saying that because I was one of the organisers: all the contributors did a fantastic job). I learned a lot. I'm looking forward to the next one; hopefully it will be sooner than 5 years next time!
The conference catering was good, too. A constant flow of tea and coffee, accompanied by fantastic little hazelnut biscuits (each small biscuit had four or five whole hazelnuts!), and rhubarb fruit juice. Many of us tentatively tried the latter, then agreed we rather liked it: not overly sweetened, but sweet enough to be a refreshing drink.
The lunches and dinners were all vegetarian, as provided by the sponsors. This was all very flavoursome, but lacked a certain something. After the conference finished yesterday afternoon, a colleague and I went out for a steak dinner.
This morning I rolled up to the train station to catch the 7am train to the airport. On the departure board, in the space reserved for the platform number, were three surprisingly short German words. I typed these in to Google translate. "Train is cancelled". Oh dear, but I had allowed enough time to be able to get the next train if necessary. I went to the information desk. The woman there tapped at a keyboard, then told me the next train to the airport was in half an hour. I don't know what made me check further, but I asked if that one was running. More keyboard tapping. A lot more keyboard tapping. Then she said, oh, the next train that is running is the 8am one. That would have left very little time before boarding, which I wasn't willing to risk. I asked if there was another way to the airport. Yes, I could catch a different train, change to a bus, then change to a further train. I looked at her, she looked at me, and then she said, but a taxi would probably be easier. I agreed. Fortunately, I was travelling with another colleague from the conference, so we shared a taxi, and ended up at the airport earlier than we would have got there by the original 7am train. Time for a leisurely breakfast of coffee and warm cinnamon bun.
The flight was fine. The train journey from Heathrow to home metamorphosed into a bus journey for part of the way, due to weekend engineering works, which made the trip a little longer than it should have been: about eight and a half hours door-to-door, for an approximately 560 mile journey. Considerably better progress than the seven hours for what should have been a 180 mile journey last Saturday.
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