I feel fairly righteous for being at Tesco by half seven this morning. I didn’t realise mum and Andrew were coming back from holiday so early in the afternoon, and we have an informal agreement to fill each others’ fridges whenever one or other of us is away.

It’s a fairly good time for cruising the aisles, being half empty but well stocked by the overnight shelf-stackers. Loads of tills open with nobody queueing. Sped home to pack everything into the fridge and bumped into Maisie at the front door. She’s leaving us in a fortnight so we ended up having a polite chat in the porch as I made lurching movements towards the car. I don’t think they hinted clearly enough that I was in a hurry.

Made the office on time, in time for a long meeting that ate into scarce testing time. After this week’s computer disaster and data recovery mission I’m two days behind on my work and testing isn’t something you can rush - tests take a set amount of time no matter how urgent your deadline.

Called mum while I was waiting for one of them to complete to see how the holiday had been and arranged to go around for dinner and look at their pictures. Promised to leave the office on time and not be late, so ended up with some bits and bobs left over to do on Monday but looking at my schedule they should be OK.

The not-being-late plan rather fell to bits when I arrived at the tube, though. The Central Line had been closed eastwards from Holborn. I came back out again and queued with the rest of the west end for a bus. Fifteen minutes later it arrived, and was already full.

I gave up on that idea and walked to Euston. It was then that they announced Liverpool Street was closed and would likely remain that way for the rest of the night. I rang ahead to warn I was going to be late.

As it turned out, by the time I’d struggled as far as Barbican it had reopened, so I got home an hour or so after that. It’s not a surprise, though. London’s transport network is in a terrible state. I’m constantly amazed by the other European capitals, many of which have far cheaper and far more efficient transport systems.

As I read once in a newspaper - although I can’t for the life of me remember which one - it is sheer madness that public transport (and the trains in particular) are expected to make a profit in this country while the roads are not. Perhaps if it was the other way around we would not be in the state we are.

Dined, viewed photos, tickled the cat goodbye then moved back home.

It’s nice to have my own bed back.

And my own tea bags and coffee.

1. Cream crackered
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2. Trouble on the trains
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3. Tea calamity
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