Sounded like a plan

I have been attending international matches at Twickenham for over 50 years, always with a group of chums called 'The S Club'. This season though I decided to embrace the events in a different way.

For some time now we have said that the match has been the low point of the weekend, and, with kick-off scheduled for 16:45, the night life has become less appealing to a group of 70 somethings at 9pm than it is after normal 3pm kick-off  times.

Couple that with hotel room's now costing in excess of £120 per night, and the match tickets themselves being between £130 and £150 for an 'average' view, and the whole experience needed to be revisited. 

So, my plan was to catch an early train from Liverpool, have a few beers and a meal with 'The S Club' and then travel back to Liverpool watching the game on the train. So first part of the plan was executed as I got a cheap day return ticket and was all ready with technology and food supplies for the train journeys.

Imagine then my nervousness when the day before travel I got a warning note from Avanti North West trains saying my train may be cancelled. OK I thought I can get the earlier train, albeit that was 07:40.

So an early alarm got me up only to see that train had been cancelled. My scheduled train was still running but the train afterwards had also been cancelled. Then just as I was about to leave a notification informed me my scheduled train had been cancelled too. To cancel one train is unfortunate, to cancel three is carelessness, even incompetence.

So what options? Drive to Crewe? Ah, go from Chester, but then found out the Birkenhead to Chester service was delayed so I could not get a connecting train by going that route. So I am now consigned to a day at home watching on the television.

I don't use the train very  much these days so am not sure how often this sort of disruption occurs, but Liverpool Lime Street must be mental today with three train loads of people trying to find alternative ways to get to London, whether or not many of them are going to the rugby.

And what of Avanti and their bed fellow the dinosaur which is the Unite union. Their members are trying to bring the Country to it's knees when they are over paid already and clearly underworked as they have no trains to drive most of the time.

Virgin trains were never as poorly operated as Avanti but given there is little chance of the Avanti franchise being renewed, they don't give a toss about customer service.

Now I see three of the four evening return train services have been cancelled out of Euston so goodness knows whether I would have got back tonight anyway. Come on England  prove us wrong about the match and make our day!!

Chance to Shine

It was back to London yesterday to take part in the awards ceremony for the cricket charity , Chance to Shine. The charity was founded ten years ago by Mark Nicholas, the Channel 5 cricket presenter and Mervyn King, the then governor of the Bank of England. It's aim is to reintroduce cricket into state schools and local neighbourhood's through the Quik Cricket format and street cricket initiative's.

We were going because number two son, Kieran, was nominated for the Volunteer of the Year award.

He was not given the news until a few days ago, so there was a hectic rush for train tickets and you can imagine the situation there....£100 plus for a single even with our old gits rail cards, so some lateral thinking had to be applied.

Using Martin Lewis and his split ticket web site we managed to get three returns for just under £120 although it did mean driving to Crewe. That bit was fun as there was an early accident on the M56 so the sat nav took us all over the show. The long term car park at Crewe was full so we eventually got on the platform with four minutes to spare. The return journey was no less stressed as I had a blonde/senior moment and threw away the return tickets rather than the outbound bits. Luckily no tickets were inspected on the homeward bound section so all was sorted.

As for the event itself, Nomura International, hosted it in their Upper Thames Street offices and it was an excellent bash, made all the better when Kieran was announced as winner of his category. He was really pleased as were we as proud parents, although he seemed more interested in chatting to the fit England Ladies cricketers who were there, than with us!!

He won the award for his efforts introducing girl's cricket into Prenton High School, and for coaching the ladies section at Oxton Cricket Club. The fact he was not a PE teacher as many award winners were also counted in his favour.

His new school in Neston do not have a team so that will be his next task once he has sorted out the History department. That should keep him busy!!