Journey into mystery

What I'd thought were three parakeets in the trees behind the clinic turned out to be eighteen of the beggars. I'm not fond, and neither were the spadgers when they did a flying visit to the back garden.

I headed for Llandudno, hoping to connect with the dotterel that's been gracing the Great Orme.

It was a thin old time as the train trundled through Chat Moss and Cheshire. A flock of pigeons disturbed from the bridge over the Weaver at Frodsham and a few dozen rooks near Helsby were like oases in the desert. We were a long time at Chester Station waiting for the go-ahead into Wales. We then had to decamp an overcrowded Holyhead train to join another even more badly overcrowded Holyhead train. Luckily, I noticed that the next train straight to Llandudno was also stuck at the station so I walked over and got that. It, too, wasn't getting anywhere but had seats free to sit on. For a while. Otherwise I was for giving up. Fifteen minutes later we were told to decamp and get the train I came in on. Half an hour after that I gave up and got the train back to Manchester. It would have been teatime before I arrived anywhere. I hear there are places in the world where travel by public transport isn't an unpredictable adventure with no guarantee of success, how tiresome for them.

I could and should have waited for a train stopping at Frodsham so I could retrieve something of the day but as they were all stuck in Wales it wasn't really an option.

The clouds rolled in after a bright, sunny morning. It was thin pickings on the way home but a flock of black-headed gulls on a playing field in Dallam brought some light into the gloom.

All in all a crap start to the month. Still, what can we expect? After more than forty years of active disinvestment in national infrastructure so the bookies' runners in the city can extract the investment capital and cache it offshore the waterways will be full of shit and the trains won't run on time. Then we'll be told by the powers that be that it's all the fault of poor people trying to escape the wars and environmental disasters our governments have contributed so much towards, them poor devils will be to blame for the rich lads' asset-stripping and nothing working anymore. It makes me cross.