On Saturday, we met up in London with my friend from high school who was passing through with her family on their way back from Euro Disney. The night before we left, I got a notification that our train home was cancelled. Leaving that with you, Later Me! I woke up at 5 to discover that our train to London was also canceled. Take THAT, said Later Me. With some intense hustling that probably did lasting damage to my marriage, we got to the station in time to catch an earlier train that was mostly empty. So far so good!

T was going back to Medford that afternoon so the first order of business was to find a place to stash his suitcase. Would it be fruitful to interrogate whose fault it was that we went to Picadilly instead of Paddington, where he would need to get the train to Heathrow? I was the reason he was even carrying a suitcase at all (full of books, all mine), which he diplomatically did not mention but rather focused on problem solving. Near Picadilly he used some kind of app to find a store that would let him leave the bag there for a fee, and within a few minutes we were at the entrance of Green Park where we met my friend

Earlier in the week N said his class had read a book called "Welcome to London" and we inadvertantly hit many of the sites in the book. Nelson's Column was down the road from the shop where T left his suitcase. We looked through the gates at Buckingham Palace where, like thousands of visitors before us, we wondered aloud if HRH would mind if we popped in to use his bathroom. Playground stop in St. James's Park. I am normally extremely begrudging about building in playground stops but this was a really nice one with a coffee stand and non-creepy bathrooms. Lunch at The Old Star. T left for the airport and the rest of us paid our respects to Big Ben.

Final landmark of the day was the London Eye. People are always asking if we've gone but I am normally a huge wet blanket about things like this. I'm also not a "fan" of "heights", and depending on who I was talking to, I either used fear as a cover for being a miserly snob or used snobbery as a cover for being a chicken. In any case, I've done it now and would rate it a solid "That was OK!". Not much of a wait, clear skies, great view of the Thames, Big Ben, and Parliament. I certainly preferred the experience to the High Roller in Vegas. Both are in motion when you have to get on or off, and based on my experience there and my friend's here I think the presence of a stroller is a major stressor.

Gelato (no chocolate for me) and then back to Euston for our customary M&S Simply Food meal deal dinner. We were aiming for a slightly earlier train since our orginal booking had been canceled. We couldn't transfer our seat reservations, so I wanted to be ready to swoop in on a table in one of the unreserved cars. The minutes ticked past our departure and our track wasn't posted, but there was no indication how much longer we'd have to wait. A Scottish lady waiting for the same train showed us pictures of the Highland cattle at the Hairy Coos Safari. B had to go to the bathroom and I knew the second we went to go find one the train would leave without us. Finally the track was posted and a surge of people crammed themselves on board.

Forget a table, no seats anywhere and people standing in all available spaces. It was very hot. We found a corner in between two cars where the kids could sit on the floor but we all had to shift and lean awkwardly any time someone passed, which was frequently since we were next to the cafe car. It was another half hour before we left the station, and we lost more time with every stop. As chance would have it, another family in our little cranny was from Finland. They had reserved seats but found them occupied and decided not to make a thing of it. I knew that if I was going to say anything to them I had to do it early, because otherwise even if I told them I don't speak Finnish, they'd worry about whether they'd said anything impolitic in front of me. They were going to an Arsenal-City game for their son's eleventh birthday. B planted himself right next to the boy and watched him play games on his phone until he fell asleep on the kid's shoulder, which he was very good natured about. We discussed the poor insulation of British homes relative to Finland; the superior reliability of the Finnish train system was unspoken. A young man going home to Manchester offered periodic updates about Premier League games in progress. His conversation with the Finnish dad about football was less comprehensible to me than when the family was speaking Finnish to each other. Rounding out the group was a Southeast Asian man who compacted himself into a tiny bundle with his knees to his chest, ignoring the jostling and the butts and crotches that often jutted into the space around him.

As uncomfortable as it was, we were all in it together. About 30 minutes from Manchester, enough people got off that there were seats for the kids and, when B started crying and a very kind woman who had just gotten a seat herself got back up so I could sit with him, for me. After their son sat down, the Finnish parents still standing in the cranny started to nuzzle each other. Arrival, parting from our comrades. We'd missed the last train back to Burnage. But we'd achieved the second best case scenario: we were so delayed by then that we were entitled to a partial refund, and that amount was more than we'd pay for a cab.