Sunday turned out to be far lazier than we expected. The original plan involved going into Farnham to do some shopping and watch Dawn’s nephew Sam play rugby before her brother Darren flew off to Italy with a wine-tasting group. Then, late morning, things went a bit pair-shaped. Darren received a text telling him his flight was cancelled. After some frantic phone calls another (later) flight was found. Then another problem reared its head. The name on Darren’s ticket didn’t match the full name in his passport – and airlines can knock you back when that happens. Of course, when you’re in a hurry stressed and the clock is ticking, you just know technology will let you down to make even the simplest of tasks more difficult and/or expensive so it took Darren ages to sort out that one.

Whilst the drama unfolded there was no way any of us were going anywhere, so I decided to put the dead time to use and go through some old picture folders on my laptop and do something productive. Early last year I’d scanned several hundred old travel slides but never got around to editing them and loading them onto my Zenfolio website. So, today was a good day to start! I’ve managed to wade through a couple of hundred of them. They’re pictures from the marathon 18 month round the world trip that Lynn and I made in 1997-1999. This particular batch are all from India taken in 1998 and you can find the first of them here. The latest scans start in Chennai in the South of India, encompass Puri and the Sun temple at Konarak in Orissa, then take in Calcutta and finally Varanasi.

Whilst I waded through pictures the airline fun and games was finally resolved and a plan hatched. The three of us would drive to Gatwick Airport, then Dawn would drive Darren’s car home whilst I rode shotgun and did the navigating for Dee to help her concentrate on driving on unfamiliar and very busy roads like the M25.

Everything went like clockwork – apart from Darren’s plane being delayed leaving! By that time he was airside and self-medicating in the bar, so it wasn’t an issue! This evening we’ve had a quiet one at home, Dee’s been cooking whilst I’ve been editing and preparing for a little job tomorrow.

Despite all the shambles of the Tories rowing back on just about every promise they’ve ever made, work on building phase 1 of High Speed 2 continues. 30,000 folk are employed on the project and tomorrow I’m off to see work on the existing railway between Princes Risborough and Aylesbury where HS2 will pass under the present line. It’s rather a unique bridge that’s being built there and I’ll be trackside, seeing the existing railway being reinstated over HS2. I’ll be posting a few bits about my trip but you’ll be able to read much more about what’s going on in future editions of RAIL magazine.

Expect daily rolling blogs from tomorrow as I’ll be out and about on the network each day, looking at various projects and locations across 3rd rail land so there’ll be plenty to write about and photograph.

I’ll end tonight with one of the pictures I’ve scanned. Here’s the ghats at Varanasi, India just after sunrise one morning in February, 1998.

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