Backdated: Thursday 18th March 09:22 Backdated: Thursday 18th March 09:22

I have found something worse than trying to type on a train, and that is trying to type on a coach. It’s not helped by the fact that I know this to be a three-hour coach journey, and it very much looks like my battery will give out before the time is up. Foolishly, I’ve got nothing else to entertain me except The Riverside Chaucer, a book I’m carrying to Cambridge for Housemate Jo. You might have got an idea of me as a absent-minded intellectual with a hint of tweed about me, but let me say for once and all: Not even I am going to read Chaucer in the original middle English for fun.

I don’t like coaches. I’m pretty long of leg as a person- not so long as to inspire respect in superstitious orientals, you know, but long enough to be pretty uncomfortable in coaches, cheap flights and the Lindemannn lecture theatre. My old knees are already in a poor state of repair after Dartmoor happened to them.

I have to admit, my whole being is not in the best condition just now. I’m definitely showing signs of fatigue- which I think is fair enough. This is the third early morning I’ve had this week, and my 11th hour in travel. There are 5 more hours due today, and maybe another 6 tomorrow. I think the image of a Wandering Ghost comes up a few times in the collective cultural unconscious, and I’m really starting to get a hold of that idea in a rather Tom Holt way.

Song in my head: “Grand Parade” by the Reindeer Section