Spared the Steps

I had recently received a delivery of my newly found invention. Well, not that new. I’d first tried them when working in Singapore in the late 90s, and to my mind was one of the greatest inventions of mankind – the coffee bag.

It’s like a tea bag, but has coffee in it. Fresh ground coffee. The Singaporean version is still the superior model (or, of course, that could be my memory playing tricks again), but I recently found a source – Lyons – that do them. An Amazon ‘1-click’ purchase and they were speeding their way to me for a lot less than the price of the coffee in my local Costa [Fortune].

They arrived Monday – 100 sachets. And all I had to do was to take them to work, on Betty, in the rack bag. I opted for a light weight trial run and loaded about 20 into the bag. Thinking that if I had to climb the sixty steps to the platform, the weight wouldn’t be too great. It was also not one of my ‘two’ days (I’m trying to maintain Mosely’s 5:2 fast diet), so lunch was in there as well – no books though.

We had also arranged for the double glazing men to start the job that morning, upon which they promptly arrived about fifteen minutes before my intended departure time (which is about twenty minutes later than if I walk to work from New Street).

I show them around the job, open the back gate, leave them to it and finish my breakfast.

After the cleaning of teeth ritual, I get my coat on, pack my rack bag, collect the garage door key to open the garage and get Betty out. It wasn’t until I was half way down the path that I realised, said glaziers had stacked up the to-be-fitted doors and windows right in front of the garage door. Which I need access to if I was going to travel on Betty. Bless them.

Advantage #1 – it looks like these guys are not going to hang around.

A snap decision later and I was back in the house, rushing in all directions trying to find my back pack, transfer all the goodies from my rack bag, changing jackets and rushing out the door to get the train.

A lesson learned: make sure you have everything you need before the builders arrive.

More importantly, I was late for my appointment. Mainly because I was walking from New Street, rather than riding. The person who was waiting for me was very merciful.

One more saving grace...

Advantage #2 - I didn’t have to do the sixty steps obstacle course.