Isn't rail travel great!

The weekend was fairly hectic (and offline). Friday night was spent celebrating Lara's birthday in Primitivo's off Colmore Row. Craig managed to kill the sound system by slicing the phono lead from the CD to amp. Fortunately it was almost closing time, so no harm donw, and not quite enough time for me to patch the lead back together (those years on the UMIST Ents crew weren't wasted...).
After a few hours sleep, it was up early for a trip down to London for an Agents & Organisers Assoc exec meeting, followed by a trip up to Cambridge.
The AOA meeting was held in Sarah Teather's Brent office. A new experience for me as I failed to make it down to Brent during the by-election... The meeting was productive, and I avoided too many actions (although in the post meeting pub session I may have agreed to be membership sec from May after the current occupant leaves the country).
Cambridge was its usual good self, I caught up with my old friend Simon who started his university admin career in Birmingham. Coincidentally there was a CAMRA festival taking place, with a winter beers theme. So a few spicy ales were consumed.
The return journey was amusing for its predictability. Why can't Central Trains write a contract that gets enables them to have train drivers on a Sunday? This meant that it turned out to be quicker (but more expensive) to travel back via London as the service I intended to get was cancelled (and has apparently not run for well over a month!). So far so good.
The service out of Euston was absolutely jam packed, with nearly every seat reserved, and those holding expensive walk on tickets (such as myself) had no guarantee of a seat, unless they upgraded to 1st class for an additional £10 and as much coffee as you could drink in 2hrs. And now they're talking about getting rid of saver tickets! I think there'll be a "fare" number of people opposed to that.