Left London Euston mid-day on a Virgin Train to Wigan . Euston was chaos, making it difficult to manoeuvre around with our large suitcases. Carollers pipped out Christmas tunes while Lauren and I bought lunch for the journey North. Train journey itself was interesting. Sat near a family from Liverpool, probably the first time I've heard a scouse accent in the wild. Behind our seats a group of woman shared several cases of beer and a bottle of Prosescco. Their conversations increasingly grew louder as the trip wore on. Definitely enjoyed a good eavesdropping session. They were quite posh, having attended Oxford University together. One of the women was the marketing officer for the women's english cricket team, and she was about to travel over to Australia for the women's Ashes tournament.
Finally, at some point Lauren went to pull something out of her rucksack and in the process her purse inadvertently fallen out. Of course we did not discover this until we arrived at our hotel in Wigan and Lauren went to look for her credit card. Several hours of stress culminated in a happy ending when the purse was was found by a train employee in Edinburgh and given to Amy (yes that Amy - our emotionally unstable ex-flat mate!- who now lives in Edinburgh) She has redeemed herself by going out of her way to help Lauren out, almost enough to make us forget that difficult year together.
We arrived in Wigan around 4. A small working-class town roughly half-way between Liverpool and Manchester, it is the home of the northern franchise of Lauren's drama university. We dropped our bags off at the hotel - commence purse stress out time - and had Subway for dinner. Locals are friendly here, all questions and statements are followed by a "love". "Would you like tomatoes with that, love?". Chavs (google it) also roam the streets without abandon. London is fortunate enough to be relatively free of this scourge.
Post Subway dinner walked to the a large former Victorian mill complex, housing among other things flats business and ALRA North. At this point Amy notifed Lauren she was in possession of the purse - conclude purse stress session. I watched the final performance of the Jungle Book- Lauren did the all the set design and costume design. This was probably one of the best ALRA shows I've been to (and trust me, I've been dragged to many). For a month, our living room was covered in fabric and fur.
We then had drinks with the cast and stage managers in the theatre bar. Everyone at the school is very friendly and unpretentious (unlike those London-based actors!), and they helped Lauren with the show. She's very excited to be returning to design a show for them in Feburary-March time.
We then got some dominos (only place we could get decent food at midnight in Wigan), and headed back to the hotel with Katy, the stage manager, who was also staying at the same hotel.
Now on the train going up to Glasgow, enjoying the scenery of forests and endless hills/mountains in the Borders area. The train inspector came up to check our tickets and he wanted to see Lauren's ID/Card that she payed for the tickets with/Rail-card. Due to not having her purse yet, she was unable to provide him with any of this. He seemed unsure what to do, but was finally convinced him to let us go when Lauren showed him her Facebook page where she had put up a status about her lost purse yesterday. Possibly the first time Facebook has been used as ID on the train?
Looking forward to spending time with Lauren's friends and family and enjoying a well-earned rest. Lauren has been put on the insurance of her parents' Audi, so she's looking forward to driving about Scotland in it!
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