Happy birthday to me!

Right now, I am in a Virgin pendolino train to Edinburgh - this is my birthday trip, to celebrate, erm, an important birthday. As my boss has put it, I am 25 + VAT.

I don't like Virgin pendolinos. They make noises which cause me migraine, and they have suspension which is so sophisticated that it causes me motion sickness. Which I consider a scandal, because trains are just not supposed to cause motion sickness!

Anyway. My journey today is one with a change in Preston. To get to Preston, I had to take a 12.46 train from Manchester Piccadilly. However, my itinerary did not say where does that train terminate. (I think you see where this is going.) As the trains here do not have numbers or anything like that, you have to distinguish them by departure time and end station. Well, what a fun if you only have departure time and there are four different trains at 12.46!

I was lucky this time, I asked a guy in the 'information' window and he actually knew. And he was nice!

In Preston, they have quite nice train station. And I've seen some interesting WW1 'memorial' - apparently, there has been a volunteer buffet which used to feed soldiers on their way to the front. It seems that this was pretty quick - men just got a letter and in 24-36 hrs, they were supposed to be in Europe. They had to travel the whole day by trains, and in Preston, they were given some food and hot drinks.

I observe the landscape as we run through it in the train. There are many very English villages, with stone / brick houses and things. I have noticed that churches look different here. We have lots of gothic and baroque churches in the Czech Republic, but we do not have the tall, spiky towers, and we do not have the square towers with four small tower-like objects in the corners on the top of the big tower. (Hope this description is sufficient. If not, just imagine a typical English castle architecture, you'll get the idea.)

Undoubtedly as a part of my birthday present, I have learned few new English expressions today:
* a senior moment: when you are old (or 'old') and suddenly don' remember ordinary things
* throw mud and see if some of it sticks: self-explaining, means that you can say things about somebody / something and hope that people will believe you, or take into account at least part of what you say (in the legal context, it means making submissions and hope that even if most of it is rejected, some of it will be accepted and will form base of favourable decision)
* with blazing guns: stating your arguments with all the confidence and energy available, even if you feel they are not 100% right - you say the stuff anyway and pretend that it's all cool
* ball in a china shop: causing more harm than benefit