On the end of one of my all-nighters, catching up with writing while listening to old editions of The Sunday Alternative, (simply because I was recording them to replace me lost personal archive), I found a load of snow pictures on a memory stick. Feeling silly I decided to attempt to counter all the tweets and Facebook posts about the hot weather, by tweeting snow pictures to try and convince the world outside Nottingham that we had had a snowfall in the night. I posted the photos on Facebook too, (how very retro) and tried to get other people to join in. If others had bothered, I'm sure that we would have convinced the rest of the country that we had the freakiest of freak weather conditions. Alas, nobody took part, although a couple of people on Facebook were fooled so it wasn't a waste of time. Well, it obviously was a waste of time as I was supposed to be working, but a good waste of time.
I was tuned in to BBC Radio Nottingham while doing this, and the breakfast show was being broadcast from outside the train station, as today is the first working day that the place is closed for work. Although everyone has known about this for ages, it inevitably threw the city's commuters into a state of blind panic. The replacement bus services couldn't cope and everyone had a moaning vox-pop to contribute to the radio. I can understand the problem with people who regularly commute, but using the train for anything else is a pointless task as this country just can't 'do' the train. Maybe it's just me, but every long distance journey I have ever attempted has lasted at least three times longer than it should have done. The final straw for me was when GNER banned smoking, (from my memory it was at least two years before the nationwide smoking ban), as I couldn't have coped with the level of stress that being a day late for something gives you without being able to wander up to the smoking carriage. The railway might be a romantic and old-fashioned way to travel, but until I feel confident that I will get there, it isn't for me. It's a shame that I feel that way to be honest, as I love old train stations and their beautiful architecture, (the nice ones anyway), although they were certainly better before they became corporate. When the entire rail network was run by British Rail, each station had its own cafe, sometimes licenced (or there was a pub on the platform), which sold real food rather than some some shit in a bag with 'Greggs' written on it. The platform newsagent didn't feel the need to try and sell you a Toblerone when you wanted a morning paper either.
So that was the first big story of the day, although I imagine it didn't make a great deal of news coverage outside of Nottingham. Nobody was joining in with the hoax, the rest of the country were never going to fall for the idea that Nottingham had suffered a snowfall overnight. By lunchtime I was starting to flag from overwork, so I went to bed for an afternoon nap, which ended up being three hours sleep. When I woke up I made myself something to eat and commenced with work, but not before checking my Facebook. Nothing! Nobody had latched on to the hoax, so I gave up. Twitter hadn't cottoned on either so I deleted the tweets, (as I would have done at some point anyway) and put it down to a fail. Later on a few people on Facebook said that they would have joined in if I hadn't done it so early, but I had to do it early in the morning otherwise it wouldn't have made sense. Not that it made a lot of sense anyway but that's not the point.
Oh, and a baby was born this afternoon and that was in the news too.
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