Wednesday 25th March Portsmouth

The beetroot sweet was better than nothing, certainly better than the seppia, baccala and fegato but I won’t be rushing out to buy more.

I spent quite a while today in trains , which was OK. Sometimes I find the people who make the announcements may be speaking the same language, but that doesnot mean I can understand the accent when spoken at speed. A few times today I struggled . My first train was cancelled and it was difficult for me to understand the announcements. I had to get another and be careful to get in one of the front 3 carriages because after a while the back part was going somewhere else. Coming home the train was also cancelled so I had to get one going to Brighton and change, but then there was an announcement on the train to change at a different station, then on that second train I woke up after we had been joined to another train and the sign in the train said we were now going to Bognor Regis not London Victoria . Luckily that was a mistake. Nevermind, it is the first time a train journey has been a bit muddled for me. I was a bit unsettled because I did not have a route map, not any map and did not have a picture in my head of where the different places were. ( Something about lack of control I fear)

Portsmouth was good. I had gone to catch up with 3 people. I spent several hours talking in a café to a cousin of John’s and his wife. They were well . He was recovering quickly after a recent operation to remove a tumor on a kidney. Then I spent 3 hours talking to an English friend who I met in Canberra. She had driven from her home 20minutes away to meet me. We went to a nearby little marina , had a bit of a wander but the weather was not good – blowy and cold. We had lunch, talked some more and she dropped me back at the train station.