It seemed like a good idea at the time.......
Around this time last year it was unseasonably warm. ( may have been August )
One Saturday, I was working until 9pm, got frustrated by weekend engineering works and after an hour to get about the same distance as I could have walked in an hour, instead of baking any more I bailed out for a well earned pint and a game of darts.
Got on the tube again and had to change several times and after a huge wait got the last one going my way. 12 hours shift and now getting towards 0130 so abou 18 hours awake. I did nod off in the few stations left . Autopilot: I was at the right bit to get the exit, woke up, got off, hang on, of the two like that, I`ve just got off at the one before mine. Needless to say the doors closed before I could get back on.

The next station, the right one is a mile away, but only if you walk down the track.
It is about 4 to drive or walk from there and 1 more to mine. Hmmm the chances of a cab on a saturday at this time , plus an after midnight premium?

A brilliant idea, it is also 1 mile if I walk along the canal, and it goes closer to home than the tube line, you used to cycle it to work once upon a time you fool! Spang!

Lovely bright moonlit night, there are factories on the towpath side, all shut as it is weekend, and fields and the chunk of preserved forest on the other side, plus a few canal boats all lights off and kipping.

Then it gets a little windy and clouds come in. Pitch black! There is nothing. My vision has ramped up to noisy but there is virtually nothing so I just stand there, too far in to go back, and the park route away from the canal is about the same ahead. There is no kerb to the towpath, just grass and wild stuff to the end of the mud. So you can blunder on listening to gravel crunch and then vegetation means go back to crunch, I did this for maybe a hundred metres very very slowly. Then there was a moment of moonlight, I was nowhere near a factory, there was a sort of clearing under some very large bushes probably cleared out by fishermen. Me no silly, I pulled the waterproof out of my pack, as groundsheet, pack as pilow and went to sleep.

I was woken by a shower, and the bushes kept me completely dry.
about 6am the light woke me and I went WTF? And then remembered. that was actually a really nice experience, in the warm asleep under the clouds not stars.

Of course that was very dangerous, there could have been muggers, fine, mood I was in, my name was Darwin.
My toolkit was in the pack and I did have some useful items like spray contact cleaner, plus there was a canal to chuck them into, most people that stupid can`t swim.
(tootired Is searching for a funny sig, nothing good so far, Thu 23 Jul 2009, 21:09, Reply)