Having teachers for parents, I often did music exams on my own.
One such day, I'd done the exam (and passed thank you very much), and was heading home by train. Pretty simple journey, half an hour tops. Getting up to the platform, I spotted a train waiting there, and asked the guard if it was headed to where I wanted to go.

"Oh yes" he says "hop on though, it's about to leave."

As the doors close I find myself on a fast train from Portsmouth to London, first stop - bloody miles away and in the opposite direction from home.

It didn't take too long to cotton on, so realising that I'd have a very long trip home, I decided to get comfortable while I waited for the first stop so I could change and actually go home. Fate, however, had different plans for me that day...

It was summer, and a pleasant tree lined route, which meant that the hitherto unrecognised epileptic woman opposite me suddenly started having a pretty bad fit. Managing to heroically miss catching her, my reward was being sprayed with blood as she hit the floor of the train (I still feel bad about that) and got some nasty mouth damage...

Being about 14, I wasn't entirely sure what to do, so I kind of helped pick her up while looking around for someone to tell me what to do... Eventually, someone got the guard who led the poor startled, barely recovered woman away when, lo and behold, first stop!

Trudged over to the other side of the station to finally go home, tired and blood spattered, still carrying the sheet music books like the geek I still am.

"Oh, there's no trains going that way tonight sonny, it's a replacement bus service just out the front there, just show them your ticket when you get on."

I got home three hours late, stinking of sweaty bus / train, spattered with blood, utterly exhausted. 12 years later and I don't think my mum's recovered from it yet...
( Sonic James Doom forgetting the date since... umm..., Fri 30 May 2008, 9:25, Reply)