Finally the day has arrived for my long journey down to Penzance by train. Colin had skipped golf so gave me a lift to the station and I was travelling with my fully charged laptop and a lot of work scheduled to set up all the personally designed invitations to the photo club exhibition to design and draft.
The first train from Twickenham was bang on time and it was only had an hour to get to reading where I have twenty minutes to grab a coffee - not very nice from Starbucks - before the train to Penzance pulled in. I had a seat as requested, by the window, facing forwards on a table although I was sharing the space with two other women, they were both friendly. The journey always seems fast at the start as we sped towards Taunton and then it slows down over every single stop between their and Penzance - a total of around 13 stops! Todays photos is a grab shot out of the window near Dawlish when the train travels right next to the sea.
I wrote all the emails and drafted all the invitations in good time as we approached Penzance where Mum and Ian were waiting for me in the car - brilliant to see them.
This evening was to be the big reveal of the surprise trip that myself, Hester and Sophie have organised and booked for Mum (and all of us) to celebrate her 80th birthday later in the year by going to Florence in November. After a delicious roast chicken dinner, I had set up the pretext that I needed to briefly join a Zoom meeting with my photo club. Actually I was face timing everyone (on mute) and when we were all online, I called Mum over! She was rather confused as to why all the family were on my photo Club zoom meeting but then I presented her with a large ribboned box with a book detailing her surprise in it. There were instructions not to turn the pages too fast. Finally all is out in the open which is a massive relief. Mum seems very pleased after she recovered from the confusion. I am very relieved that I no longer need to worry about Mum booking another trip at the same time even though she has in fact books another trip, it is a few days after we come back and she can travel to Stanstead from ours the night before!
