My Day from Hell Yesterday or a Reality Check?

Boy was I feeling sorry for myself today. Up at 05:30 on a Monday morning to catch a train to Cramlington, via Newcastle for a meeting in Blyth. The journey down went well apart from realising Cramlington station has a platform and that's it . . . so the hunt for a taxi was on.

My meeting went well and I had two hours to spare until catching the 14:28 from Cramlington to Morpeth for a 14:50 connection to Glasgow Queen Street. However by the time the clock reached 14:38 I realised my train wasn't coming so I'd missed my 14:50 connection. So I caught the 15:38 to Morpeth only to find out the next train from there to Glasgow was 22:00, so quickly jumped back on the train I'd just got off and headed back to Newcastle.

At Newcastle I found out all East Coast trains were halted due to a problem on the line at Berwick. The 'problem' was someone had decided life was too heavy on their shoulders and jumped onto the railway line as, presumably, they could see no way out of what ever troubled them.

So feeling slightly chastised I decided to go cross country, via Carlisle, and found a somewhat packed train full of people with the same idea, so things were looking up.

That was until we reached Hexham where the guard announced the doors were gubbed and the train was terminating where it was so "everybody aff". It was at this point chaos broke out.

Mum's were screaming cause they couldn't got home for their kids, other peoples kids were screaming cause they wanted home and the poor lassie trying to announce what was happening couldn't be heard as everyone was shouting at her.

It was at that point my day got worse when my phone battery died. What the hell was I going to do now. How could I phone home, text or wibble away of Facebook or Twitter. By this time any chastising of myself was over, I mean the world needed to know of my predicament and I couldn't tell them!! I mean they might be missing my inane tweets.

Order was finally restored when a train was sent from the angels and whisked us off to Carlisle where three minutes later I was sitting in a comfy first class seat, on a Virgin Pendilino (it was business, so my employers were paying) with enough power to restore my phone, laptop and ipad.

With power restored I could feed my need for social media rising. I needed to find out who was saying what about the Kiltwalk and that's when I realised my day didn't matter anymore.

As I logged on I saw Tam's video, this video, taken of his grandson, Jordan Harden who was playing with his Dad TWO days before he died, yes before he died.

We have mentioned Jordan and Team Dyas many times on FB and I've watched several video's of Jordan getting up to high jinx, but as I watched this I saw a wee boy looking 'done', with the joy of a shot on a slide being out done by the sheer pain he's in.

Missed trains, catch the next one, train breaks down, something will come along, but lose you child? well that just doesn't bare thinking about.

This is why The Kiltwalk and all you Kiltwalkers do what you do. You walk to provide much needed funds for Children's Hospitals. You walk to support charities who help the Children who need it the most and for those poor wee mites whose lives are cut so tragically short, you walk to try and make their last weeks and days that little bit better.

Have a great day everyone and please, if you can, get someone in your office or in the pub or at the playgroup to sponsor you just a little bit more.