Matty boy, uplifting music and a few nasty moments

Hosing it down this morning. A filthy day. Many of the trains weren't running thanks to industrial action, including those I take to get to Mum, so I called her first thing and rearranged a visit to next Wednesday. 

A suprise visit from Matt, who had come to Seaford to see his grandfather, and get his wee boy William to meet him. Lorraine cooks us some soup. William was delightful, and extremely well behaved. Great to see Matty boy again, last glimpsed on Chiswick High Road in the summer. Good to have a catch up on some gossip, but also to see Matt being such an exemplary dad. All heartwarming. 

Then later in the afternoon, Lorraine and I set off to Brighton by car, to catch the train to Victoria. Arrived in good time, bought a snack from M&S and caught the tube to Embankment and walked up through the festive throngs to the London Coliseum  St Martin's Lane, where we saw Max Richter lead the performance of his piece Voices, based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Rather amazing to see it performed live, wonderful musicianship and the soprano voice of Grace Davidson beautiful. A definite emotional and musical experience. Lovely stuff.  Sitting next to a talkative little man who was quite drunk, and fell asleep during the performance. We also enjoyed a collection of pieces in the first half called Free & Equal Vol 2 played on piano by Carolina Cury with Konstantinos Damianakis on electronics, some interesting stuff that made me think of Eno's collaborations with Harold Budd. 

Walked happily off to Embankment and got back to Victoria, only to discover at a little before 10pm there were no trains. As we had travelled up from Brighton to Victoria, we had made a schoolboy mistake of assuming that there would at least be one or two back, even given there was a restricted service of the strike. But there was absolutely nothing. We made our way to try our luck at Victoria Coach station. Nothing there either. No hotel rooms, everything being booked, other than those starting at several hundred quid. Mum wasn't able to take us, and there was one train to Ashford that left at 11, but would have been very difficult too.  A bit of a squeaky moment.  

Luckily Lorraine called Beth, our fourth emergency service, who managed to summon the rescuing angel of an Uber and an angelic man arrived in a car, and drove us down to Brighton Station. Here we collected our own car, and we were back home by 1am. Both of us hungry so we had a piece of cheese on toast and a bottle of beer, and watched Match of the Day on the gold sofa rather than go straight to bed. 

Below. Inside the Coliseum. We had quite a good view.