cosmolinguist | [244/365]

I did that thing the other day at work where I agreed to be a backup option for something I didn't really want to do. I figured it was okay because I also wasn't likely to be expected to do it.

I spent this morning doing it.

Despite vicious insomnia (I got maybe three hours of sleep), I got up when my alarm went off at 5:30 and was out of the shower getting dressed at 5:38 when the link that would tell me how the taxi that had been booked for me told me that the driver had already arrived. I thought the link was broken, because it also told me the car was booked for 6am!

I was in the car by 5:50. And Huddersfield by 6:30.

I was in Huddersfield to talk on BBC Breakfast about the folly of the plans to stop staffing almost all ticket offices in England, on this the occasion of the consultation closing. I had to get there in a taxi because there were train strikes today.

I've been to Huddersfield about a billion times, spent quite a lot of time waiting there, but I'd never seen it so quiet before. A few staff members were there to turn people away who hadn't seen the big whiteboard on which someone had scrawled "There are no trains from this station today due to industrial action." And, ironically, the ticket office was open! And being used! Even amid a day of eerie silence -- not just no passengers, but no train announcements, nobody in the store or the café or the pubs -- I saw people going up to the ticket office with anxious questions and going away relieved and happy. I stood nearby and vaguely witnessed this while I was waiting on my turn to be interviewed and I thought that just this impression of that interaction did a better job of illustrating my points than I could. Ticket office staff do so much to relieve anxieties, even for people who cannot possibly get a train from here today.

But yeah, I got there two hours before I was interviewed and it was also the first time I hadn't had any kind of information ahead of time except for that automated text telling me when I could expect to be picked up. And when I got there, it was just a producer and a presenter and a cameraman and they were all busy interviewing a couple of other people (someone from Age UK and someone else from a train-passenger group of some kind).

After a while the presenter, who didn't even introduce herself, asked me who I was and at least seemed happy with the answer which was a relief to me.

It was almost 7 o'clock by that point which was when Google maps told her a local café was opening nearby so we went there. This may have been the best part of my day: the staff were amazing and while I was sad for them that they had no other customers, it meant I could have coffee indoors instead of wearing a mask.

The presenter and I had a good chat, including her asking me what I wanted to talk about, me just naming the first couple of things that came to mind (I was so tired), and her tailoring her questions a bit to suit. Then she had to get back to actually do some work, but I had an hour before I'd be on so I ordered another coffee and asked what kind of breakfast they could do for vegetarians. I ended up with egg, mushrooms and cheese on a massive "teacake" -- it'd be called a barm or barmcake here, so I really felt like I'd traveled, y'know.

Feeling much better for calories and more caffeine, I wandered back to the station and stood where I was directed and said the things I wanted to say.

Two hours I'd been there, for these two minutes on TV.

But it was praised by Boss3, the PR guy I work with, and others on my team who either saw it live or saw the clip that was soon shared on our intranet. So that's good, I'm happy they're happy. Surprised to see the happiness from my big-boss that I got the two messages in that we most want, when I wouldn't have been at all sure that if I'd been asked "you get two messages, what should they be?" I'd have had any answer at all. I think I'd have just frozen up. But when a nice person asked me amidst a chat over nice coffee, I just casually mentioned the first couple things that came to mind and I guess that worked? As D said when I told him about this, I apparently do know this stuff well enough to do it in my sleep. I was still pretty asleep!

I got home just before ten, made a phone call, sent a couple emails, and then no one really expected anything of me for the rest of the day work-wise. Which is what I needed after so little sleep...and such a busy week...and what I'm increasingly sure is burnout after two months of this one thing at work...

There's so so much more work waiting for me (including another rail accessibility consultation!) but I feel like I got such a big weight off my chest today that I wished for more of a ritual to mark the occasion, like I talked about the other day.

Instead I had a nap -- so catastrophic that...you know sometimes you might wake up with a sore neck and think "I must have slept on it funny"? I managed to do that to my jaw -- and am now staying up late with D drinking beer and watching his goofy mate livestream a virtual DJ set.