Barely travelling

Ok not really travelling at all, unless you count far flung bits of London like Shepherds Bush or Charlton. Plus a trip for a meeting at St Albans for 8:30am.

Shepherds Bush trip was to see Simon Amstell, ex-presenter on Never Mind the Buzzcocks and now doing the stand-up circuit. Have seen him do stand-up a couple of times before so knew what I was letting myself in for, although this was wholly new material. His is not gag a minute sort of humour, but he is always entertaining and just interesting. Its quite cerebral in parts, and I like the self-deprecating stuff, but he also does go in for some pretty biting and cruel stuff - as was shown off on Buzzcocks. And yes I rather like that too.

That trip was after seeing a couple of exhibitions at the Royal Academy. The Glasgow Boys was especially good, but really full. I just imagined that Monday afternoon there would be no one about, but far from it.

Charlton was unsurprisingly to watch a Charlton match. There could be no other reason for visiting the place. Having more than one Bristol Rovers supporting friend is I guess somewhat unusual outside Bristol, but I have three, with one of whom I attended the game and another I spotted while trying to get a re-invigorating half-time hot chocolate. Yes it was cold. Not too bad on arrival, but getting into hypothermia levels by the final whistle.

Actually a very entertaining one all draw. Rovers goal was a little out of the blue, and the source of much rejoicing at our end. And after about an hour of quite nice football but with little incident, Charlton suddenly came out all guns blazing looking for an equaliser and so the rest of the game became full of goalmouth action. Fine goal-keeping display from Rovers' Danish under 21 international Mikkel Anderson kept the reply down to a solitary goal.

An enjoyable night, but wasn't impressed at turning up with a few minutes to kick-off to find a long queue behind one solitary pensioner selling tickets to away fans, next to 3 firmly closed ticket windows. And if anyone says we should have turned up earlier, they do not travel out of London Bridge. Travellers fall into two categories; regulars who have a despondent look on their faces as yet another train is cancelled, and the infrequent traveller like us who have puzzled expressions as they try to find a platform for their preferred destination, and having missed one train then try to work out where the next might be from.