Miserable day of the Year – Jan 19th, Blue Monday

Yesterday morning when I was having breakfast it was told in BBC that psychologists and day experts say Jan 19th is the Blue Monday – the most miserable day of the year. And we scoffed at them saying every day is glorified with some term. I was on relatively high spirits for the start of my Prince2 course. However, the day turned out really miserable for me; an absolute nightmare.

It was raining in the morning. SreeRaj dropped me at the station and I boarded a train to Leeds at 7:45 am. As the course was happening with an external trainer in Leeds I had a map with me to locate the place when I reach Leeds. And I had a well set buffer time as my training was supposed to start only at 9:30 am. The train was on time and I managed to get hold of a priority seat and was very comfy and slowly gone to a nap. By the time I opened by eyes there was no one in train and my mind was on a shock, ‘God, did I reach London?’ I thought I had slept off and reached the final destination of the train. However, I managed to get out and it was only York – only half way through. The station was crowded and from the announcements I got to know that there were no trains running to Leeds due to some fatality. Instead they have made arrangements with coaches to take passengers to Leeds. And we were to board the coach from outside the station. I walked out of the station for coaches and found out that there was a HUGE queue in the form of a flock. Not on the ‘survival of the fittest’ mood, I waited with patience for around 20 minutes there to get in and by the time some coaches have left. It was really a test of patience in freezing cold.

Then there comes the next announcement that rail services will be resumed shortly and no more coaches will be running there after. So I got into the station again and the direction was to board the train in platform 5 to Leeds. By the time it was already 9 o clock, and I got into the train, sat there for around 10 minutes and there you get the next announcement that next train to Leeds departs from platform 7. Good God I thought and walked over to platform 7 and boarded the train there. As soon as this was done all the passengers were directed to move to Platform 9 for Leeds trains. By this I have lost my hope as I was sure I was not going to make it on time for training. Walked over to platform 9 for the train; this didn’t work out as well and another announcement came that transpennine express to Manchester Airport via Leeds leaves shortly from Platform 11. The mob including me rushed to platform 11 now and boarded finally. This train was over crowded and I had to walk the whole stretch of the train to see if I can find a place to sit. Well, the walk was not in vain and got a side seat in the table near a huge man (somehow no one wanted to sit there as you get only a portion of the seat as the other guy occupied more than half of that seat too). All these happened within 20 minutes and by that time everyone in the train was frustrated making calls to their work place cancelling meetings and appointments. I was a bit relieved, ‘Oh, not just me!’ However despite all hopes the train started only at 10:30 am and all were stuck as if in a big tunnel, it was not a pleasant thing to happen on a Monday morning. Meanwhile four different reasons were given for this, ‘Fatality, Signal problem between Church Fenton and Leeds, Signal problem to leave York station, Signal problem to enter Leeds station’!

Meanwhile I get a call from my colleague saying that the course is cancelled as the trainers were off sick. As soon as she hang up realised I didn’t have my office laptop with me and its better to go home and work from there. The train doors were locked at the same second and I couldn’t get out. All I could do was to travel to Leeds now. Reached Leeds around 11:00 am, got in to office and explained the miserable story to everyone. Meanwhile one of my colleagues checked online and told me that I have a train leaving to my home station in the next 7 minutes, otherwise only one after 2 pm. It was another marathon now to ran back to station and catch this one. However, this bit was not bad and I did manage to catch. But, by this I was shattered and couldn’t even sleep because of the frustration. This train ran late for another half hour and I reached Northallerton around 1 pm. I was literally in trains from 7:45 am to 1:00 pm. So, how can I not agree to the predictions of Blue Monday! It definitely was for me!!! However, the second half of the day was relatively better.