Is Your Journey Really Necessary?

As I mentioned in A Capital Day Out , I'm taking a trip to Manchester next month. Ideally, I'd have booked the return ticket in one easy transaction – but putting my hands on £73.00 is beyond me at the moment. Even though my travel costs will be reimbursed afterwards, I'm trying to find the most economical way to do the journey within the scheduling constraints. It's the outward leg that's the stumbling block. I need to be in Salford by 4.45 p.m., so I've had to make sure that I'll get to Manchester with time to spare in case of disruptions. With this in mind, my first port of call was the Arriva Trains Wales website. I've seen numerous advertisements for their bargain fares over the past few months, in the stations, in the pocket timetable, on the trains themselves, and on their website. According to these, the cheapest single fare is £13.00. That sounded like a good option to me, so I had a closer look at the website. Isn't it odd how, even with my

Shanara the Dippy Bint texted me last week out of the blue and asked me when I was planning my next trip to Cardiff. I told her that I wasn't planning a trip at all – £7.00 for a return ticket represents a fair chunk out of my Giro. To make matters worse, thirty quid of this fortnight's money has come and gone already on another rail ticket, this time to Manchester. (All will be revealed in a month's time, don't worry!) But she insisted that we had to meet up soon. For one thing, she's expecting her second baby at the end of November. For another thing, I saw enough of Cardiff during the run-up to Xmas when I was working there, and I certainly don't think I can face a day there for 'fun.' So we eventually agreed to meet for lunch yesterday. It was an interesting day out, to say the least. I'd planned to catch the 10.21 train, but first of all I had to call into the Library and book my ticket to Manchester. Luckily, I'd stayed overnight in Rhian&#