Barbara?

I think you mean Mary with her C.U.N.T. campaign (Clean Up National Television).
Barbara was the doggie lady.

Yes, correct, I meant "Mary". Mary W. certainly didn't do any dogging.

I think that (once again) we can abandon hope for snow in Oxford. The one and only year you had any to speak of was 2010, when I was in Costa Rica. A friend in Rural Lincolnshire tells me that 2 weeks ago, there, it was 6" deep.

You're not supposed to be travelling anyway, with these stupid lockdown rules.

No, but I'm glad that I did what I did when I did, though a day-trip as far as Lincolnshire would have been pushing my luck.

"Three Men in a Boat" is on my reading list. I've oft fantasised about exploring Oxford in Edwardian times, when all was picturesque, but even better in the 1880's. If time travel were possible, I could get a train from Ealing Broadway to Oxford the same as today.

Not so picturesque in the slums, and even the pretty places had hunger, hard work and disease. I'm going to London on Monday. No buses, so it will have to be the train.

1. Although poverty wasn't nice for the poor, it didn't make places any less picturesque. On the contrary, it's prosperity which has driven the redevelopment, modernisation and spoiling of places that were once picturesque.
2. Then you'll be on the Paddington train, passing through Ealing Broadway station. Shall I stand on the platform and wave a white handkerchief?

1. Agreed. I get very emotional when I think of the East End and across the river. There was a strange beauty to those terraced streets, despite the poverty, but so much of it has been demolished or invaded by high rise monstrosities.

2. Don't bother. Waving a hanky might be breaching covid regulations.

True, but it could be a good platform to protest about them.

Then you could try waving your mask instead.

I will wave it, declaiming: "Once more unto the breach!"

Sorry I missed you. The station names go past too fast for me to read them, and Ealing Broadway must be such a nondescript place that I didn't notice it.

The station may not be of great interest or beauty, but it's a very useful transport hub (it's on the GWR as well as two Underground lines, and has 9 platforms), and will be even more useful when the Elizabeth Line is eventually finished and running. But the Intercity trains pass through it and other intermediate stations at such high speed that if you're on a non-stopping train it's come and gone in a second. It's frustrating for those for whom Ealing Broadway is their destination, and (having just passed through it) have to get on another train at Paddington to get back there, even though it can be quicker to do that than to get on the stopping train at Slough. Pulling the communication cord a mile or so upline would force the fast train to stop here, at the cost of a fine. But if travelling in a group (only one member of which would need to pull the cord and incur the fine) the fine could be shared between them, and be a time-saving and cost-effective way of getting to Ealing Broadway.

I'll watch out more carefully next time, but I certainly enjoyed the trip better than Oxford Tube, and the bus selection at Paddington seems preferable. It also has the advantage of somewhere to sit under cover whilst awaiting the return service, better than waiting around outside at Marble Arch. The down side, of course, is that it's considerably more expensive, but the hospital (taxpayer) will be paying when I get my refund.