Wednesday 07/01

I don’t want this to become a weather blog but I feel duty bound to report that the temperature at the moment is not only sub-zero but sub -5. According to reliable sources – a colleague I bumped into on reaching the office – the local temperature here this morning sunk as low as -11°.

OK back to the commuting. Again, a trouble-free return journey by public transport yesterday evening so perhaps the industrial action is finally petering out.

Different story this morning however. I got to Noisy le Sec RER at around 7.45, but the next scheduled train to Paris was not until 8.02. This implies the cancellation of at least 2 trains so something was clearly not right.
To avoid a 15 minute wait in Arctic conditions and to give myself some slim hope of actually getting to work, I took an RER train going the wrong way – out of Paris. This may seem counter-intuitive, but believe me it is the best tactic in such situations. At the ‘hub’ station of Val de Fontenay, and after a 10 minute wait, I was able to get a fast train going back into Paris – and past the still crowded platforms of the stations on the way in.
The alternative would have been less productive as I know from experience that I would never have been able to get on the ‘slow’ 8.02 train at Noisy and quite probably the one after that too.
Amazingly, and for the first time in weeks, I actually caught a train from St. Lazare to Bécon although it left late, was packed and crawled along for most of the way.
Total journey time = 90 minutes.