Earlier today, it occurred to me that I'm losing half a day each week to commuting. Once I've taken into account the walk to the bus stop in the morning, waiting for the bus, travelling to the station, waiting for the train, travelling to Birmingham and finally walking to the office, around an hour has passed. If I'm lucky enough to get to the station in time for the fast train (and not the slow local stops-at-every-station one) then it's around a 45 minute journey but that only happens about once or twice a week if I'm lucky.

Travelling home usually involves me catching the local-stopping train and walking from Canley because that's actually quicker than going to Coventry station and waiting ages to catch a bus home from there.

So normally I lose about 2 hours each day to travelling or waiting to travel. Every now and again though, something goes wrong, such as last night. A train had broken down at Hampton-in-Arden and blocked the line to Coventry. My train had to wait at Birmingham International. I decided rather than wait around in the blazing hot sun, I would risk the bus back. I caught the no. 900 which slowly took me (and a load of other people who didn't fancy waiting for the trains to start moving again) around Meriden and Allesley Village before eventually dropping us off at Pool Meadow. Rare good timing meant that a no. 12 was waiting to leave, which takes me to the end of my road. Even so, I was over an hour late getting home.