13-May-2026
Today, we had to go and "retrieve our will"...
Sounds somewhat arcane, no? As though our willpower had dissolved, and needed to be magicked back by some esoteric process. As though all the problems in life could be solved if we could only retrieve our determination to do things from wherever it had bumbled off to...
Actually, as so often, it was all quite prosaic. The lawyer who'd drawn up our will wanted to charge to look after it for us. Not necessary, we thought. We'll avail ourselves of the opportunity to retrieve it, and house it for free...
Cue a little expedition to Port Erin:
We got off the bus at Port St Mary, and walked up over the hill to Port Erin. Beautiful light, and lots of sunshine, but a truly hellish wind was raking the south of the Island that day. We didn't linger on the prom, as maniacal gusts were hurling sand everywhere
Best to retreat to the Whistlestop for some of their awesome ginger cake (currently heading Nigel's ginger cake league table)
It was about 1415 by now, and we decided not to wait for the 1600 steam train, but catch the bus instead. Except we'd not walked much... So, undeterred by the fact we'd bought a picture from the charity shop, and therefore had to transport it, we thought we'd walk to Colby, and pick the bus up from there.
Now, the moral of this story is: Always take the steam train. Always. Don't even think about it. Just take the steam train...
The walk to Colby took us along a sheltered road where we went from being really pretty cold to being far too damn hot. This is a common problem at this time of year. Plus we were encumbered with said picture.
And the bus we'd expected didn't come... The service that should have been our bus was running late, and having reached Port Erin, took -- for some inexplicable reason -- the other route back to Douglas. So we had to wait for the next service.
Fortunately, Colby was looking very pretty:
We eventually got home (with picture and will). No earlier than if we'd taken the steam train...
Remember the take-home point: TRAVEL BY STEAM TRAIN!