See this face?

That’s the face of a baby on a train. And my thumb, in the corner there. But mostly a baby. On a train.

And this is her FIRST TIME on a train, hence the occasion of recording the moment forever more with photographic equipment. She looks happy, yeah? Pretty excited? Keen to go places, see the world? Or, not the world, exactly, but maybe Severn Beach? Which is not a proper beach, despite the promising title, but somewhere fun to run around and get some fresh air and generally fark about for a bit before heading back home for lunch? Sounds good?

Yarp.

We, however, went to a place called St Andrews Road. The stop BEFORE Severn Beach. In my excitement – I spaffed too soon, prematurely, you might say – I made us get off the train a stop early, and we ended up in the direst place imaginable for anyone to be, let alone these city folk intent on seaside japes and, erm, some estuary-based larking about.

That St Andrews Road station is pretty much an industrial estate. By the estuary. With proper piles of dusty slag and massive puddles of toxic waste. Men in scuffed high-vis jackets trooping wearily to and fro between belching machinery. Giant croaking chimneys. A lonesome and seeping kebab van. Tumbleweed. Crows picking through the bones of a long-deceased buffalo. Scorched horizon. The train station itself is merely a slab in the ground. With a bench, and a bridge.

There is also, most helpfully, a sign saying which station it is. Somehow I missed that.

The next train that could take us to our intended destination – the fabled and wondrous and now totally legendary Severn Beach – was due in a mammoth TWO HOURS time. An industrial estate is no place to entertain a curious toddler for two hours. We’d end up being subjects of some horrific public safety video. There was nothing else to do, but wait for the train we’d just (very stupidly) alighted from to make its return journey and take us back into town.

What a farking wasted journey. All my fault. I am never going out ever again, ever. Unless it’s to the shop, and I don’t have to go near the estuary.

But Moo got to go on a train, and she loved it, so that’s OK.

How stupid have you been today? Not as stupid as me, I betcha.