I’d hoped that my National Insurance Number would make it to the hostel while I was still there, but as time went on it started looking less and less likely, so I made some alternate plans to leave a forwarding address for the blasted thing. I’m told that the situation can be be both better and worse if you’re applying as a non Citizen; They don’t do the interview, and you just post off a form instead, but it takes forever to come back, and they can’t cope with the the idea that your address might change.
As it happens, I’d checked out of the Barmy Badger, and had left my bags there during the day while I got myself sorted for the train to Inverness. I’d even checked that they were OK with forwarding the mail to a friend, and that said friend was OK with opening the mail and letting me know the details.
Then the letter turned up in that day’s post, and they put it on my bags for me.
I like that hostel.
There were some foggy days as December ground on, though they sadly don’t show up all that well in photographs.
What does show up is the apparent civic art approval for a sunbeam, possibly due to rarity.
And also a pigeon perched on the tip of the thumb.
Most of the houses on the street the Badger’s on look like the ones below, an I’m guessing the floorplans are mirrored.
Then there’s this one, which looks to be part of a building on Earl’s Court Road, where the design brief was “Make it look like the rest of the buildings, but also like it’s from an alternate dystopian London, and if you can make it resemble a prison, that’d be awesome”.
The Badger slowly emptied in the lead-up to Christmas.
My understanding is that they were taking no bookings at all for the Christmas period, and the only folks remaining were going to be a few of the long-term residents, rattling around in a five-story hostel.
A number of the long term folks were from Europe, and so were heading off, or from elsewhere in the UK – The few remnants seemed to be Australians, with one South African, for whom heading home was impractical.
One of the ‘passing through for a while’ crowd headed for Poland a week or so back, to spend Christmas somewhere cheap and scenic, with snow.
Looking at the rain outside in Inverness, and the storm that’s heading towards pretty much the whole of the UK, … I’m not certain that he didn’t make the right call.
And then the train.
Tamsin & I took the Caledonian Sleeper to Inverness, and … It was pretty comfy, despite opting for seats over an actual sleeper compartment, and it being a sleeper means they give you oodles of time to get on board, which is always nice.
Surprisingly, I actually slept a lot. Woke up in a few stations, including Edinburgh at 4am or thereabouts.
Got to the Struy Guest House at … midmorning? … and while there was nobody there, our room/dorm was ready and the owner was kind enough to talk us through getting in, so we were able to deposit the entirely too heavy and numerous bags.