Yesterday/today, I have had what one of my colleagues very politely called a “laptop drama”. Over the past few weeks I have noticed a marked deterioration in my focus, concentration and memory to the extent that when I wanted to make an appointment to see my GP yesterday, I had to ring up the surgery and admit that I couldn’t remember her name. Now that’s quite worrying for me as I am normally mentally very dextrous and able to juggle many many balls in the air without overlooking anything.
This is just one sign that all is not well in my head-space but whilst chatting to a colleague about it I did try and laugh it off and not get too wound up about my current poor state of mind. It’s no good worrying, it won’t help.
Things got worse however when I managed to leave my laptop in it’s rucksack on the train. I take 2 trains to and from work, and last night I boarded the Birmingham to Stansted airport train (I get off at Leicester) with my laptop. I put it up on the overhead racks as usual and travelled to Leicester where I got off the train on platform 2, crossed over to platform 3 and caught my second train to Market Harborough. At this stage I still hadn’t realised what I had (or hadn’t) done and I was oblivious to the fact that my laptop was happily winging its way across country to Stansted Airport.
When I got off the train at Market Harborough, I was walking along the platform towards the exit when it finally dawned on me. No laptop. No rucksack. Damn. It was too late to re-board the train and see if I had left it on there but deep down I knew that I had left it on number one train.
I got the number of Lost Property at Stansted but the train wasn’t due in until after it closed so there was nothing I could do until this morning.
I was about to start ringing around at 08.00am when I noticed a text message on my work Blackberry-this is unusual as I use my own phone for texting my friends and family so I opened it to see what I had missed. I had a very pleasant and welcome surprise. It was a text from the train guard on the Stansted train who had found my laptop sans owner and had taken it to lost property at Cambridge station. He found my business card and contacted my work mobile to let me know.
What a hero! A huge thank you to Mr T Wood of Cross Country trains (who will be receiving a thank you letter in due course) for saving my bacon.
So today, I have had to take a day off work to go and fetch my errant laptop from Cambridge. It has taken almost all day to travel there and back and I am exhausted but it could have been a lot worse. It could have been stolen. It could have been taken to Stansted lost property which would have taken me a lot longer to get to and cost me £120 in train fares instead of the £33.50 I spent today.
Thank goodness for small mercies and celebrate that there are some great, honest and caring people still around.
This restores my faith in human nature! Long may it continue 
