The adventure, continued

Of course, it wasn't my intention to remain exiled off-station - it would have been unkind for me to expect my family, worn out by their journey, to trek a further couple of hundred metres to find the car - not to mention the questionable security implications of where I would be leaving the car. So I drove back to the station, the approach road to which was now considerably busier than it was previously. I began to worry whether I would be back in the station in time to meet my train.

Eventually, I reached the barrier guarding the entrance to the short-stay car park. I pressed the button for a ticket, and was greeted with "out of fanfold tickets". There are moments in life when a threshold has been crossed - this was one of them. Eventually I found someone looking vaguely official, and told him of my predicament (shared by the lady driver of the car behind, of course). I went back to the car, and saw that the machine had another button marked "call for assistance". So I did - "intercom engaged". I tried again, and someone answered. "The machine is out of tickets," I cried. "Just drive through," was the answer. "There's a barrier in the way," I bellowed, politely. The barrier lifted, and I drove through.

We were not yet 'out of the wood'. As the lady driver and I realised, we would have difficulty leaving the car park, without a time-stamped ticket. We found a burly, uniformed man who was arguing with a couple who had evidently been caught out by the '£20 for every subsequent hour' rule. He told us to head for the station reception (we would recognise the place because of the goldfish), where our problem would be sorted out. Sure enough, a kind gentleman gave us what I would from then on refer to as 'get out of jail free' tickets. These were simple exit tickets - no need to pay. I discovered later on that this was standard procedure for the situation I was initially facing - if the train I was meeting was late, I could find my way to this office, and claim an exit ticket, which would avoid the £20 surcharge. Perhaps Network Rail should have considered printing this information somewhere that people could read it?

At 18:41, the advertised expected time of arrival of my family's train, I was standing opposite the platform where the arrivals board assured me that it would arrive. A train arrived. The passenegers alighted. My family were not among them. As I fumbled for my mobile phone to call my wife to ask her where (the hell) she was, the phone rang. She told me that they were stuck somewhere south of Kirkcaldy. "But your train has just arrived," I puzzled. Back to the station reception, who told me that her train was indeed stuck north of Inverkeithing, and that the train which I had seen arriving must have been a different train.