If I order a lamb steak I expect to be asked how I want it done

I had intended to be home today after a long three weeks that has taken me to Atlanta, Washington, Connecticut, Novia Rosetta Stone Language Scotia and finally Manchester and Llandrindod Wells. My original intent was to hire a car in Manchester and drive through the Welsh Marches to a workshop for various Welsh Local Authorities. From there a four hour drive would take me home. The marches road is one I know well as I drove it many a time with my father to help out with his duties as a veterinary surgeon, and then later a a solitary and strictly amateur palaeontologist with hammer and sample bags seeking out Trilobites. As it worked out I was simply too tired to risk the drive, and I needed time to write and catch up generally on email so I took the train. It was a good decision as I got a solid few hours of work in to Shrewsbury and then on the small single carriage train that plies its way between Shrewsbury and Swansea by way of multiple rural settlements and the odd market town, I fell into conversation with a scientist on his way to a conference on global warming. Overall the experience ended well, but with a less than salubrious overnight Llandrindod Wells is a former Victorian Spa town, fallen on hard times but now a centre for activity in Welsh Government. It stands between the industrial (or rather post industrial) and dominant south with a history of activism and internationalism that encompasses the Chartists and the Spanish Civil War, and the rural, welsh speaking north. A tension ever present in Welsh culture (read Emyr Humphries novels to understand this). I grew up in the north, but, through my mother and most of our active relations identified with the south so I have lived in both, understand both but am not fully a member of either tribe.Given that the last train leaves at 1530 and my workshop ended at 1600 I found a hotel and booked a room for the night. I will not name names on this occasion but suffice it to say that the Language Learning Software hotel represented a missed opportunity. It had large rooms and a spectacular Victorian architecture, it had once been great but now it was at best shabby. The bed required careful positioning to avoid the springs, there was a smell of damp in two corners of the room and the heating was the fist two thirds of Goldilocks, either too hot or too cold. There was a wireless internet, I could get a signal but not pick up an IP address. My request that they reboot the router met with blank refusal, their computer was connected so there were no problems as far as they were concerned, would I please go away so they could return to their gossip. The wall paper was peeling off the wall in the bar so I left to find somewhere to eat. In retrospect the cheerful fish and chip shop next to the station might have been the best location. I finally found a bistro with pretension but little else. If I order a lamb steak I expect to be asked how I want it done. Spiced lentil soup should taste of something other than spice (lentil possibly) and bread which has been bought in bulk, frozen then reheated in a microwave just before it is served lacks shall we say class. Back to the hotel, the springs and a fitful night's sleep in consequenceIn the morning as I had paid for breakfast I decided to eat it, another mistake. Cereal was available but the milk had been out in an open jug next to the overheating toaster for the last two hours. The "full breakfast" ha largely been decanted from tins and burnt. Coffee still had the granules from the nescafe jar floating in the pot. I fled for the station and the train French Learning Software to Swansea.From that point on I did not regret my choice to return by public transport in daylight. I had forgotten just how beautiful mid Wales is.