Two penguins stay calm and carry on: Best laid plans

Today was a good example of how days can go when you travel.
We had a plan to explore the Piccadilly and St. James area stopping at King's Cross on our way to have our train tickets to York confirmed and printed.

We easily made our way to Kings Cross-St Pancras. Then, following signs, wound our way out of tube station, through St Pancras rail station, across street and into the cavernous Kings Cross railway station. We stopped in travel information and were assured that we could just find any train ticket machine, enter our confirmation number, the credit card used, and the ticket would be printed. Well.... long long story short, the system didn't recognize our number, the ticket office couldn't find our name or ticket order (three different somewhat bored agents tried) and when we finally got to the bottom of it, found out the on-line order was through a booking agency who doesn't talk to the train line. No record of our ticket would ever show. We were finally advised to phone the agency (no office) and try to figure it out.

The difference between this and 1973 is that we were planning ahead, in no hurry and calm!
We looked outside the station, planning on carrying on to Piccadilly and were greeted with a downpour. That is the other difference. We have time, like a certain level of comfort and, let's face it, older! We chose to stop for lunch, ponder our options, then decided it was okay to just call off the day. Oh to just sit and read books (Sunne in Splendour in preparation for York), have an afternoon nap, get ticket mess sorted (on-line chat did it) and plan for another day.