Still considering joining you for once, but just for a change (!) the journey to the smoke is complicated by acts of replacement bus- fortunately only as far as Havant, rather than somewhere in the middle of the line that takes an hour's ride and probably means a missed train. The crack of dawn option involves getting on the road about half-six and twenty minutes waiting at Woking before eventually getting into Waterloo at 9.25. The (slightly) less painful but later alternative gets into Waterloo at 9.48. There are no fast/semi-fast services whatsoever, so they're all nearly two hours. As I'm sure you can appreciate, my enthusiasm is somewhat waning!