Oh, Please…

I try not to talk back to the radio too much – the little people inside it can’t hear you, you know – but an item this morning really got my goat. According to the review of the morning papers, one of the red tops (sorry, really can’t be bothered to give them the oxygen of publicity by linking to them and besides I was too busy ranting at the radio to remember which one it was) was complaining that a motorist had been fined for soaking a council worker by speeding through a puddle and had three points docked off his licence. Apparently, this just contributes to the sense of persecution that drivers are currently feeling. Sense of persecution? Drivers? How do they think pedestrians feel when they’ve just been drenched from head to foot in muddy puddle water by a now-departed driver? Pleasantly refreshed? In my opinion (and I admit I’m biased) drivers don’t get persecuted enough. But I am immensely cheered by the news (and it was news to me) that drivers can get points* for inconsiderate driving. But let’s not stop at soaking council workers and other pedestrians. When the tarrif of penalties are drawn up, I hope the following crimes against pedestrians can be taken into account:

1. Taking advantage of timidity on the part of people using zebra crossings to accelerate as you approach them so they don’t dare exercise their right of way - 3 points.
2. Creeping across crossings in nose-to-tail traffic so that when the little green man finally does come on, the route is completely blocked by car drivers wearing their ‘pedestrian? what pedestrian?’ blinkers and we have a choice between walking in front and getting run over or walking behind and choking on your exhaust – 2 points with an extra bonus point for gunning your engine when the pedestrian’s right in front of you
3. Turning into a side road while a pedestrian is attempting to cross it without first checking whether the poor sod was intending to commit suicide that day or was just going about their normal business & assuming that the car drivers actually knew their Highway Code – 3 points, or 4 if you then hooted to get the pedestrian out of your way.

Come on Tony Blair. You know this makes sense. More sense than banning drinking on trains, anyway.

* and what do points mean? Disqualification! So you can join the rest of us poor sods on the pavement and see how you like it then.

All Very Mysterious

Glimpsed in passing this morning: an elderly man on the staircase on the first floor of a block of flats, winching up a number of shopping bags with the aid of a rope. Below him, a woman in her fifties with more shopping bags, seemingly waiting for him to pass the rope down.

What can it all mean? Extreme measures against bird flu? A hostage situation? Or simply a prank by the senior classes to keep the rest of us baffled and bemused?

Reasons to be Cheerful …

 One good thing about not living in Hackney any more is that I don’t have to witness the replacement of the routemaster on the 38 route with one of the dreaded bendy buses. Today was the last day the old buses were to run and from tomorrow the people of Hackney will have to risk spontaneous combustion, slowness and total ridicule by riding on a bendy bus.

I’ve already blogged about routemasters and I don’t wish to repeat myself on the subject. Nobody really wants TfL to stick with what are basically obsolete technology forever. Of course the routemasters have to be replaced eventually before they grind to a halt in a black cloud of diesel fumes. And maybe the open platform isn’t such a great idea when used by the drunk, the elderly or the plain clumsy. But they should be replaced by buses, real buses, London buses: double decker buses. Not by some bastard love child of a people mover and a train, a minibus with delusions of grandeur. And this is not some tourism thing, that can be sorted out by sprucing up a few remaining routemasters and sending them around the sights. Every London child should be able to climb up the stairs of a proper London bus and enjoy the view from the best seat in the house: the Drive the Bus Seat. And if some of those London children happen to be 36 year-old disgruntled commuters, then they should have that right too.

And besides, you could never get trapped on a 38…

Credit where credit’s due department: I clipped the photo of the 38 logo and its little heart from a photo on this site where you can see pictures of all the 38 buses in the world (go on, you know you want to). Guess which one is prettiest? Not for long though.

An open letter …

… to the man who sat next to me on the train this morning.

Your bag does not get a seat.
It doesn’t matter if there was a spare seat when you sat down, your bag doesn’t get a seat.
It doesn’t matter if you fully intended to move the bag if someone indicated they wanted to sit where your bag was sitting, your bag still doesn’t get a seat.
It doesn’t matter if your bag was carrying the crown jewels, or if your bag is your best friend and you take it everywhere with you and call it snookums, your bag still doesn’t get a seat.
No matter how many right-on ‘make poverty history’ bangles your bag might have been wearing it still doesn’t get a seat.

It’s a bag. This was rush hour. It has a perfectly nice luggage rack to sit in. Or it can sit at your feet or, if you want it to be really comfy, on your lap. It doesn’t get a seat.

And it especially doesn’t get a seat on the seat opposite me so that it looks as though I was the low grade moron who thought their bag should get a seat.

There. I hope that has cleared up any confusion that may have arisen.

Yours faithfully
Disgruntled Commuter

Two Legs Bad … Two Wheels Good

Disgruntled commuter is going over to the dark side. I’ve bought all the kit, I’ve worked out my route and I’ve ticked the organ donor box on the GP registration form: I am now ready to be a cyclist in London. The truth is, my legs are tired from walking twenty minutes to Vauxhall every morning, and twenty minutes back again, and my lungs are tired of breathing in the lovely mixture of fumes from the cars. I used to cycle regularly from Ealing Broadway to Kew and I enjoyed the shot of adrenaline that a daily dicing with death or dismemberment* brought on. Coffee just doesn’t deliver the same kick in the morning. And please note that I do not wear lycra, I do not run red lights, I do not cycle and talk on my phone at the same time (haven’t got the breath…) and I only cycle very slowly and politely on the pavement when I have to.

As I had a day off I thought I’d do a trial run, see how much time I would save. The figures break down like this:
Farting about with my lock and lights and bag releasing my bike from the railings at home: 5 minutes
Cycle to train station: 5 minutes
Farting about with lock and lock extension and lights and bag at Vauxhall: 5 minutes
Grand total of time saved over walking: 5 minutes

Oh well. As I found out on the North London Line, the minutes have a way of adding up…

* If any faint hearted parent types are reading this, please note the usual amount of artistic licence applies.

Kew Bridge is Falling Down*

I see this sign every morning and every evening and it never fails to bemuse. ‘In the event of spotting a defect on this structure, please ring (gives number) between the hours of 9:30 and 4:30 Monday to Friday’

So that’s all right then.

* but only during working hours

Bank Error in your Favour

It was deja vu all over again for me this evening as I wedged myself onto a Silverlink train to go to Highbury & Islington and onwards north into the wilds of zone 6. It’s been less than two months but already the memories have faded as to just how unpleasantly crowded those trains could get, even in the middle of half term. It took over a minute just to get off the train at Highbury and I wasn’t even the last one out of the train by a long way. And the train was late of course – about 9 minutes without even trying.

On the way back we left ourselves plenty of time to get to the station as we were going via the supermarket. Sod’s law being fully operational, this meant we got to the train station about 20 minutes before the next scheduled train (there’s never a queue at the checkouts when you want one, is there? – in fact there was tonight, but someone let us go in ahead of him because we only had one item. It would have been churlish to refuse). Fortunately the train before was 20 minutes late so we got a train 10 minutes earlier than we had planned and saved ourselves a long boring wait at the station to boot. So total time wasted tonight? -1 minutes. Doesn’t seem right, somehow.

Flashers Beware

Pulling out of Waterloo station on the Bakerloo line today we heard the following announcement:

‘Passengers are reminded that flash photography is not allowed anywhere on the London Underground network. This is because the drivers’ eyes are adjusted to the dark in the tunnels and a flash can temporarily blind us causing delays. If you really want photographs of dusty old trains, may I recommend the London Transport museum – nearest stop Covent Garden. Alternatively, you could get a life.’

Something tells me this was not one of the official pre-recorded train announcements.

Strangers on a Train

A little moment of light relief that eased an otherwise dark and dismal morning commute.

I was sitting in one of the sets of seats where a row of three is facing another row of three (do these have a name? Three by twos?). When I got on a chap was already sitting by the window sitting with his back to the engine, so I chose the middle seat of the row facing the engine (Rule 1: never sit directly opposite someone if you can avoid it) and another bloke chose the aisle seat opposite (Rule 2: never sit next to someone if you can leave at least one seat between you). We had therefore achieved the correct configuration for three Brits who don’t know each other sitting in six seats. At Clapham Junction it looked like the train was going to get busier so I moved up next to the window to leave space for more people to sit down (Rule 3: it is better to sit opposite someone than next to someone). But then the guy who was sitting opposite me decided it would be better to sit facing so he moved to the aisle seat on my row (Rule 4: it is always better to sit facing the direction of travel than away from it). This then freed up his seat so the guy on the aisle with his back to the engine moved to the window seat (Rule 5: it is better to have a window than an aisle) leaving his seat free. After all this manouevring a new passenger sat down in the recently vacated aisle seat and commented cheerily ‘Musical chairs!’
‘And you can choose the music for the next round,’ someone replied.

And then we all buried our heads hurriedly in our newspapers in case anyone tried to turn it into a prolonged conversation. (Rule 6: you can make a joke if you have to, but don’t make a habit of it)

So now you know.

Mummy, what are Lettings Agents For?

I wasn’t the only thing to get soaked last night. I woke at 3am this morning to find that the torrential rain had found its way through our roof and into the spare bedroom carpet. Naturally I then spent the next hour lying awake fretting about it and blogging furiously in my head … So apologies in advance for the places where this tips over into hysteria. Trust me, it’s a lot more toned down than the original post was.

The Erudite Baboon, in a recent post, was worrying that his letting agents might notice that his flatmate had changed room, name and nationality between the beginning and end of his tenancy. He should ask himself one question before worrying further: is the new flatmate in fact a dusty light fitting? If she is not, then he is safe; the letting agents will not notice. A few weeks after we moved into our new house we got the check out report and inventory for the property. Here are a few of the things that had been missed by the letting agency:

A whole extra fridge.
Three large ugly pieces of furniture.
The fact that the garden (described as ‘in need of a sweep’) had turned into a buddleia jungle with a rampant passion flower vine that was not only taking over the gardens of the three adjoining properties, but was over the roof and beginning to threaten the television aerial of the next door house.
The fact that the smoke alarm had been disabled.
A leak in the drain trap of the kitchen sink that had stained the cupboard underneath it (described as ‘clean’) with filthy washing-up water.
A hole in the roof.

Here is what they had noticed:
Dusty light fittings
Marks on the wall
The damage to the ceiling paper where the leak had obviously come through before.

A colleague at work who lets out his old flat was mortified to find that his agents had docked 40 quid off the deposit of his otherwise perfect outgoing tenant as a charge for cleaning dirty light fittings. Is this some kind of a fetish of theirs? Who could overlook a fridge and see some dust on a light bulb? Who would charge 12% or more of the rent to look after someone’s property and not think to check whether the leak that had caused obvious water damage had actually been repaired? There are dozens and dozens of professional letting agents in London, yet I’ve never heard of a single one that wasn’t completely incompetent at the most basic aspects of their job.

We do, at least, have a decent managing agent for our house who, now we’ve moved in, regularly performs such miracles as: answering a phone, returning an email, sending a bloke round. I’m worried that she’ll turn out to be a sixth former on work experience who will soon be spirited back into school and replaced by the sort of workshy malcontent we had to deal with when we were moving in. Meanwhile, if you’re a home owner thinking of letting out anything more valuable than a beachhut in Baghdad, be afraid. Be very afraid. And then get a friend to manage it for you.