Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre

Here’s another ‘what’s the difference’ quiz – this time for all the adults out there, and particularly those adults who drive very large cars for the transportation of one small child to school in the morning.

Drag your mind, if you will, off the school run for a second and ask yourself what the difference between the following two things:

    
(Hint: only one of them is for parking in)

Next time you’re on the approach to Kew Bridge and wishing to turn right into gridlocked traffic, don’t inch forward so that you’re trapped between the yellow box and the pedestrian crossing (that’s the one on the right, by the way). And as the pedestrian crossing is not a parking space please don’t try and reverse your monstrous car into it when the lights turn against you and you’re trapped out there in no-mans-land. Or, if you really must (because its bull bars are blocking traffic flow across the bridge), how about looking in your mirrors before doing so? That way, if you’re really lucky you might _see_ the pedestrian before you back into her and she won’t have to leap back onto the traffic island to save her miserable skin. And, even better, you will also see the two very amused police officers in the car behind before they book you for dangerous driving.*

*sorry, the last part is pure fantasy on my part. There were two police officers in the car but they didn’t book the driver. In fact, they were also breaking traffic rules and had stopped partially blocking the crossing and the bike reservoir behind it. But I can dream.

The Real Bird Menace

I was trawling around yesterday on the TfL website looking for clues to the mystery of the Great Underground Chocolate Machine Mystery (everybody’s got to have a hobby, after all). I didn’t find any answers but I did find out lots of interesting information such as the fact that my old friend the North London Line will be taken over by Transport for London who are planning to run better trains and more frequent services – not exactly the world’s most challenging set of targets but welcome news for the poor sods who still have to use it – as long as they can hang on until 2007.

But that wasn’t what I wanted to write about today. I wanted to write about the great pigeon menace. Also buried in the TfL news section was a report on road deaths with the good news that ‘deaths and serious injuries’ of cyclists (along with all other categories of ‘deaths and serious injuires’) fell in the first six months of 2005. Hoorah. Digging a little deeper into the fine print I discovered that while serious injuries fell (and you can get the full story here if you’re as sad an individual as I am) deaths of cyclists rose by 175% from 4 to 11, which explains the strange lumping together of deaths with serious injuries – there’s quite a difference to the individual concerned, I think you’ll agree. Now there could be many reasons for this rise, none of which the report goes into, such as more cyclists on the road, or more motorists making sure to reverse back over any seriously injured cyclists that they do hit to finish them off, but one factor which I bet nobody’s taken into account is the rise (or lack of rise) of the pedestrian pigeon.

Pigeons in London, who presumably have their own pigeon targets for reduced CO2 emissions and reductions in airborne-related accidents, are now almost entirely ground-based birds. They reserve flying for emergency situations and for the rest of the time get around on foot (or feet if they’re lucky enough to have two), occasionally the getting on the District line at Earl’s Court for longer journeys. This means that they are continually walking under the wheels of my bike, realising it’s an emergency, attempting to take off at the last minute, and threatening to end up flying right up into my bike.Now car drivers can just drive over them, but cyclists risk a face full of pigeon – not the most delicious of prospects – so I find myself actually stopping for the stupid birds or cycling round them as they potter about in the middle of the road wondering which bit of vomit to eat next. This has got to be a traffic hazard. Either we teach the little buggers the green cross code, or I’m going to have to get a sticker for the back of my bag: ‘I brake for vermin’.

As for the other feathered peril we’re all supposed to be panicking, or not panicking (I have lost track of which) about – there was no sign of it in St. James’s Park this weekend. People may be shunning chicken and eggs and stockpiling Tamiflu, but they’re still letting their toddlers feed the ducks. When starving Pochards march on Parliament to demand the resumption of bread supplies, we’ll know the stiff upper British lip has wobbled at last.

Normal Service Resumed

Ah yes, humanity is back to swamp gas on the great scale of things

There’s not much that protects us from the elements on Kew Bridge station. There are any warm clothes we may have been foresighted enough to wear. There’s the warm glow of knowing that we’re on our way home from work. And then there’s a little bus-stop type shelter that a fortunate few can squeeze themselves into away from the rain and the wind. Only make that just the rain, now, because I noticed this evening that all of the glass in the little windows had been smashed and removed, leaving only a few crumbs on the platform. Given the wind that’s been whistling in direct from Siberia recently, this was not an improvement.

So thanks, guys, or gals, whoever you may be. And if we soon find ourselves inundated with Mozart, I’ll know who to blame. Meanwhile SouthWest Trains might want to think about actually manning this station occasionally, if only to keep their valuable hardware intact.

Gruntled*

Occasionally, just occasionally, something happens which makes me revise my opinion of humanity from one notch above swamp gas to something slightly more evolved like, oh I don’t know, plankton. Shortly after blogging yesterday, just as I was about to brave the north wind and Tescos in order to keep the other half in chocolate biscuits, I realised that at some point during my travels my wallet had got itself lost, stolen or strayed. There followed the usual nightmare of card cancellations and the dawning realisation that it wasn’t just my cards in there, it was a fair old chunk of my life including driver’s licence, Open water diver qualification, frequent flyer cards, library cards: the works. None of which would be easy to replace. I went to work this morning resigned to spending half the day on the internet or the phone to various helplines. Instead I found a post-it note with a message: I’d left my wallet in a shop (actually the shop that had sent me off on yesterday’s wild goose chase, but never mind, they are officially forgiven) and it was safely in their till waiting for me to pick it up.

Phew.

Of course, my cards are still cancelled, but given the way we’ve been spending recently, that’s probably no bad thing. The main thing is I can still leap into a hire car, collect air miles on a flight to the tropics, go scuba diving and then enjoy a relaxing evening in a hammock with a dozen of Lambeth’s finest library books whenever I want. The fact that I have done none of these things for the last half-a-dozen years is neither here nor there. It’s nice to know I can.

* Given that the title of my last entry was a fate-tempter too far for the local weather gods – I got rain, snow, sleet, more rain and a north wind that cut like a knife and that was just on the way in to work (it was just sleet, wind, rain and ice on the way back) – what the fates hold after today’s post, I shudder to think. Still, live life on the edge, that’s what I say. Bring it on …

Spring Has Sprung (Seasonally Adjusted)

I had a day off today so in order to keep my levels of suffering more or less stable I decided to go for a run (damn these Protestant genes of mine … why did I have to get a full dose of the Work Ethic, without any of the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to compensate? Still, I suppose if this body does ever get resurrected, at least it won’t be with cellulite on its thighs) and then ended up taking a grand total of four buses and one tube around town on various errands. Now it was nice to be up and about so early and still be in daylight after the gloom of the last few months, but I was not impressed to see that some of the trees on the South Bank still have their fairy lights up and shining away in the morning drizzle. It may not quite be spring yet, but last time I looked it was nowhere near Christmas. And it wasn’t just the South Bank either – once you start looking there are stray trees still lit up all around London, day and night, pumping out as much carbon monoxide through their light bulbs as they can hope to absorb through their leaves (and no, that does not make them carbon neutral). Regular readers will know I’m not a fan of fairy lights at the best of times* but burning them in February is just insane. How long will they stay up? Till March? June? Till the last bulb has burned out sometime in November? Either the council has forgotten them or they are simply trying to cover everything from Diwali to Chinese New Year with one set of decorations. And don’t talk to me about festive. It’s February. It’s supposed to be miserable.

*i.e. December. For about a day. Maybe for an hour on Christmas Eve. But only if it’s snowing

Hopalonga SouthWest Trains

These past couple of weeks there has been a guy with a broken leg getting on my train in the morning at Vauxhall. I try and keep an eye out for him because I can be a little, well, focused when getting on the train in the morning and I don’t want it to be me that barrels him out of the way in my haste to get the best seat. He’s probably fortunate (apart from the broken leg part, of course) that he gets on at Vauxhall where the train still has a fair selection of seats and not at Clapham Junction where it’s every commuter for themselves – although at least there the crutches would come in handy as weapons. This morning he chose to sit opposite me (after a bit of rearrangement from some other passengers so he could get the aisle seat – see, we’re not all terrible people) in the three-by-two beside the doors, where he had room to stow his crutches and stretch out his cast for the journey. Was this the disabled priority seat on the carriage? It was not. The disabled priority seats are airline style – mmm, handy with a broken leg – and not even the closest to the door. It took me weeks to even notice they were there, because who on earth would put the disabled seats miles from the door? Even Silverlink wasn’t that stupid.

I would like to have been a fly on the wall when that particular piece of insanity was decided on. What was the reasoning? Oh, stick the cripples at the back where they won’t upset the other passengers? Give them space to stretch out and they’ll just leave their crutches lying around cluttering up our nice trains? Give me strength. Or rather, give them a week in a cast with some crutches, and see how they like it then.

Revenge of the Pod People

Now that I have become conscious of the soothing classical music being played to calm the troubled breasts of the users of Vauxhall tube station, it’s beginning to seriously get on my nerves. Partly this is because the reproduction is horrible and tinny (has one of the station staff’s phones been commandeered to play the music?) and partly because this morning it was some choral number that just sounded unseasonably Christmassy but mostly because even if it was the most sublime symphony of Mozart being played on Bose Surround Sound, it would take more than that to mitigate the effect of being stuck in the queue for the only working Oyster card machine while a passenger and a member of staff argued the toss about whether or not the passenger had ‘touched out’ at the end of his last journey. (‘Yes I did’, ‘no you didn’t', ‘well I did’, ‘but the card has an incomplete journey on it’, ‘Yes but I touched out’, ‘no you didn’t', ‘yes I did’ … and D.C. al coda, or until beaten to a bloody pulp by the next person in the queue, whichever comes sooner).

The more I think about this classical music lark, the less sense it makes to me. Look around you the next time you’re at the sort of gathering where antisocial behaviour takes place – bus stops, school playgrounds, countryside marches – and ask yourself what those dangly things are coming out of the ears of the likely trouble makers. That’s right. Headphone wires. It doesn’t matter how much Mozart Muzac you play at them THEY CAN’T HEAR IT. They can barely hear their friends, that’s why they shout so much. The only people left who will be able to hear it are the dwindling band of non-pod people such as myself, and we’re not generally the ones setting fire to things. Unless, of course, I missed the government announcement whereby every ASBO comes with a court issued iPod, locked and loaded with the latest hits from Classic FM, to be welded permanently into the offenders’ ears.

And speaking of the pod people – take a close look at the John Donne Portrait the National Portrait Gallery wants to buy and see if you can see what I see. A man ahead of his time, or what?

The Best Things in Life Are … Woah, How Much?

No need for visiting tourists in London to take an expensive tour bus – the number 3, departing handily close to our house, takes in Westminster bridge (Earth has not anything to show more fair), the Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar Square and more assorted ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples than even the most demanding five year old can desire. We had the best seats in the house (at least, after the girl who was on the front seat of the top deck got tired of sharing it with a wriggling child and gracefully gave way) and we got to press the button and stop the bus and everything. And all for only … well, for me with a travel card it was free. For the other half with an Oyster pay-as-you-go it was 80p. For Disgruntled Niece (still more or less laptop sized) and Disgruntled Nephew (crucially, too short for his head to be spotted by the driver as he bolted onto the bus*) it was also free. But Disgruntled Sister and Brother-in-law, oysterless and proffering cash it was �1.50. Each. For a single. Cor blimey. Still, I suppose if you don’t have that sinking feeling you’re being ripped off by the locals, it hardly feels as though you are on holiday.

*I did try to pay for him, honest, but was wearily waved aside.

Eye Queue Test

Ah the London Eye – possibly the only tourist attraction in London that Londoners will voluntarily go on, partly because it is big game of ‘you can see my house from here’ but also because it is, in the end, quite cool.

Not so cool that they haven’t tried their best to ruin the experience, of course. And they’ve done it in the time honoured fashion of trying to make it more like a flight. They can’t strap us in to uncomfortable thrombosis-inducing seats, and even they haven’t thought to install little screens in the capsule yet (surely only a matter of time) but they have managed to introduce the essential element of all airport-related nastiness the endless queue and its close cousin the arbitrarily early arrival time.

I booked our ‘flights’ – yes, they really call it that – for 5:30 so we could watch the sun setting over London. The non-refundable, non-rearrangeable tickets were to be picked up at five and I arrived a few minutes before that in a sweat of anxiety because the rest of my party were caught up in traffic and were last heard of on the mobile announcing they had just turned onto Oxford Street and did I know the way to Waterloo? So I checked at the information desk – would it be okay if they were a little late? What should I do? The answer – just relax, the tickets were valid until eight.

Obviously I was relieved, but also a little annoyed. Nowhere on the site where I booked had I seen any indication that we could show up to three hours after the stated time. All that wasted fretting and contingency planning and anxious pacing up and down just wasted. Just like all those two or three hours early we ‘have’ to turn up at the airport to catch our flights (the latest time is actually forty minutes before – but that’s only if you read the really fine print). They don’t want to wait for us, so they make us wait for them. And of course the five thirty time was the time to start queuing, not the time to ‘fly’.

Ah well, we made it in the end. The sun had just set as we started to rise over London in the velvety dusk. London was lit up and the traffic and trains were reduced to so many sparkling points of light. Not a sight for any self-respecting Disgruntled Commuter to confess to seeing. Normal service resumes on Monday.

My Small Child Hell

Put it this way – the tube journey was the easy part. (Top tip from a five-year-old: not got a seat on the tube? Try saying ‘but I want one’ in a one-step-from meltdown voice and see if a nice man will give up his. It worked for Disgruntled Nephew, but I’m not so sure I’ll get away with it when I’m on my own.)

No, the first real hint of trouble came after the tube journey when we headed down the subterranean passage that leads to the Natural History Museum and encountered what appeared to be small child rush hour. Ah. Half term. Bad move. Imagine the worst rush hour crowd you have ever been in. Now slow it down to half speed, add an element of total randomness, put half of it in pushchairs and the other half running around at knee height and you have got the picture. Was there a strange absence of children in all other parts of the country today? If you’re missing one, try looking in South Ken – I think that’s where they all ended up.

Still, we learned a lot. We learned that people on tube trains don’t wave back. We learned that the people who put the pedestrian crossings in at the Albert memorial have a sick sense of humour (why else would you put in a nice ramp on one side, and then two steps up to the kerb on the other side?). We learned that between Lambeth North and South Kensington there are approximately 1,230,937 steps. And we learned that the only way to avert a total meltdown is with ice.

Ice cream, that is. Yep, even in February.