Lane Discipline

It’s always exciting for me (I should get out more) to have a different commute for a change. Today I had to get to South Kensington for a conference which meant a walk along the river and across the bridge to Westminster and a short hop westwards on the tube. I was feeling rather pleased with the prospect – at least until I got to Westminster and found the station staff there gleefully slapping ‘Part Suspended’ and ‘Severe Delay’ signs up against all available lines.  Fortunately I’d left plenty of time and after a very crowded few stops and the scary sight of about four million people standing on the platform at Victoria (what happens if someone shouts fire?) things eased up and I got a seat and everything.

On the way back over Westminster Bridge with Big Ben bonging gently in the background, I realised there was another down side to the journey. It’s a great view, as I believe Wordsworth may have mentioned, and they’ve helpfully blocked off one side of the bridge so that everyone – joggers, commuters, strollers, poetry lovers and most importantly tourists - is funnelled onto the other. Where the tourists promptly block everybody by attempting to photograph each other in front of said view. One chap this evening was going for a particularly arty shot of his girlfriend* by crouching down low and getting plenty of space between his camera and her. A whole pavement’s worth of space, in fact. Which left everyone else with the choice of waiting for him to finish or inadvertently adding themselves to his composition. Obviously you don’t want to ruin someone’s photograph, but on the other hand, neither do you want to stand around while he fiddles with f-stops so you end up doing a sort of apologetic ducking motion as you pass through, usually at the exact moment the shutter goes. Some tourists’ photo albums must be full of apparently bowing locals, with their other halves gurning away in the background.

I think they need to take a leaf out of the road planners’ book and give people their own lanes, particularly in central London. Photography, strolling and poetry appreciation on one side, walking on the other. Joggers may need a lane of their own, especially the kind that run three abreast and step aside for nobody. That may not leave much room for the cars, of course … but I think I can live with that.

* not that kind of arty, this is a family blog

April Fool

Another day, another faintly disturbing email from London Underground – this time from one Bob Thorogood, purporting to be the general manager of the District Line, letting me know personally that bits of the Silverlink and District Line will be closed for nine days starting on April 1st. He’s signed it and decorated it with a little animated pneumatic drill and everything. While not as grovelling as the one I got when the Northern Line was closed it’s nice to know they still care, although if they read the blog more carefully they’d know I haven’t used that line for several months now. I suppose this is all down to the fact that my oyster card while not, apparently, being registered in the real world (i.e. I can’t put a monthly season card on it) does somehow carry on a parallel cyberspace existence (perhaps it has its own blog?) where it is registered on the internet, entitling me to apologetic emails from Bob and his friends.

Bob (He did address me formally as Ms Commuter, but I feel I know him already) also threw in a helpful link to this leaflet with alternative travel arrangements such as a ‘replacement bus service’ (surely this is an oxymoron up there with ‘military intelligence’ – they’re telling you to allow ‘up to 30 minutes extra’ for an ordinarily 10 minute journey. What kind of a replacement is that?) and using SouthWest trains. Unfortunately, SouthWest Trains, getting into the swing of things, will also be having engineering works on the Richmond line on both affected weekends, and, as a special bonus, the Waterloo and City line will be closing that week too. So, fancy a trip out west on April Fools day? Think again. West London is closed. Please try later.

Choices, Choices

The nice thing about the train I get these days is that I generally have choice of seats.

The bad thing about the train I get these days is that so does everybody else.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I want to deny my fellow passengers a choice of anything. It’s just that they take so flipping long to decide. Picture the scene. The train comes in and we can see through the windows that there are a few seats still empty. Now I can instantly rank any of these seats in order of preference, based on their intrinsic permanent properties such as facing vs non-facing, airline style vs actually comfortable, as well as their contingent properties arising during this particular journey (proximity of other people, schoolchildren, dickwits on phones etc)* so if I manage to get to the door first, I can move unhesitatingly to my first preference seat without so much as a nanosecond’s delay. Yet what usually happens is that I get to the door second, behind someone who gets onto the train, moves to the head of the aisle where no-one can get past them and then stops dead, torn like Buridan’s Ass between two equally attractive bales of hay. While they muse upon the philosophical dilemma in front of them, I am blocked and can only watch as other, faster, commuters who got in the other door perform flanking manouevres and nab all the best seats. This at least breaks the mental deadlock in our friend the Ass, but I end up squished into a backward facing seat between a schoolchild on a mobile phone and the fat guy with the personal hygiene problem.

I’m working on patenting a mobile phone based seat selection device using my algorithm honed through years of commuting, which I will be handing out free at a platform near me as soon as I’ve ironed out some of the bugs (or indeed, actually programmed it). Meanwhile here’s a thought for those people who have difficulty deciding what seat to sit in. It’s a seat. You’ll be sitting in it for about 20 minutes. It’s not your future spouse, difficult career decision or ethical dilemma involving a car load of nuns and a suicide bomber. JUST PICK ONE and sit in it. Thank you. And good night.

*It’s possible I’ve thought about this too much. Forgive me, I spend a lot of time on trains

Where’d it Go?

That whooshing noise you hear? It’s the sound of another weekend disappearing into the past without apparently touching the sides. It didn’t help that this weekend they made it a whole hour shorter (why the weekend? Why can’t the clocks go forward half way through Monday afternoon? I’d vote for that) but it seems like one minute it’s Friday evening and I’m locking up my bike, thinking there’s plenty of time to sort out the half detached mudguard and renew my season ticket, and the next thing I know it’s Monday morning, it’s dark, my watch claims, implausibly, that it’s time to get up and some blasted blackbird is singing happy blackbird songs outside my window.

Yet I must have done something over the weekend because when I tried to leave the house I found my bike bag in the bathroom, my oyster card in my fleece pocket instead of my work jacket, my bike lock draped over a chair, my phone feebly demanding to be fed and my wallet missing. And somebody’s changed all the clocks. And I’m late for my train. And of course whatever the weekend festivities were, they didn’t include renewing my season ticket or fixing my bike so I ended up pelting down to Vauxhall having retrieved most of my belongings (wallet was in my bag where I left it …) with one mudguard flapping merrily in the gale and the strut it was supposed to be attached to forming a sort of Boudicea type scythe for kneecapping unwary passers-by with.

I think they should break us in gently with British Summer time, I really do. And I’m really sorry about the kneecaps, I hope you get better soon …*

*no pedestrians were harmed in the making of this blog

Because Them’s the Rules

Look, we’ve all done it. Inadvertantly ticked somebody off because of a moment’s inattention or because we didn’t know or forgot how to behave. On Friday I was dribbling home on my bike thinking far too much about how nice it was not to be absolutely freezing, and not enough about little things like signalling my turn (hey, I was turning into my street, of course I was going to turn, everybody should know that, right?) and caused a moment’s inconvenience to another cyclist (the only other person about). I apologised, he said something rude, I muttered something worse and there it was: that Friday feeling, leaning up against the wall, gone.

It’s a nasty, rotten, dirty, grey, pigeon infested world out there in London, even in spring. And that’s why we Londoners have rules for living by – to make our own lives that little bit less rubbish, and to avoid spreading the pain further than we can help it. But sometimes it seems like people have forgotten. So here, as a public service, is a reminder of the Urban Rules for Living.

1. The ‘don’t speak to strangers’ rule doesn’t include the words ‘Excuse me’, ‘Thanks’, and ‘Sorry’
2. It also doesn’t apply when walking around with a Sunday paper*. I don’t know why this should be but it is.
3. If somebody breaks a rule and then apologises spontaneously for it, try and be a bit ungrudging in accepting. You can always sue them later.
4. Nobody wants to hear your music
5. Or your opinions
6. Or your half of a phone conversation
7. There are two sides to every person – a front and a back. If you don’t know what’s going on behind yours, take a look. Someone could be trying to get past. Or steal your wallet. Either way, it’s worth the odd glance. Just a thought.
8. Your bag is in the way. It just is. If you can’t move it, at least look apologetic about it.
9. You’re not in so much of a hurry that it’s worth knocking someone out of the way to get to your destination. You think you are, but you’re not. And if you do send a little old lady sprawling on the ground you’re going to have to stop and pick her up and dust her down anyway, and that will make you even later.
10. If you’re having a bad transport day, the chances are that the poor transport employee on the platform is having an even worse one. Here’s a little tip: if they’re in uniform and accessible to your wrath, the chances are it’s not their fault. The people whose fault it is are sitting in suits in a nice office on the ninth floor. Don’t make somebody’s crappy job even crappier by taking it out on them.

That’s it. Now remember that tomorrow everyone will have got out of bed an hour earlier than they’re used to and grumpy won’t even begin to describe it. So it’s more important than ever that you stick to this don’t get cross code, keep your cool and get home again unscathed.

*as long as it’s Sunday. If you’re one of those people who reads bits of the Sunday papers all week on the train, then nobody’s going to talk to you ever. You’re wierd. Sorry

Gimme (rather less) Shelter

This morning I decided to stand at the other end of the platform at Vauxhall (because I’m a bit mad that way, me). I noticed two men working away at some construction or other – one of them chipping at the tarmac on the platform with a chisel and a lump hammer, the other one leaning on his shovel and making the odd helpful remark. Intrigued I looked closer and deduced from the neatly shrink-wrapped packages beside them that they were putting up one of the despised bus-shelter type shelters on the platform, just behind the stairs.

Hooray, right? Wrong. True, I’ve complained about the lack of shelters on stations in the past – but that was for Kew Bridge, which is exposed to the elements, whereas Vauxhall station already has a roof – one of those Victorian cast-iron and wooden canopies that covers the entire platform and shelters everyone in reasonable comfort from the rain. It also has a nice, moderately spacious and, more importantly, heated, waiting room with the added bonus of built-in entertainment after some bright spark removed the helpful signs saying ‘push’ and ‘pull’ on the doors (I’m easily amused). Having two blokes spend several days painfully chipping away at the tarmac so they can install a further tiny little glass and steel bus stop underneath a perfectly good roof is just insane and I can think of no good reason for this waste of money. I can think of any number of bad reasons, however. I hope it’s just that some manager somewhere made it a target that there would be bus-stop style shelters on every platform and nobody thought to add the words ‘where necessary’ on the end. Or maybe it’s that every individual station got money in the budget to put up bus-stop shelters and it’s now year end and use it or lose it time. But then there’s the possibility that having installed these expensive, fragile and largely pointless shelters, they will take down the real roof and let us fight it out for the ten square metres of dry space that remain. And then sell the videos on eBay.

It’s too late now, I suppose, but here’s a radical idea. Why not not install shelters in already sheltered spots and use the money saved to put up new canopy roofs on all of the stations that need them? They’re far more attractive, less breakable and will make life better for larger numbers of people. I can’t believe they’d be that much more expensive. Come on SouthWest Trains, you know it makes sense. Oh, sorry, I forgot. That’s why you won’t be doing it.

Uncle Tom Cobbley and All

Turning onto Kennington Road this morning I found I’d hit one of those mysterious gaps in the traffic (some combination of the congestion charge and traffic light phasing) that meant there was absolutely nothing on the road in either direction as far as the eye could see. Curiously, there were no pedestrians about either – it was just me and my bike. And the little green man. Because, despite the lack of pedestrians, someone had pressed the button and the light on the crossing was red. Mindful of my pledge, I duly stopped and waited and wondered – if a bike stops for red and there’s nobody around, does anybody actually care?

Still, as I pondered this and other philosophical conundra I did have time to notice a curious sensation on my cheek (left upper) – warmth. As in sunshine. As in spring. Which was fortunate because my train was late this evening, giving me an extra six minutes to enjoy the sensation of not getting frostbite while standing outside. This, according to the guard at Kew Bridge, was due to a passenger activating the alarm. By the time we got to Barnes, the story had grown with the telling and it was due to a passenger activating the alarm at Hounslow and a delayed train in front of ours. By Clapham Junction the guard had added the further supplementary excuse that when the passenger alarm is activated they have to go and investigate before they can move off again, and the announcements were now longer than the original delay. Sadly, I got off at Vauxhall before he could add in existential angst, wrong kind of snow or extreme weather conditions to the roll call of excuses. There’s an irritating folk song in there somewhere if only I could be bothered to write it…

Bump and Grind

5:30 this evening saw me at the outer reaches of zone 6 (there were fields and trees and horses and, er, gardening centres and everything) in – and this was our big tactical error – a car. You need a car out there in the nosebleed suburbs and that meant that everybody else was in their car too, and we were inching forward at what would have been a brisk walking pace had we been a sedated sloth.

Most of the time, I like to think that my commitment to public transport is a moral thing, an informed choice about cutting down on greenhouse gases and particulates and smog and other such nasties. But at times like these I realise I wouldn’t drive to work if you paid me. Not if there was an any other way of getting about that was better, like unicycle, or strolling barefoot over broken glass. In your car you are pretty much guaranteed a seat, there are no annoying announcements over the tannoy (although little voices are prone to pipe up from the back with the unwelcome news that they have just done a wee in their pants) and you can choose the music, as long as that chimes in with the wishes of a two year old with, fortunately, a penchant for John Lee Hooker. But that’s pretty much all on the plus side. While trains can be slow and late and frustrating at times, at least you can pass the time while you wait. When you’re driving you can’t do anything – you can’t turn round and feed your toddler, you can’t leave the yellow box clear or other cars pile in and block it for you, and you can’t pull out and chase after the white van that clipped your wing mirror and then roared off on the wrong side of the road. As my sister pointed out, after about a week of that I wouldn’t be Disgruntled, I’d be Ranting Commuter. If not actually Raving Nutcase Commuter With an Uzi.

So it was with some relief that I got on the train for the rest of the journey home. As though to underline the difference there were trains waiting for me at both Palmers Green and Moorgate and I got a seat all the way. There’s a lot of talk about weaning the British off the ‘convenience’ of their cars. All I can say is that I’ve yet to experience a car journey where ‘convenient’ was the adjective that sprung to mind – unless the convenience in question was a public one, and I was travelling with a toddler.

Rest in Pieces

Bike owners (and indeed bikes) of a sensitive disposition should look away now.

It seems I have been wrong about the Vauxhall underpass. I thought it was a route into the station and a handy place to leave my bike of a morning. Having spent the last six months studying the mystical passages inscribed on the walls of the underground tunnel chamber, I can reveal that it is in fact Lambeth’s Legendary Lost Bicycle Burial Grounds*

Bikes come here – or are perhaps brought by their sorrowing owners – in numbers to die, following the ancestral pathways marked by fading runes (the uninitiated call them cycle lanes) on London’s roads. Once they have died, they are ritually chained up and their bodies left to be disposed of naturally by the circling vultures that haunt this mysterious and ancient place.

The process is slow…

<p

but steady

and in the end nothing is left but the bones

I can only hope that my own bike profits by its daily opportunity to meditate on the nature of its own mortality. Otherwise, next time I ask it to change gears and it declines, it may just be time for me to leave the vultures to do their thing.

* Best-selling novelists can license this entirely true piece of historical research for the payment of a nominal fee. Contact me at the usual address.

Don’t Mention the War (part 2)

I try and stay away from global politics in this blog, as it’s not what it’s about, except when the fallout from geopolitics blows up in our faces, as happened last summer. But with the third anniversary of the invasion I am reminded of the one time I ever overheard a worthwhile and interesting conversation on a train. (Restaurants, now, that’s another matter…). So bear with me if you will for a story that is barely on-topic and less timely than a Silverlink train.

Three years ago, just days before the invasion, a group of people got on the train one evening at Gunnersbury who obviously all worked at the same office. One of them was Iraqi, the rest English, and the Brits were busy quizzing their colleague about what he thought about the coming war. I don’t remember the exact words, but the gist was this: While he would be happy to see the back of Saddam Hussein, the outcome for Iraq would be a disaster. The minute the dictator was toppled, the country would disintegrate into violent civil war. Sunni against Shia, Muslim against Christian, Kurd against Arab, cousin against cousin. ‘Iraq needs a strong man,’ he said. ‘We all hate each other.’ His colleagues protested that the Coalition troops would bring democracy but he shook his head. Iraq wasn’t ready for that. The country would fall apart. The planned invasion would open the gates of Hell.

His colleagues didn’t believe him. At the time, I didn’t believe him (with my enormous grasp of Middle-Eastern politics and all). But every time I turn on the radio these days, his words come back to me. What a shame he worked selling insurance in a West London industrial estate instead of at Number 10. But maybe having someone who knew what was going on would just have muddied the waters …

Normal service resumes tomorrow.