What Goes Around, Comes Around

There seems to be runaway inflation in the Kew Green area – the five pence in pennies that I had noticed earlier seemed to have miraculously transformed itself into a whole pound coin this morning. After wrestling with my conscience for all of thirty seconds (while checking discreetly with my toe that it wasn’t glued down) I nabbed it. This is clearly a case of positive pound karma – if it wasn’t actually being returned to me by the guy to whom I inadvertently lent it last month, then it must surely been dropped by the sort of person who doesn’t give total strangers change whenever they ask. In fact, now I come to examine it more closely, it does seem sort of familiar…

All of which is making it hard to write the sort of magnificently disgruntled post you were all no doubt hoping for after my week off. The powers that be had done their best: an interesting new one-way system in Vauxhall station this morning, the whole of Vauxhall Spring Gardens cordoned off by the police after ‘a fight outside the pub’ (begging the question why the park isn’t cordoned off every week given that it always looks as though a vodka hurricane has blown through it the night before) and a ‘quiet coach’ on the way home with an airconditioning system that sounded like an extractor fan crossed with a ball-bearing factory. Yet even taking all this into account, I still feel like I’m up on the day – the after effects of my holiday are clearly still lingering. Sorry about that. No doubt it will wear off eventually.

Watch this space

Teeny Weeny Bikes – the Menace Continues

Another top tip for the youth-of-today who insist on riding ridiculously small bikes – don’t combine them with a large backpack. The resulting top-heaviness inevitably ends in tears. Or in this case a crashing noise, loud unmannerly laughter from your companions, and barely concealed smirks of amusement from everybody else.

In fact, if you’re going to ride a ridiculously small bike it helps if you are ridiculously small yourself. Anything else is just, well, ridiculous

Ms ZK at speed
Originally uploaded by old_greywolf2000

Back to work on Monday…

More Fashion Advice

‘Help me,’ cried a squeaky voice causing me to look up from the day’s self-appointed important week-off task*. There, cycling round and round the park, unable to stop, was a young lad who had unwisely combined two of the youth-of-today’s inexplicable trends – enormously baggy trousers and teeny-weeny bikes. The bike, you see, had become caught in the ballooning trouser fabric and with his legs tangled up in them too, he couldn’t stop pedalling without falling over and was thus condemned to keep going in a prescient metaphor for the future rat-race his life would become: trapped by his own media-driven desires in an endless cycle of getting and wanting, until exhaustion set in and finished him off. Or at least until he worked out that it’s better if your bike-wheel diameter exceeds that of  the cuffs of your trousers. I suppose I could have helped him, but I was busy and it would have meant getting up and moving and doing something energetic.

Did I mention I was having the week off doing absolutely nothing, by the way? Hot, isn’t it?

*Keeping fully hydrated while sitting under a shady tree reading about the evils of soya, since you ask.

That Friday Feeling

I don’t know what it is about Friday afternoons that encourages some drivers to leave their brains behind when they get behind the wheel. I also don’t know what would make a grown man drive a Nissan Micra, especially the ones that look like partially melted beach toys. Whatever it is, a brainless one in a beach toy decided to ignore the red light at Vauxhall Cross this evening only to discover that it wasn’t just there for pedestrians but also for the three lanes of traffic that were now bearing down on him and his little inflatable pedal car. One screeching of brakes later he was washed up in the middle of the crossing with pedestrians and cyclists flowing around him – although sadly none of us thought to come with a pin. I’m hoping his red face was due to embarrassment but I suspect it might have been more to do with the booze.

I’m taking another one of my go-nowhere, do-nothing holidays next week. I might blog; I might not. Watch this space

Yeah but No but Yeah …

Overheard in the newsagent this evening as I was trying to score myself a fix for my Mr. Tom habit before the train left, while the customer in front of me was trying to buy himself a monthly travelcard:

Newsagent: So do you want it starting today or tomorrow?
Customer: Today
Newsagent: Tomorrow?
Customer: Today
Newsagent: Starting today?
Customer: Yes
Newsagent: Not tomorrow?
Customer: No
Newsagent: Today?
Customer: Yes
Newsagent: You sure today?
Customer: Yes
Newsagent: Today?
Customer: Yes, today.

Whatever happened to the customer is always right? I thought I was going to miss my train…

A Public Service Announcement…

… for anyone suffering in the heat.

The coolest non-airconditioned spot in London that I have found is the northbound WAGN platform of Highbury and Islington station. Why this should be, I have no idea. The Victoria line platform right next to it is several degrees warmer and a good deal stuffier. Get yourself up to the end near the entrance and stand in the breeze from the tunnel and stay there (whatever you do, don’t get on the trains – they’re living hell). There are worse ways of sitting out the heatwave, and doing any sort of travelling is one of them – which is why I’m having a day off and shall be looking for a shady tree. Or failing that, heading up to Highbury.

Not-stalgia

I was chatting over lunch to a colleague today who was a fellow Silverlink sufferer and now soldiers on alone. We swapped tales of misery past and present – the heat, the overcrowding, the purely notional attempt to stick to a timetable – and I took the opportunity to ask her if Dalston Kingsland still smelled, seeing as that was her home station. ‘Oh yes,’ she said – the culprit being apparently an open sewage vent right in the middle of the track. Not only did it still smell, but a few weeks ago it appeared to have caught fire – black smoke was pouring out of the vent, instead of the usual fragrant steam – which everyone (including the train drivers) dealt with in the usual way by pretending it wasn’t happening. After that, my complaint about SouthWest Trains’ air conditioning being too cold didn’t seem to gain me much sympathy – I can’t think why. Anyway I have solved this last by carrying a cardigan with me at all times in case I feel a chill, thus hammering the final nail into the coffin of my youth – forget middle aged, I’m becoming old …

Funny Ho Hum

Following on from Friday’s entry, the guard this morning was actually triple tasking: not content with combining ticket-selling with whistle-blowing, he decided to also try his hand at a bit of standup. He started off just pottering through the carriage as normal, until he got to Clapham where he had to hold the doors for a couple of passengers who were belting onto the platform at the last minute. Having told off the young woman who got on last for ‘gripping the train’ (apparently it ‘buggers them up’ – I think he meant the schedule, rather than the actual rolling stock, but who knows) he then asked her if she was buying her ticket. ‘Buy it the night before,’ he told her, then announcing it to the carriage at large: ‘You lot do know you can do that don’t you? Now, hands up who wants a ticket from me this morning? Nobody? Right, who’s got a ticket then? I want a big resounding yes from everyone who’s got their ticket.’ Needless to say it would take more than that to rouse a train carriage to audible speech at that hour of a Monday morning. ‘What, shy are we?’ Having elicited nothing more than a few weak smiles and not a few rolled eyeballs he went to try his luck in the next carriage which didn’t sound much more lively. A rare case of wanting to suggest to someone that they _do_ give up the day job. Ah well, at least his artistic ambitions were confined to comedy and not, say, opera or Elvis impersonating.

Even less amusing were the announcements all over the platforms this evening about Friday’s strike, which looks like it’s going ahead. You can usually get advance warnings of these sort of actions from The Ticket Collector, and now it seems to be official. More when I know more, and stand by for advanced disgruntlement on Friday

Snap a Londoner*

A game for all the tourists to play

The aim of this game is to get as many shots of Londoners inadvertently crossing into your photographs as you can in an hour.

You will need:
a camera (preferably digital) and an accomplice.

How to play:
First choose your location – near a tube station at rush hour is good. Some players do well on London’s bridges. Place your accomplice in front of a picturesque location. Stand well back. Well, well back. You’re aiming at blocking the entire pavement. Use your zoom if you have to – whatever it takes to avoid stepping forward and leaving an escape route for the Londoners to get past behind you. If it’s a wide pavement, use your backpack to block off any gaps, or the rest of your tour party. Now wait, fiddling with buttons until a pedestrian can’t stand it any longer and gets between you and your accomplice. Take the photo.

Scoring:
One point for every Londoner you capture. They have to be genuine natives – you will identify them by the scowl. Anyone smiling, gurning at the camera or doing rabbit-ears behind your accomplice’s head is a fellow tourist and you lose points for each one.

For a fun variation, especially if you’re jetlagged, try early mornings when the joggers and cyclists are about – parks are a good location for this, or the South Bank. Londoners caught moving at speed count double.

The winner is the person with the most points, or the one who first gets their camera smashed or thrown into the Thames, although the latter is difficult to verify.

Advanced players can move on to the bonus solo round. Stand yourself in front of a picturesque location and make eye contact with a Londoner (this in itself is not for the faint hearted). Using unneccessarily elaborate mime, indicate you want them to take your photograph (top tip – don’t choose the ones in the hooded tops. It’s well known that these Londoners are so starved of love and understanding that they will take off with your camera in a desperate bid for attention). Stand well back, motioning them further back too. Indicate you’re not yet ready for as long as you can until a pedestrian can’t stand it and starts to cross the line of the photo. Then smile and try and get the Londoner to take the photo with another Londoner in it. A royal flush (Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square) wins the game

The prize:
Send in your photographs along with name, home address, telephone number and where your kids go to school. We’ll be around to discuss your winnings later…

*And yes, I know I’ve blogged about this before, but strangely they keep on doing it and so I keep getting annoyed about it and will have to keep blogging about it until they stop. You have been warned.

Happy POETS day

The guards on my trains were busy again today although at least they weren’t attempting to enforce the unenforcable this time around. The one this morning was multitasking – not just doing the doors at the stops but also checking and selling tickets in between which meant not a few people were left dangling in mid-purchase while he had to get out and do important whistle-blowing things on the platform* (this was usually between the point of handing over the tenner and getting their change – a bugger if that was your stop). He certainly looked the part of a busy man – his belt was completely taken up, what with the mobile phones and radios and torches and ticket machines and oyster card readers and other bits and pieces. Clearly, if SouthWest Trains want to issue any more kit they are going to have to get some fatter guards. That’s probably why they still have the whistles – they can hang them round their necks.

The guy this evening was less visible but, not to be outdone, made himself audible instead. He got onto the tannoy at the approach into Wandsworth Town to tell us the train was busy (we had noticed) and the first class carriage had been declassified (hurrah) and, with a brief pause to do the doors at Wandsworth, was still giving us complicated instructions as we approached Clapham Junction (‘You’ll find the departure board at the bottom of the stairs as you exit via the overpass but you won’t see it because it’s facing the passengers coming down the stairs, so if you do want to see it I advise you go up the stairs first and then turn round and look down and you’ll see which platforms all the trains are going from’). I do appreciate the SouthWest Trains guards, I really do (the Silverlink equivalents all seemed to have been selected on the basis of poor diction and a poorer grasp of English) but I do wish sometimes they’d relax, sit down, take a break, especially on a Friday. They’re making the rest of us feel tired.

* Am I the only person who’s rather pleased with the fact that despite the automatic door pips and all the other electronic gear on the trains these days, we still get seen off from the platform with an old-fashioned blast from a whistle?