PC Plod No More

Right, well that’s the last time I feel guilty about cycling through Vauxhall Spring park on my way to and from the station. I’ve had a residual feeling of awkwardness about using the paths because, while it doesn’t say anywhere that you can’t cycle there, neither does it say that you can. (Back when I was at university, I was taught that the thing that distinguished our superior common law system from other Johnny-foreigner garlic munching type Napoleonic codes was the presumption under common law that anything not explicitly banned was assumed to be allowed. But somehow this doesn’t seem to apply any more these days, particularly once you get onto a bike). The park is a handy shortcut and it has wide tarmacked paths, but it is not the most salubrious of places and recently the police incident boards have become such a permanent fixture that they’re attracting their own graffiti and the police seem to be cordoning it off on a regular basis on Monday mornings after the weekend’s festivities. So I wasn’t bothered to see a couple of police-people patrolling it this morning: you can’t argue with more bobbies on the beat, now, can you? Except that these bobbies weren’t on the beat – they were in their nice warm panda car, driving up and down the paths of the park. Dixon of Dock Green it wasn’t. And it rather puts my cycling into a perspective.

A Quick Question

Just what is the difference between ‘help’ and ‘assistance’? Can one be helped and not assisted? Can one be in need of assistance but not want any help? I ask because the guards have taken to offering not one, but both. This morning it was ‘And if I can be of any help or assistance …’ (emphasis most definitely on the or). And then again this evening: ‘I will be walking down the train if you need any help or assistance.’

If one of the guards ever does appear, as advertised, walking down the train, I shall ask them. Meanwhile, can one of you help? Or, indeed, assist?

Struck

 

This non-blog is brought to you courtesy of Aslef and SouthWest Trains. There are, as promised, almost no SWT services running today and while I could get into work if I tried hard enough, I decided against. I was going to take a day off tomorrow anyway and the thought of attempting to insert myself onto a District line tube carrying both its own passengers and probably half the refugees from my usual train just didn’t appeal somehow.

Not being a train driver or a train manager, I don’t know the ins and outs of this dispute beyond the two statements that have been put out by both sides, so, uncharacteristically, I’m going to refrain from commenting. But I will say this. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the dispute itself, if two sets of adults can’t sort out something like, this without ending up dragging not one but 350,000 innocent third parties into the conflict then something has gone badly awry with the pair of them. Both sides claim to be acting in the best interests of the passengers – now that I can comment on. And my comment begins with B and ends with ollocks.

What really bugs me about these strikes is the timing of them. You can see the thinking in the smoke filled rooms of Aslef HQ as the union leaders planned the action over their beer and sandwiches: ‘We’ll make it the day after the bank holiday. That way everyone will get an extra long weekend and we’ll be carried shoulder high on a parade of grateful commuters released from the toils of their jobs for an extra day of frolicking in the sunshine.’  What they may not have factored into their calculations is that some of us actually need to go to work and that if we take a day off that’s coming out of our holiday entitlement or pay, not theirs. I’m also perfectly capable of organising a long weekend all by myself, thank you very much, when it suits me. And while a day not driving trains doesn’t leave you with a backlog of undriven trains to deal with the morning after, a day not doing whatever it is I do (answering emails?) leaves me with a substantial backlog of not-done things to catch up with when I finally do get in.

If the unions really cared about us, the commuters, as they claim to do, then they would strike on a Sunday, or the bank holiday. But they don’t because that wouldn’t have the effect that a strike on a working day would have. So we’re left with their crocodile tears and their pretended concern and an inconvenient day off or a struggle into work. And because both sides know fine well we’ve no alternative in the long run, we’ll continue to be the ones that suffer until they sort themselves out. Grrr

Churgled Once More

I suppose the nice young man couldn’t know, as he rang our doorbell, that I had the cable from the laptop inadvertantly wound round my foot. Nor could he know that I had taken out the battery a few months ago in order to save it from being trashed from repeatedly being topped up as it was plugged into the mains almost permanently. Nor, indeed, could he know that I had just spent 40 minutes typing something without saving it, nor that I would leap up in excitement at the sound of the doorbell (I live in hope that one day it will turn out to be something interesting), nor that I would yank the cable out of the back of the laptop with my foot. Nor could he know that I was about to give him and his charity collection very very short shrift indeed, although possibly the sound of someone coming down the stairs shouting ’shit shit shit shit’ would have tipped him off about that in advance. Still, I now know that having just wasted the better part of the evening composing something only to have it vanish into the ether, puts you into exactly the right mood to get rid of doorsteppers, much quicker than the last time.

Next lesson: how to back things up as you go along…

The Babe: an Apology

Following advice from our legal representatives, Dewey Cheetham and Howe, we would like to issue the following statement:

It has been brought to our attention by a representative of the Babe that a posting on Disgruntled Commuter may have inadvertantly given the impression that she was prone to imagining spiders.

We now accept that the spider mentioned by the babe was not in fact an imaginary spider but was in fact an actual large hairy spider hovering a few centimetres above Disgruntled Commuter’s head. We further acknowledge that the babe was indeed acting in our best interests in pointing out said spider although the likelihood was that had we seen the spider we would have screamed like a girl and that, notwithstanding the presence of any arthopods imaginary or otherwise, babymother still had to turn right across approximately 17 lanes of London traffic and having her navigator screaming like a girl would not have helped in this endeavour.

We would like to take the opportunity to apologise to the babe for this misrepresentation of her remarks, and to further apologise for any distress or inconvenience that this may have caused. We trust that the matter is now closed.

 

And Another Thing …

… while we’re on the subject of the uselessness of the SouthWest Trains ‘Quiet Coach’ policy (and if you weren’t, I was). Even if they were able to enforce it (which they’re not – apparently the guards have no legal right to tell someone to not use their phone and the stickers are just there to encourage passengers to behave considerately, as though that’s ever going to happen), the mobile free zone is only ever going to prohibit people talking into their mobiles, not talking about them. The other day I got stuck in a set of seats with three people who all clearly worked together and who spent the entire journey discussing the relative merits of the different tarrifs and whether they should be replacing their phones after 18 months or 12. This was the most boring conversation I’ve ever been stuck listening to since I got trapped at a table in the college bar with some northern Chemists at university who were playing ‘name that A road’.

You’d think that if a conversation was that uninteresting it would be easy to tune it out, but you’d be wrong. It’s very dullness became riveting. It was a car-crash of boredom, spectacular in its sheer tedium, and it was only after I’d spent about fifteen minutes waiting in vain for one of them to say something even remotely interesting, that I realised I had been staring at them in appalled fascination for most of the journey. This of course breaks all the rules and I had to bury myself in my paper, hoping they hadn’t noticed…

Still, it’s over now, the weekend has begun, and if anyone wants any advice on the relative merits of the various Orange tarrifs, you just have to ask. Not that I’ll answer, of course.

How to Drive Like a Londoner*

Imagine you are in a car, wanting to turn left. Ahead of you is a cyclist, possibly not going very fast, definitely in a scary yellow jacket and clearly signalling a right turn. The right turn and the left turn are in about 10 yards, opposite each other

Do you:

a) Wait patiently for the cyclist to make her right turn, then make your left turn.

b) Wait for the cyclist to move out to the right to make her right turn, then come in on the inside and make your left turn.

c) overtake the cyclist anyway, cut across her bows, turn left in front of her and end up on the receiving end of some very unladylike language?

Answers on a postcard please.

This did at least distract me from my previous preoccupation which was wondering what the unidentified substance was that someone had left on my front wheel while my bike was locked up at Vauxhall…

* Pronounced ‘Arsehole’

Force of Habit

Twice in a row I’ve done this now. For the last two days at work I haven’t been able to cycle for wardrobe-related reasons, but instead of taking the most direct route home I’ve found myself automatically setting off on my cycle route instead which means going in a big loop well out of my way. The first time I was about half way home before I realised I wasn’t actually on my bike (although I did think I was going a bit slowly). Today I vowed to do better, but as I was walking towards the exit of the station I was fatally distracted by a woman who dropped her oyster card without noticing and had to be tapped on the shoulder before she realised that all the people in the station shouting ‘excuse me!’ were talking to her. Musing idly on the way some commuters get so lost in their thoughts that they become completely oblivious to their surroundings, it was only when someone stopped me for directions that I realised I’d done it again. Goodness knows what might have happened if they hadn’t stopped me – I’d probably have never realised, completed the whole loop, and then chained myself up to the railings when I got home.

SouthWest Trains have signs up all over the place advising us not to travel on Tuesday because of a drivers’ strike. It’s all very well them saying that but even if I did decide to take another route to work, I know fine well that Tuesday morning would see me lost in my usual reverie, waiting on the platform at Vauxhall, wondering where all the trains have gone…

Google Me

I suppose that in these illiterate times when – if you believe the newspapers – all you need to do to get an English GCSE is to turn up (or to be an attractive blonde with a twin sister if you want an A*), it is encouraging to note that at least one of the disaffected youths of West London knows how to spell the word ‘vagina’. And can demonstrate the correct use of it in context (if ’spunky wet …’ counts) – all without the aid of any spell checker or predictive text facility.

Of course I would have preferred it if he or she had not demonstrated this skill on the platform shelter of Kew Bridge station, but you can’t have everything.

Miscellany

Some things I learned on my travels this weekend, in no particular order:

That just because you have printed out nice instructions on how to drive from A to B in a car in London, doesn’t mean you don’t also need instructions on how to drive back from B to A, such is the fiendishness of the London one-way system.

That things look very different from the passenger seat of a car than they do from the pavement … As I confidently navigated my sister in entirely the wrong direction round an unfamiliar looking junction, I suddenly realised it was my old friend and nemesis Vauxhall Cross, but it was too late because we were already halfway to Battersea.

That it’s possible to overcome fiendish and unexpected one way systems, confident misdirections by your non-driving navigator and unannounced closed roads with flair and panache, but not with a two-year-old in the back seat. The full text of those ‘Baby on Board’ stickers should actually read: ‘Baby on Board; driver distracted by urgent need to deal with dangerous imaginary spiders.’

That it’s not possible to buy a period return to Leigh-on-Sea, and nobody knows the reason why.

That Tilbury Town station – fortunately – has the fastest pin-number machine in the Western hemisphere.

That people in Essex really do own their own patio heaters, thereby giving their homes all the charm and ambience of a pub beer garden.

And that there is a God … and He has a sense of humour.