House Arrest…

… I knew I should never have signed that ID cards petition under my real name …

Actually it’s just that I’m waiting for the British Gas engineer, which means being stuck in the house from 8am to 1pm knowing that the only time he or she can be guaranteed to turn up is if I risk heading out for a paper. I am reminded of the joke about the Russian under the communists who orders a new car. ‘That will be delivered in three years time, on Wednsday the 28th of February.’ ‘Morning or afternoon?’ he asks. ‘It’s in three years time, why do you want to know if it’s morning or afternoon?’ ‘It’s just that I’m having the cooker delivered in the morning.’

So no commuting for me, although my own personal raincloud did get a little workout during my run this morning – it bided its time until I was at the furthest point from home, then unleashed a downpour. By the time I reached the house with the icy wind knifing through my wet shirt, the last few drops were being shaken from the trees. And now that I’m waiting, stuck indoors, the sun is out and the sky is blue once more.

If you hear a clap of thunder and the heavens open again, you’ll know the gas man’s been and gone, and I’ve been released from confinement…

World of Traincraft

SouthWest Trains continues to live in a fantasy world where the 17:41 from Kew Bridge is an eight-car train. Its computer says it’s an eight car train, the announcements say it’s an eight car train, it’s just the pesky boring old analogue train that persists in being four cars long (just like all those trains that are ‘on time’ long after their appointed hour for arrival has come and gone without the actual train coming or going).

I wonder if it’s very cynical of me to ask whether, when the time of reckoning comes and the franchise is weighed up in the balance, it’s the real numbers, or the computer-generated fantasy ones, that get used in the statistics?

Christmas come Earley

So I was out in the wilds of Berkshire today (and am I the only person who gets a little twinge of nervousness when their train approaches the sinisterly named Winnersh Triangle?). In Earley, to be precise, where I twice proved G.K. Chesterton’s maxim that the only way to be certain of catching a train in this country is to just miss the one before it. This meant I had plenty of time to taste the delights of Earley station – its locked Ladies’ loos (viewings on request), its friendly locals and, as I walked over the pedestrian footbridge to the uninhabited platform two, a tenner. This latter I picked up and, because I had perhaps been over-impressed by the rural nature of the station, took it back to the ticket office to hand it in.

I’m not sure, now, exactly what I expected to happen next. The station master to exclaim, ‘Ar, that’ll be the Squire’s, Ma’am, the rest of us bain’t seen one o’ they tenners since michaelmas last’? Someone rushing in to report it lost – ‘I’d recognise it anywhere – it had an engraving of Charles Darwin on one side, and a picture of Helen Mirren on the reverse’? Instead, the ticket guy took the tenner and looked at it and I stood at the ticket window and looked at him, and he knew and I knew that all that was happening was that the Earley Station Christmas party fund was about to be richer to the tune of ten quid. But the proprieties must be observed so he did what all good public employees do in these circumstances and took a piece of paper and made a note that ten pounds had been found by me at approximately 5:05 pm on the footbridge to platform two. And then he hesitated, looking at his handiwork. Something more was needed to give it that official air. He reached into his drawer and found it – the imprimatur of all bureaucracy, the rubber stamp. Ker-chung. The paper had become a document, the tenner official lost property and I and he could go our separate ways, all honour satisfied.

More Portents?

So there I was this morning, cycling along, feeling full of That Friday Feeling*, when I heard a whirring noise and a cyclist overtook me. This in itself is not that unusual as I cycle at a speed that can best be described as meditative, but – for the first time ever while cycling in London – he also said ‘Hello’ as he whizzed past. Hmm. I’m not sure what I think of that one. On the one hand, I’m all for camaraderie among the beleaguered minorities on the road. On the other hand, if I stop concentrating for a minute while cycling I’m likely to disappear in to one of Lambeth’s speed-potholes and never be seen again.

And in related news, I was cycling up past the nightclubs again this morning when I saw, once more, that the cars were double parked outside and the hoodies were gathered, blocking my route. Oh dear, I thought, preparing to hop up onto the pavement rather than risk a confrontation. Whereupon one of the blingiest and most behooded of the young men got into his car and moved it out of my way with a cheery wave.

Youth. There’s just no consistency.

*Exhaustion, since you ask

Confused? You Will Be

I thought for one horrible moment this evening that I was going to have to say something nice about SouthWest Trains. I got to the station in time for the 5:41 which is generally one of the dreaded four car trains. But what was this? Sense had apparently been seen. The idea of running a longer train throughout peak hours had finally dawned on SWT. The misinformation boards were telling us it was an eight car train, and passengers were spread out along the length of the platform in anticipation. The train was announced, all eight cars of it, and the train chuffed round the corner bang on time. Everything was in place for a comfortable and punctual journey home.

Everything, (and stop me if you’ve heard this one before) but four of the eight carriages.

One headlong sprint up the platform later I was crammed into the remaining half of the train, in one of the last remaining seats (it helps if you’re the person who’s prepared to glare pointedly at the guy with the bag on the seat until he does actually move it) wedged in between two chaps giving a masterclass in CV preparation (apparently, your bullet points should each consist of an action, and then a result acheived for each action), and the people in the aisles. And at Clapham Junction, just in case any further confusion was needed, SWT woman decided to announce that we were now going back to Hounslow, in what was perhaps a cunning move to ease congestion by panicking people off the train. Needless to say, it didn’t work.

I do, on the other hand, now have a very spiffy CV.

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

What is the point – oh SouthWest Trains – of putting up ‘Due to a fault no information can be displayed’ on your information boards? I suppose that way we know you’re not wilfully withholding it from us. Although sometimes I wonder. There was some sort of signalling-related gridlock going on this morning and at one point we had two out-of-service trains, one on platform three and one on platform four, both held at a red signal, and the only announcement we got was a slightly frantic one urging us to stand well back behind the yellow lines. Whether that was because they were about to explode, or whether they just didn’t want our grubby fingerprints on their shiny new trains was never explained. Anyway, when the guy finally came on the tannoy and was just about to tell us where the next train would be going he was cut off abruptly with nothing but a faint gurgle, and the rest was silence. No doubt the SWT gestapo tracked him down in his secret location and put a stop to his broadcasting of classified train destination information to the hoi polloi.

‘For you, station-master, ze war is over …’

Survey Fails to Say

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m not shy of stating my opinion on, well, more or less anything. So when the phone rang and a nice young man asked whether I’d be willing to be surveyed about the extension of the congestion charging zone on behalf Transport for London I readily agreed. My opinions on the congestion charging zone are many and varied and sometimes contradictory but all strongly and sincerely held, and I looked forward to giving Ken the benefit of my wisdom.

But first we had to see if I would qualify. He checked that I didn’t work for Transport for London, or the London Assembly or any of the train or bus companies (presumably because that would make me biased) & I did not. Then he checked that I didn’t work in PR or Marketing or Advertising or Journalism (presumably because that would make me the sort of slimy lower-than-a-snake’s-belly person whose opinion is not worth soliciting even if I could tell the truth for long enough to impart it) & I did not. He failed to ask if I was the world-reknowned disgruntled of Disgruntled Commuter blogging fame, so I didn’t tell him, and we proceeded to the next question. So, I was a female aged 16-44, living in Lambeth … ah.

What? I asked

The quota for females aged 16-44 living in Lambeth had just filled up. Was there any other person in the house who was not a female aged 16-44 living in Lambeth who would be available to answer questions? There was the other half, I said. Was the other half willing to respond to a survey for Transport for London on the Congestion charging zone?

The other half was not.

Frankly, I have no idea how they ever fill their quota of non-females aged 16 to anything for these surveys. Even if they employ a lot of nice young women with seductive voices, they still have to get the chaps to come to (or even answer) the phone. And meanwhile, Ken has to struggle on without my advice. I notice the well-heeled good folk of Kensington and Chelsea were protesting on the streets yesterday at the extension of the zone. Coincidence? I think not…

We have Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

So I was cycling to work this morning and I was in no mood to be delayed. This was mainly because I was under what I can only describe as my own personal raincloud (no metaphor, this, but an actual rain cloud that started raining gradually and imperceptibly as I set off and then built up via drizzle all the way up to steady soaking rain before tailing off just as I reached the cover of the underpass. Maximum effect for minimum expenditure of water – a big thanks due there to whoever it is up there who implements Sod’s Law, Weather Department).

Anyway, I wasn’t best pleased as I cycled down past the viaduct to see that outside one of the night clubs people were still spilling out and the cars waiting for them were double-parked, effectively blocking the road. Normally I’d have a sarcastic remark to pass about that, even if under my breath, or at least a dismissive gesture as I squeezed my way past. But hmmm. South London Nightclub. Flash, tinted window cars. Young men lounging around in hooded sweatshirts and sunglasses and rather too much bling. I try and take much of the mass-hysteria about gun crime in the media these days with a pinch of salt (anybody else notice that in the round up of London’s Gun Crime Crisis over the weekend some of the papers had chucked in a few killings from Nottingham and Manchester just to make up the numbers?) but even so. There are times when one is advised to be flipping people off of a morning, and there are times when one is not. So I discovered that, oh look, I could just squeeze through the gap they had left me if I tried hard enough. And cycled safely off to live to blog another day…

Canine Chews Hominid

So, in what was not at all a thinly disguised advert for their services, an insurance company has revealed this morning that their survey shows bikes are often stolen in the UK – even if they’ve been locked up! (Coming up after the break: Electricity company study finds nights are on average darker than days! Winter colder than summer, vest manufacturer reveals!). Naturally, the bikes left in South London got nicked the fastest, although they don’t seem to have risked the Vauxhall underpass for this study, possibly because they ran out of bikes. The fact that the BBC – Radio 4, indeed – managed to juxtapose this story with another about the ongoing genocide in Darfur spreading into Chad only left me clutching my head in despair. How am I supposed to carve out some sort of niche for myself with the daily minutiae of relentlessly trivial transport-based stories if the Today program is doing it for me?

But fortunately others have taken the baton temporarily from my nerveless fingers. Li’lo has written a post reminiscing about her schooldays travelling on the Hounslow loop back in the 80’s. Reading it reminded me to be a bit less miserable about the schoolkids on the trains (if I can) – after all, we’ve all been there in one way or another. It also made me very glad indeed that we don’t have the slam door trains any more as you’ll see if you follow the link.

Normal blogging will resume next week, when I have regained the will to live.

When is a Bike Lane not a Bike Lane?

When it’s on Kew Bridge, it would seem.

There certainly used to be a bike lane on Kew Bridge, way back when I used to cycle over it, some time around the turn of the century. They created it by drawing a nice picture of a bike and a couple of pedestrians on the pavement and letting everyone fight it out for themselves*. Then they created a bus lane and moved the bikes into the bus lane, which makes a bit more sense, given that widening the bridge isn’t really a practical option. Then they got rid of the bus lane, because it was causing such congestion even the buses complained, and went back to two lanes of traffic. But where did the bike lane go?  There’s no longer a picture of a bike (but then, neither is there a picture of a pedestrian) to mark the lane any more. Nor is there a white line to separate bikes from people. All that remains of the old lane is a sign, at the other end of the bridge, saying ‘Cyclists dismount’ and a sort of race memory among the cyclists that it’s okay to cycle on the pavement.

Which means that the first most pedestrians hear of it is when they’re walking along towards the station one evening, expanding lyrically to their colleagues on their latest idea to cut global warming by having Google server farms heat entire cities, when there is a whooshing noise and a yellow lycra-clad streak tears past at speed. And only then do they remember, back in the days, that this was a bike lane once. And they’re walking in it.

* Technically, this is not a bike lane but a cop out, but we’ll let that one pass.