Honesty. Not Always the Most Lucrative Policy

I really must stop reflexively checking my change in shops and then going back and complaining when I get too much. It doesn’t impress anyone. Not even the guy at the news-stand this morning when I pointed out he’d given me 70p change for my Guardian instead of 30p.

‘You should have kept it,’ he complained. ‘Spent it on yourself. Had a treat.’

Too late for me now, obviously, but should it happen again, can any of you suggest what small but enjoyable treat I could purchase for myself for 40p? Always assuming I don’t just hand it back and get 40p’s worth of smug righteousness instead…

Terminal Confusion

Well, I’m back – did you miss me? Two weeks of serious relaxation and NO COMMUTING were in danger of leaving me seriously gruntled but fortunately for you lot the flight home has undone all that. Why do we bother? I’m going back to having my hols in the back garden. After seven and a half hours in the refined torture that is the economy class seat I was ready to confess to pretty much anything. The US should forget extraordinary rendition and just send their villains via American Airlines. They’ll crack before the first mini-meal is chucked at them: ‘Beef or Chicken?’ ‘I did it, I masterminded the 9-11 attacks! I fund Al-Quaeda!’ *blank stare* ‘Beef or Chicken?’ …

Still, at least we made our connection. We’d made the foolish error of booking our flight via two different airlines. United into O’Hare, and then American Airlines to Heathrow. Wrong. United flies into O’Hare all right, into the United terminal of O’Hare, terminal 2. Once ‘deplaned’ (almost as painful as it sounds) we looked around for where we should go to catch our next flight. Signs pointed us to many different terminals and concourses, but nowhere told us which one might be the one we needed. The departure boards showed only United departures. There was no other information. Finally someone asked us if we needed any help and we explained our dilemma. She looked puzzled. It appears that nobody in the history of manned flight has ever flown into O’Hare by United and then wanted to leave by American. A more senior person was consulted. Did our boarding card show our gate? It did not. We asked, hesitantly, which terminal American Airlines flights normally left from. There was a pause. The senior person and the junior person looked blank. No, they didn’t know that. Why should they? This was United. This was where all the United flights left from. We left them and wandered on, hoping for enlightenment or a smoking area, whichever was sooner.

Finally, we rounded a corner and found an abandoned Travelers’ Aid booth. We leaned over and consulted the secret map of Where Flights Leave From. American Airlines – terminal 3. Just, handily, round the corner from terminal 2.

London, What State is That?

Off topic again, but mild disgruntlement ensues …

We’re in Colorado and, since we last visited, they’ve instituted a thing called a wildlife stamp which you need to have to access State Wildlife Areas. Unlike the State parks you can’t buy them at the entrance to the place in question (as they’re usually out in the boonies somewere) but have to go and find an outlet or be organised enough to have bought them online. As we’re planning another trip out into the wilds next week, we set off this afternoon to the local marina to pick up a couple. They asked us what our date of birth was and our height and weight*, we paid our 10 dollars and our 25 cent search and rescue surcharge, and all was going well until they asked for some ID. We produced our UK driver’s licenses**. Much headscratching followed. The girl at the counter called the manager. The manager looked confused. ‘London, is that a state?’ he asked. More a city we thought. ‘What’s the two letter code for that?’ We didn’t know. Try UK, we suggested. UK didn’t work. The manager called the helpline. The helpline put him on hold. We waited. We examined their stock – the Jalepeno pepper flavoured beef jerky, the Barbie fishing kit (complete with pink flower shaped tackle box), the many different kinds of fishing lure. We waited some more. Finally the helpline picked up. The manager explained the situation – that he had furriners in his shop and they didn’t have any two-letter codes. He waited. He got his answer and we got our stamps.

For future reference – should you ever need to visit a Colorado State Wildlife Area and you’re from the UK – the two letter code for the country is GBR.

Still it’s all worth it to be able to see one of these:

*No, I don’t know why either.
** Luckily these were the new picture kind, not the old raggedy piece of green paper kind. Those just get laughed at in most countries…

 

Off Topic…

…But I feel I should take my duties seriously as one of Metro’s shortlisted British Travel blogs.

In the Boise City, Oklahoma (truly the town that everything forgot) Pizza Hut, two tall men in stetsons, jeans, checked shirts and cowboy boots walked in and sat down together in the booth behind us. Anywhere else in the world, you’d assume they were simply gay, but this was cattle country and they seemed to be actual cowboys and sure enough, they were talking about their cattle. I leaned back to hear more:

‘Yeah, so I went to get the herd DNA tested and the guy said…’

It seems ranching has moved on.

 

Things to Do in Denver … when you’re a Suitcase

Of all the tedious cliched things to happen on a trip, losing your luggage – or no, let me rephrase that, for we were blameless in the matter – having someone else lose your luggage is the most tedious and cliched of all. So I shall spare you the details except for this one detail. At the airport, we reported our lost bag, were told it was in Denver, and were given our claim code – a six character mix of numbers and letters – plus a website where we could track the adventures of our luggage as it tasted the fleshpots of the Mile High City. On logging in this morning to see when it was going to be delivered to us, I discovered that our bag had managed to shake off its pursuers and was now declared missing. I decided speaking to a human was called for and rang the handy 1-800 number provided, only to be caught in voice-operated menu hell. I got through the first few hurdles and then was asked for my code. ‘As letters can be hard to distinguish, please use common first names such as Emma and Mary for the letters,’ the instructions went. I glanced down at my code. ‘K’ was the first letter – Katy should do for that I reasoned, or Kevin. But then I looked at the rest of the code and gave up. Common names beginning with ‘X’, anyone?

Two Years …

Two years ago I came back from a particularly painful Silverlink commute and wrote my first blog entry. ‘Two years, is that all?’ the other half asked. ‘It seems longer…’ I really must stop forcing him to read and comment on every post.

We’re celebrating the anniversary by heading off on one of the least pleasant form of modern transport ever devised – the aeroplane. I hate flying. I hate the whole suspended up in the air in a metal tube part, I hate the way airlines and airport security between them reduce you to a compliant herd of sheep, if you can imagine a herd of sheep putting up with standing in an endless shuffling queue with their shoes in one hand and their bag of toiletries in the other. I hate the way you now have to pay extra just to sit in the bulkhead seats or the emergency exit rows these days. I hate the food and the air and the person in the seat in front of me, even before he’s put his seat back as far as it will go. I hate it all. But it’s the only practical way to get to Colorado, so that’s what we’re going to do. Believe me, if I could take a train there, I would. Even if it was a Silverlink. OK, well maybe not a Silverlink. There are limits.

So expect the blog postings to be somewhat few and far between in the next two weeks. Normal service will resume on the 30th, with an extra helping of disgruntlement due to the jetlag…

What a Rip… ah

So off to the station this morning to buy a return to Kew Bridge, because my season ticket has run out and there’s no point buying a new one just before going on hols. Last time I bought a ticket it was at the ticket office at Vauxhall and it was months ago, before this year’s price rise, because the old ticket machines had a fixed number of buttons for stations, and they hadn’t got one for Kew Bridge. And last time I bought a return ticket it was something over six quid – enough that even if I only get 3 days usage out of my weekly ticket (15 quid for zones 2 & 3) it’s worth buying it anyway. The ticket office at Vauxhall is pretty slow and always has a queue, but they’ve put in whizzy new ticket machines including one at the back entrance to the station, and they have touch screens so you can enter any station name you want. So I headed in to buy my ticket this morning, wondering how much the return would have gone up by.

The answer? Minus three pounds. £3.30 for a return ticket, peak rate between Vauxhall and Kew Bridge. What? I thought at first the machine was broken, but then I checked the actual ticket and noticed it actually is between Vauxhall and Kew Bridge – the ones I was buying before were from ‘London Terminals’ to Kew Bridge – all very well if you want to go into Waterloo itself, but a bit pricey if you don’t. Vauxhall, being also in zone 2, works out cheaper. I’m curious now as to what they’d sell me if I tried the ticket office again, but not so curious as to actually stand in the queue to find out.

A quick calculation with the old shoes and socks off also reveals that if I’m taking off only one day in a week, I’m better off buying four returns than the weekly travel card (and according to SWT’s own prices, I’d be better off buying five of them than shelling out for their weekly ticket between Vauxhall and Kew as that’s over £20). Which puts my miserliness in direct conflict with my terminal impatience. For the princely sum of £1.80 saved, I’d have to use the machine every single day, and it would only take one bewildered tourist to ruin my morning and make me miss my train. Hmmm. What would you do?

And, in other news, in my round up of urban signs of spring I missed one vital milestone: the first sighting of a ‘tox ‘ for the year. I don’t know what’s happening north of the river, but I only just spotted my first ‘Tox 07′ on the approach to Putney this morning. Is it just me, or are they getting later every year? Me, I blame global warming …

Help, I Need Somebody…

Like, I suspect, a lot of Londoners, deep down I secretly want to be helpful. Yes we may look like the most boot-faced collection of emotionless commuting robots you’ve ever seen but, if it doesn’t hold us up or we haven’t had to force our way past too many strolling tourists recently, we’re actually just dying to be asked, keen to be of assistance. No really (there just is no way of conveying sincerity in writing is there? You’ll just have to take the non-sarcasm of this post on trust). Visitors of ours have confirmed this – stand lost on a street corner or scratching your head in a tube station and someone will stop and help*

Sadly, after a recent triumph when a little old lady asked me to help her across the street (up until then I had thought this was a figure of speech, but no, she was frightened and wanted some assistance), mostly what I get asked for is directions. Now this may, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, convey on you the freedom of the place, but it only does so if you actually know the way to anywhere. I, on the other hand, have absolutely no sense of direction and usually only get from place to place by navigating my way via all the other places I know the way to. Unwary strangers are likely to end up being given directions from the place they are in to my house, and then from my house to the place they want to get to. It’s simpler that way, for me at least, but rarely very direct.

Still today has been a bumper day for direction giving for me. With the help of my trusty A-to-Z it took me a mere ten minutes to work out the best way from Newington Butts to Vauxhall for a lost young man this morning. And then I was stopped this lunchtime by a Spanish girl in the street proferring a map and asking the way to Morley College. I looked at the map and it was no help. The problem I have is that maps tend to give street names and I rarely know the names of the road I’m on – they never seem to be called things like ‘the road that goes past Lambeth North’, for instance, or ‘that big wide road that goes round the old building near waterloo, the one that’s going to be a hotel’ which is how I think of them. So I stared at the map and scratched my head and peered around for a street name. Then I spotted a traffic warden. He looked a little startled to be addressed by someone not employing any obscenities, but I reckoned if anyone knew their way around it would be him. And I figured it would be a rare chance to help out both parties. She’d get her directions in a far more coherent fashion than I’d ever manage. And he’d get to talk to someone who wasn’t calling him a c*nt.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to polish my Swiss Army Knife. Because you never know when you’re going to encounter a horse with a stone in its hoof, do you? Be prepared…

* as long as you’re not blocking the entrance to anything. Then we’ll mow you down. Sorry, but we are in a hurry.

Picture This

I spotted a charming vignette of family life on my way from work to the station this afternoon. Some poor child’s parents had over-estimated the effectiveness of their toilet-training technique and Mum was doing a quick emergency pants change on the corner of Kew Bridge – no doubt to the entertainment of the four lanes of rush hour traffic inching past them. And Dad? Dad was capturing the precious moment for posterity on his camera. I mean, I know there are some fathers who are not content unless every waking section of their offsprings’ lives is recorded, but there are limits – and little Johnny’s first al fresco wee is surely one of them…

Biting the Hand

So as I walked from the station to work today, I already had a blog post in my head, ready to be written. It was to be a short but perfectly formed rant about Metro readers, and in particular those Metro readers who seem incapable of folding their newspaper over as they read it but instead insist on spreading it out on their neighbours’ knees as they flick through its pages. This was triggered by a particularly egregious example this morning from a chap who’d already had to squeeze his way onto the train at Clapham Junction and shoogle his way into the middle seat between me and a rather burly builder, so he knew the space was limited. Nothing daunted, he spread his Metro wide and gave us both the benefit of his paper for the next five stops despite the fact that I was already reading a newspaper – one I had gone to the bother of paying for – and didn’t really want to read his. I had decided that he was either new to the whole newspaper-reading business and thus wasn’t aware that it was possible to actually fold the thing down the middle (bendy stuff, paper), or was so excited that someone had given him something for free he thought he’d share the love. It was only when I got in and checked my stats that a third possibility emerged – he had rumbled my identity and was trying to subtly show me this : I have been shortlisted for the Metro’s Brit Blog awards and in the travel category no less. Obviously this made the rant seem a little churlish, and so I have refrained.

So instead can I say a big up to my fellow shortlistees: Phileas Blog , London Underground Tube Diary (I’m in distinguished company here), Mindhorn and Blood Bus, A Driver’s Blog of Night Bus Terror . And a big welcome to my commuter hell, o Metro readers, I hope you stick around. Meanwhile, while I have your attention, can I just make a tiny little suggestion? To those of you who don’t? Fold the paper over when you read it would you? There’s a love.