Zebra Crossing, Serengeti Style

Blimey. I know I was complaining about the pedestrian crossing lights at Vauxhall Cross yesterday, but I wasn’t expecting them to switch them off altogether. The lights were out coming and going today, and it’s a tricky junction at the best of times. Particularly coming out of the station where the traffic comes under the railway line and approaches the crossing on a blind bend. The technique this evening seemed to be for everyone to gather on the curb until enough pedestrians had built up to form some sort of a moral imperative. Then we waited, watching the people on the traffic island, who could at least see what was coming. Once one of them was bold – or foolish, or homicidal – enough to step out into a gap, then we all surged across, working on the assumption that they wouldn’t run us all down. The effect is similar to those wildlife programmes where the migrating zebra have to cross the crocodile-infested Zambesi, but with fewer stripes.

Anyway, that is definitely the last time I say anything disparaging about the lights on that particular junction. Oh, and drivers? If you’re approaching a crossing andthe lights are out and a pedestrian decides to cross rather than spend the rest of their life on a traffic island – don’t honk. They’ve got at least as much right of way in the circumstances as you do.

A Cautionary Tale

I almost got run over this morning and for once it was entirely my fault. You see, I’d been reading about the disappearance of the flashing green man over on Diamond Geezer, and I was distracted while standing at the crossing into looking at the lights instead of responding to them. Diamond Geezer had pointed out that the little green man no longer flashes these days – it just goes off for a bit before the little red man goes on, leaving you with the impression that the pedestrian light is broken. This, apparently, has been done on safety grounds. So there I was standing at the crossing at Kew Bridge thinking, ‘blimey, he’s right’ (how could I have doubted?), ‘they do just switch off now’. And I was so busy thinking that, I forgot to think of other things, like checking to see if there’s a motorbike revving up to start at the light that’s just about to go against me as I cross. Nippy things, motorbikes, aren’t they? It’s fortunate they’re so manouevrable…

So anyway, setting my near death experience aside, and from the safety of the pavement this time, I did a quick straw poll of the pedestrian crossings on the way home this evening, to mixed results. The junctions at Kew Bridge and Vauxhall Cross both do the disappearing green man trick whereas the pedestrian-only crossing on Kennington Road still has the flashing man. What’s going on here? Have any of you noticed this alarming trend? When did it start? And how can making the light look broken be safer? I never thought I’d have cause to say this, but bring back our flashing men!

Tuesday is the New Monday

… and the Quick Ticket machine at Vauxhall celebrated in traditional fashion by being broken. Or not broken exactly – that would merely have been annoying. Instead it was working in every respect except for the bit where it read your switch card, having gone through the bits where it read your oyster, told you what was on it, you selected the ticket you wanted and it told you how much to pay – and that really was infuriating.

You’re probably now wondering why those of us stuck in the Slow Ticket machine queue didn’t warn those people in the Quick Ticket machine queue what was going on before they went through all that palaver. Well, we did try. It’s just that – when confronted by a choice between an apparently working Quick Ticket machine and a stranger in the Slow Ticket machine queue warning you it didn’t take their card, you go with the machine every time. After all, you reason, they probably screwed up in some way, inserted their card upside-down, forgot their pin number or didn’t have enough money in the bank. And so you too find out it’s broken the hard way, join the back of the Slow Ticket machine queue behind the terminally confused tourists and the people trying to pay with crumpled fivers, and take your turn at being patronised and then ignored by people who don’t believe you when you try to warn them it wouldn’t take your card… at least that’s the way it happened to me.

And as to why someone in Vauxhall station didn’t think to put a sign up saying ‘This Ticket Machine Does Not Accept Bank Card’s’, I have absolutely no idea. Perhaps they had run out apostrophes…

Pedants Anonymous

Your special bonus Bank Holiday issue blog entry.

Out and about yesterday, trying to find some part of London that was out of the rain yet not five-deep in coach party tourists, we spotted the following sign:

Oh dear. I thought it bizarre that this notice could have been drawn up, printed, proof read, distributed and displayed across London without anyone spotting a flaw. Or had it? When we examined it more closely it turned out we weren’t the only ones offended by the outbreak of apostro-flies:

Someone had been making corrections. I wonder if this counts as vandalism? If not, perhaps the nation’s army of teachers, copy-editors and dwindling band of punctuation sticklers could be issued with tippex, red ink or blue pencils to go forth and sort out the rest of the signs. After all, can you think of a better way to pass a rainy Bank Holiday Monday?

Home, James

And don’t spare the moderately sized engine.

I was overtaken on my way to the station this morning – no surprises there, I’m not the fastest of cyclists. I then overtook the car – not that unusual either, cars aren’t very good at realising that bikes go faster than them over speedbumps, at least if they wish to keep their exhaust pipes. What struck me, as I cycled past, was that the passenger was sitting in the back reading the paper, whereas the driver was sitting up in solitary splendour and a peaked cap in the front. Now who, I asked myself, still gets chauffeured to work in this day and age? And, more to the point, who gets chauffeured to work in a battered green Volkswagen Passat?

Oh, the trains? Eight cars, coming and going. I’ve decided just to get used to it.

Flapping Heck

Aargh. This recent micro burst of warm weather (soon to be curtailed if the gleeful forecasts of ‘wet windy and cold weather’ for the bank holiday are anything to go by) has re-opened the whole jeans vs. any other form of trousers debate. The problem with jeans is they’re hot, and a bit sweaty for cycling in on a humid day. But the good thing about jeans (and as a child of the eighties, when I say ‘jeans’ I of course mean Levi 501s for there is no other viable option) is that they tend to stay put around the ankle. Whereas other, lighter, trousers go in for flapping about and getting caught up with the bike chain, collecting grease, and generally making nuisances of themselves.

There’s an answer, of course, in the form of the bicycle clip, but that answer is simply wrong – bicycle clips, like braces and bowler hats, are just automatically comical and there’s no way I’m wearing them however practical they may be (see also: vests). There’s another answer which is to tuck your trousers into your socks but I know me, and I also know that the chances are I’ll spend a good 50% of any given working day with one leg still tucked in until some kind soul bothers to tell me. So I’m left with the flapping, greasy marks, and the chance of a disastrous bike-chain related foot amputation. It’s the price you pay for style, I’m afraid.

And if you checked in with bated breath for an update on the four-car/eight-car formation of the 7:41 this morning, I’m going to have to keep you in suspense for another day. I got to the station a tad early this morning and the 7:26 was just about to depart. For one brief second I contemplated missing it just to see what the fates had in store for the next train, but then I came to my senses and got on. You’ll just have to keep checking in (I suggest hourly) tomorrow …

Doomed, We’re All Doomed, I Tell You.

I’ll have to break off this fascinating tale of train lengths – I know, the suspense is killing you – because I went to Paddington this morning instead of to work. Riding up on the escalator from the Bakerloo line I noticed that once again the ingenuity of man has found yet another way that we can use up electricity doing things that we didn’t need to use electricity for before (my personal low point was the discovery of a battery operated eraser). Yes, the adverts on the escalators are now on little screens because our attention span is so low that even the stuff we barely glimpse as we glide past it has to be moving around to catch our attention. Plus it’s probably harder to put chewing gum on the models’ noses on a screen. And the adverts? Well, I’m not going to give them any more publicity here*, but it’s a car company. Which is using the space to tell us how eco-friendly its latest cars are…

* because I’ve forgotten which one it was. 

The Saga Continues

OK, so now I’m really confused (admittedly, it’s easily done). Got to the station this morning and saw to my disappointment that the information board was displaying a four-car train for the 7:41. This was repeated in the announcement (they don’t normally bother) – ‘this train is formed of four coaches’ – just in case there was any lingering doubt in any of our minds. Then, when it arrived, it was eight cars long. Do they not know? I’m beginning to wonder if it’s just that the second half of the train has somehow got accidentally stuck on the end of the real 7:41 – like chewing gum on a shoe – and they simply haven’t noticed. Anyway, nice long train in the morning, nice long day at work, turn up at Kew Bridge for the 17:41 some ten hours later, find they’re announcing an eight-car train. Aha, I thought, I know what’s going on here. They’ve just got a digit wrong, that’s all. The 17:41 is always a four car train, whatever the announcements may say . 7:41, 17:41 – it’s an easy mistake to make. So we hardened passengers huddled up at the four-car end of the platform and awaited the train. Which was eight cars long.

Do you think that the unthinkable might be true? That they have actually bought more rolling stock? Or are some of you out there somewhere finding yourselves crammed into an unexpectedly short-arsed SouthWest Train?

That’s Not My Train…

…its carriages are too spacious.

So I’m standing on Vauxhall platform today feeling very Monday-morningish after a bike ride to the station that seemed to consist entirely of encounters with lorries on the wrong side of the road (did they change the law?). The 7:41 Hounslow train is announced and lo and behold a train appears in the distance. But it’s clearly the wrong train because as it rounds the curve we can see it in all its eight-car glory. So I step back behind the yellow line and wait for it to pass and for the real 7:41 Hounslow train, the short packed one, to arrive after it. But what’s this? The train is slowing down. And it has ‘Hounslow’ as its destination, and it’s stopping and the doors are opening and so, warily we step inside. Where we are wafted to our intended destination in comfort and ease with seats for all.

Despite energetic pinching, I don’t seem to have woken up yet. The last time we got an eight car train in the morning it was between Christmas and New Year and everyone practically had a carriage to themselves. But today was a normal day, if you count Mondays as normal which – thinking about it – I don’t. Still, do you think it’ll last?

Romeo, Romeo, where the Hell are you, Romeo?

So, 10:30 this morning saw me – busy, busy, with errands to run – quite literally stuck in the house. The other half, heading out early had reflexively double locked the door, forgetting I was still inside. I was now discovering that the mortice lock mechanism on the inside of the door didn’t work, or at least my increasingly frantic attempts to make it work weren’t having much effect. Gah. I searched for another means of escape. Our sitting room windows are actually French doors opening out onto a vestigial iron balcony that looms out over a long drop down into the area, and appears to be attached to the front of the house by not much more than rust and the force of habit. I wasn’t climbing over that. I stared out into the street, so near and yet so unattainable, and realised the downside of living on a quiet road. One elderly gent pottering deafly around his car. One young man on the other side of the street with a Londoner’s determination to notice nothing unusual, not even a damsel in distress signalling wildly from her balcony. With the other half not due back for hours it looked as though I was stuck.

Fortunately, help was at hand. Two Polish chaps busy replacing our genuinely old sixties-style concrete lamp-posts with ersatz Edwardian ones, film companies for the use of, finally noticed my feeble cries of ‘Excuse me!’* I handed one my keys so he could unlock the door – I managed to get the yale open from the inside before he forced it wth his shoulder – and thanked him profusely. God only knows what he thought of it all – his English (and my Polish) wasn’t up to the intricacies of crappy lock mechanisms and useless landlords – so I had to leave him under the assumption that he’d effected a daring rescue of a distressed female locked up by her cruel and thoughtless husband. Which isn’t when you think about it, all that very far from the truth. At least the thoughtless part of it, anyway.

*Phrase of the week.