Honesty Box

The back entrance to Vauxhall station was set to its usual going home configuration today: the gate on one side was for people coming in, the gate on the other side was for people going out and the gate in the middle was simply open. I’ve never worked out why they don’t just open all the gates if they can’t man that entrance instead of just one of them. But then I’ve never really worked out why the bulk of the passengers still choose to go through the gates they have to use their tickets to open instead of going through the middle and saving themselves the effort. Do you think demonstrating you’ve actually paid for your train ticket has become some sort of a status symbol these days?

Two Perspectives

Here’s how she probably described it when she got into work:

‘Oh my God, I was almost knocked down by one of those demented cyclists this morning! I was crossing the road and she screeched round the corner and almost went right into me. If I hadn’t cried out, I’m sure I would have been killed. Bloody cyclists.’

Here’s how I would have described it:

‘Oh my God, some stupid woman almost killed herself under my wheels this morning. I’d just turned left after Lambeth Bridge and I was swinging round so I’d go round the outside of her when she suddenly noticed I was there, stopped dead in her tracks and just screamed. I had to end up on the wrong side of the road to get round her. If she’d just kept on walking she’d have been fine. Bloody pedestrians.’

So who was right? Well obviously, I think I was, but as she had started to cross the road before I started to turn, she did have right of way. On the other hand, I had seen her, signalled my turn, and planned my line so that – had she only kept going – she need never even have noticed I was there. I was going fast – it’s only safe in London if you can keep pace with the traffic – but not excessively so. I could round corners at a more sedate speed and perhaps I wouldn’t startle so many pedestrians (except by the yellowness of my jacket) but I’d probably end up as the hood ornament of a taxi if I did.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of it though – and the floor is yours in the comments box – I’m fairly sure of one thing. If you’re a pedestrian and you suddenly see something coming, be it a bike or a car or a runaway bear, and the thing that is coming is not between you and the pavement you were heading for, keeping going is the safest course. Stopping and screaming is not.

Here Be Dragons

I have a confession to make. I have never been further south on the Northern line than Kennington, and I live in Kennington. South London is a closed book to me, despite living south of the river* for almost two years. I am a North Londoner in exile. I will shortly be breaking new ground for me (and for North Londoners everywhere, I suspect) and heading south on the Northern line, as far south as you can go without actually ending up in Mordor. Sorry, Morden. South Wimbledon, to be precise. To attend what is either a party given by somebody I have never met, or the most elaborate white slaving operation in the history of the internet.

If I’m not back blogging by Monday, I’ve either been kidnapped, or fallen off the edge of the world.

* But – to steal a phrase – within sprinting distance of a bridge.

Inexplicable

There are the inexplicable things that people do on trains. Take, for instance, the chap the other day who spent a crowded journey from Kew Bridge to Clapham Junction carefully ripping articles out of the Argus Lite with a ruler. He left behind a small pile of torn newsprint and an ineffable air of mystery: for what could there be in the Argus Lite that was so gripping and so important that he couldn’t wait till he was home to cut them out?

And then there are the inexplicable things that people do in train companies. Take Kew Bridge and its great bike rack glut. Bowing, no doubt, to the awesome power of the blog, the old bike racks have now been removed – sawn off at ground level, it looks like. So we’re now back to the situation we were in before they built the new bike racks – with parking spaces for 20 bikes. Except that a lot of money has been spent on putting in the new bike racks, and now all the spaces are on the same platform which means anyone coming in on the now bike-rackless platform has to lug their bike up two flights of stairs, wheel it across the bridge and lug it back down two more. Hmm. Improvement? I don’t think so. Meanwhile, the number of benches, and particularly benches under cover, remains resolutely too few. So if you’re listening, SWT, and you’ve got any money left, how about some seats?

The Great Escape

I was almost train-napped this evening. As we were pulling into Vauxhall, I was mildly amused to hear SWT woman warning us of the short platform at the station and advising us to move into the forward coaches. But you laugh at these things at your peril – the train stopped, we waited, and waited, and waited, until the horrible truth dawned. She meant it. And she wasn’t opening our doors. Other passengers could be seen getting out of the front but we were stuck and heading to Waterloo where we would no doubt fall victim to SWT’s crackdown on fare avoiders, and get fined for travelling beyond the validity of our tickets. At this point, remembering my colleague’s near-death experience*, I started to try and get forward. But other people were trying to come the other way and a bit of a melee began to develop. Fortunately a more forceful commuter than I, with one of those carrying voices that seems to be born to command managed to get us all at least moving in the right direction. And at that point, the pips went – oh blessed sound – the train relented, and we were able to open the doors.

So all’s well that ends well, but it is a bit worrying if a computer glitch like that affects what actually happens on the train. There’s a guard and a driver on these trains, both – as far as I can tell – human, who could see pretty clearly that this was not a short platform and we could all get off in safety. So why let SouthWest Trains woman have the final say? Anyone can tell just listening to her that she’s not entirely to be trusted. Or have they not met their target for detecting fare evaders, and they’re resorting to desperate measures? I think kidnapping’s going a bit far…

*or forced trip to Brentford, anyway. Which amounts to the same thing

All Is Revealed

Oh dear. Barely a week into the summer holidays and already I’m tired of having over-excited teenagers on my train home. Youthful high spiritedness is one thing – acapella renditions of old Spice Girl hits are quite another. As is the habit the young lad opposite me had of dislodging his dental brace with his tongue and sticking it out his mouth for all to see.

But maybe I’m just grumpy because finally I have got to the bottom of the great train lengths mystery, which I know riveted you all in May this year. Since then, the 7:41 has become a consistently eight-car train, complete with an announcement to that effect and the special instructions for passengers at Isleworth to use the front four coaches, which was the clincher for me.  More and more people have started using it, too. Which is when SouthWest Trains revealed their plan in all its dastardlyness. When the going gets tough (and the tough this morning was flooding in the Balham area, apparently), for maximum disruptive effect, it’s always the 7:41 that gets cancelled.

Or is it? For there is never an announcement to that effect. It simply and silently disappears from our screens and we find ourselves no longer waiting for the 7:41 in all its spacious glory, but waiting for the 7:56 sardine special to Weybridge instead. It is as though the train came and went, and nobody noticed it. I’m beginning to wonder whether in fact SWT aren’t actually cancelling it, but running it as a 0-car train instead.

Buttoned Up

I don’t know, call me little miss observant, but it’s only just occurred to me after 2 years commuting with them just how badly placed SWT’s door buttons are. If you’re on the outside of the train waiting to get in, and you’re a well-brought-up considerate commuter (as I know all of my readers are), you’re going to want to stand aside from the doors, to allow the passengers on the train to get off first. So where do they put the door buttons on the outside? Right in the middle of the doors, where the two halves meet. Yet if you’re on the train, not wanting to get off because it’s not your stop, and you’re a well-brought-up considerate commuter, you’re going to want to stand to one side, to let the people who do want to get off off. So where do they put the door buttons on the inside? Off to the side of the door.

You know, if they had sat down and really thought about it I don’t think they could have done worse – short of something really perverse, like having them on the floor. And the more I think about it, the stranger it is. How could they get it so wrong? Do you think the doors are on inside-out?

Bleeeeeurgh

I don’t know, what part of ‘wet and miserable weather’ do I not understand? It seems that, despite a whole weekend of apocalyptic flood reportage in the papers, my own blog entry for Friday, 20 minutes of hyperventilating flood warnings on the Today programme this morning and a weather forecast of heavy rain for the whole of Southern England, the part of my brain that decides what I should wear in the morning (no point asking me, I’m asleep) decided not to bother with a jacket. Or an umbrella. Or, indeed, waterproof shoes. Something to do with the fact that it wasn’t raining then, I suppose. And also because I did have my cycling jacket, which is waterproof, but is really not seemly for non-cycling wear. That – coupled with the fact that I also decided it would be a stunning idea to do the long cycle ride to Battersea this morning – meanss that there is no part of me now that is not soaking wet (yes, indeed, blogging is the first thing I do when I get home). And there’s something really very unpleasant about cycling not just in steadily dampening jeans, but in a wet shirt overlaid by a waterproof but not terribly breathable jacket.

But I do wonder exactly what I could wear that would cover all circumstances. My day consists of a 20 minute cycle ride, a five minute wait on an exposed and shelterless platform, a 25 minute air-conditioned train ride, a 10 minute walk in everything this summer chooses to throw at us (blizzards?), and a day spent looking at least passably professional in an air-conditioned office with its phasers set to stun. Oh and only one small backpack to carry my many outfits in. So to show that I can take the fashion advice as well as dish it out: readers, the floor is yours. What would you wear?

Darkness At Noon

Sodding typical. I take a day off and now here I am, at home, with the lights on, in the middle of the day because it’s so dark I can hardly see.

Summer. Remember that?

Back to the commuting front on Monday. I’d say have a great weekend, but I don’t think any of you are ducks, so I think it’s unlikely to happen

More Fashion Notes

You know you’re getting old when the latest street fashions become not just laughable but downright baffling. Take this morning. There were two young lads using the cashpoint at Vauxhall in front of me in shower caps. Other than that they were ‘normally’ dressed – trousers with the crotch at the knees, enormous trainers, baggy tops – and shower caps. I thought at first they might have been catering workers or something, but no: while the lad on the left had a plain white one, the one on the right’s was blue with white polka dots – rather a jaunty shower cap for a septuagenarian say, but a shower cap nonetheless. And the way they were wearing them – puffed out on top of their heads like a mushroom – suggested they weren’t there to be functional. What’s next for today’s hip and happening yoof – curlers? Slippers and a pipe? Tartan shopping trolleys?

And – before you ask – no, it wasn’t raining.