(N)early Doors

I should point out before posting this that I have never yet been knocked off my bike. But in my head, I’ve died a thousand nasty deaths.

Today it was the old cyclist’s friend the driver’s side car door. Ironically enough, I was coming back from Battersea having decided to get back in the saddle, as it were, and take advantage of a brief gap in the rain. I had already endured buffetting head winds, and a bike that feels as though someone has attached ten pound weights to its back wheel. I’d passed a nasty and sobering-looking accident and negotiated four roundabouts safely and was on, as I thought, the home stretch and posibly – fatal mistake – beginning to relax.

In a sense, it was my fault. I’d seen the car pull up behind the van. I’d pulled out far enough to pass the car, but not, crucially, its door. I was signalling right and trying to get further over. It’s always a pain trying to pull out on a bike – I’d already had one lorry blast past me and I was looking over my right shoulder to see if the car behind me was going to do the same or let me into the gap. At that moment I sensed, rather than saw the parked car’s door open and I found myself powering through the tiny gap that remained – something I’d never have managed in cold blood but it’s amazing what adrenaline and the invokation of minor deities can do*.

But then again, why should it be my fault? I know that the proper cyclists say that the price of survival on the roads is eternal vigilance, that anyone will do anything at any time without any warning. But it wasn’t me that flung a car door open into the stream of traffic without looking for the (brightly coloured) cyclist first. Why is it that I have to maintain some sort of ninja-level awareness of everything that’s going on above, below, in front and around me while car drivers can be singing along to the radio and dreaming about what they’ll have for tea – and that’s if they’re not actually on their mobiles, quarrelling with their kids, or putting on their makeup in the rear view mirror?

I saw five or six little kids in high-vis vests being taught to cycle on the roads around our house yesterday. Some sort of council scheme, I think. This is fantastic. Get the kids out on their bikes, get them fit, get them and their parents out of their cars, save the planet, cut pollution and obesity in one fell swoop. But what happens when all these wobbly little kids have got their proficiency badges and want to actually cycle out there for real? If we really have to be the ninja cyclists, constantly alert, just to survive, they aren’t going to last five minutes.

We aren’t going to get more cyclists until the roads out there are safer. The roads aren’t going to get much safer until there are plenty more bikes. What is the answer? I don’t know, I truly don’t. Move to Copenhagen? I’m sorely tempted.

* who is the patron saint of cyclists, by the way? I think I owe him or her a candle or seven.

Not Dead, only Sleeping

The Ticket Collector has asked me to say that his site is back up and running again after a server crash. If you’re looking for railway-related disgruntlement from the other side of the tracks, as it were, then that’s the place to find it.

 See also London Underground life, and this replacement bus service …

National Express, or Swings and Roundabouts

Well, that didn’t last long, did it?

Don’t worry, It’s only a one-off. We’re celebrating my freedom with a short trip to Scotland which meant we finally got to try out the newly enfranchised National Express trains on the old GNER East Coast Main line route. On the whole, apart from some hastily repainted livery, not much has changed. The prices seem to have gone up (£157 EACH for an open return – that’s worse than TfL) and the restaurant car has either disappeared or is kept as a guilty secret between the first class passengers and the train crew. But then on the other hand, the toilets remained unblocked at least as far as Newcastle (something of a record) and the standard of passengers’ comedic Geordie banter has improved immeasurably (sample dialogue: ‘Did you gerrim something nice for Christmas?’ ‘Aye, I did’ ‘What did you gerrim?’ ‘Bottle of whiskey’ ‘That’s not a nice present that’s just alcohol’ ‘Wha’s wrong wi gerring him alcohol for Christmas?’ ‘Well there’s no thought in it, alcohol, is there?’ ‘Yes there is, there was plenty of thought in it, he shared half the bottle wi me!’). And – in pitiful compensation for the loss of the restaurant car – we did get 20p off our cheese and ham toasties at the buffet ‘because you look like happy people.’

But it was on our way back from the buffet with our hot bargain toasties that we met what almost turned out to be our nemesis: the National Express One-Way Trolley of Doom. The trolley (‘Any hot drinks, sandwiches, refreshments?’) was at one end of the carriage, parked beside the table seats, so there was no way of slipping past. I stood patiently and waited for the girl to finish serving her customer, expecting her to pull the trolley forward or back a couple of feet so I could squeeze into one of the many empty seats but she resolutely ignored me and called out her siren song again. Did any passengers want any hot drinks, sandwiches, refreshments? They did. First she served the Japanese gentleman a coffee and then got into a tangled conversation with him over whether he owed her any more money (he, having clearly been in London too long, was trying to pay her an extra two pounds for his coffee). Then the chap opposite him wanted to buy his colleague a drink and needed a receipt. At this point, with our hot toasties now more like warm toasties, I cracked. Could she just move the trolley for a second to let us slip by? No, she couldn’t, because the trolley only went one way. More passengers proffered notes with more and more complicated requests. The other half was getting restless. Finally, she relented. She started to shift the trolley in its one singular direction so we could escape, at which point the chap on the other side of the trolley, who I thought had been waiting to pass as well, grabbed it by the handle. He wanted hot drinks, sandwiches AND refreshments and he wanted them now.

Fortunately the trolley girl, possibly alerted to the fact that she was about to be annointed with two now cooling cheese and ham toasties, stood firm, or rather, backed up firmly. She yanked her trolley out of his grasp, explaining once more it only went one way, and suggested her follow her and her siren call down the aisle. We escaped with a sound like a cork popping out of a bottle to enjoy our cheese and ham toasties. And the only mystery now is how she managed to be seen coming back up the aisle with her siren call (Any hot drinks, sandwiches, refreshments?’) and her One Way Trolley of Doom.

We’re guessing they have to wheel it out of the train at the stations and pick it up bodily and turn it around. I am SURE that never happened on GNER.

First we Quit our Jobs…

I have a little confession to make.

Nearly three months ago, I handed in my notice at work, and neglected to find myself any other job. I have decided to become a writer, you see, a proper, full-time one. It may or may not work out but we’ve got enough saved up to keep us going for a couple of years before we’re forced back to the nine-to-five.

Now, alert readers will have spotted the flaw here. One of the drawbacks of not having a full time job – indeed, I think it may be the only drawback – is that it makes it very difficult to keep up writing a daily entry in a blog about commuting. Which means that posting may become a little unreliable here in the future. As in Silverlink in a snowstorm, or the Circle line during engineering works – that sort of level of service. There may well still be postings: I’ve got to fulfil this challenge, for a start, and I’m sure that wherever I go, my commitment to using public transport will ensure that I’ve got plenty to feel disgruntled about. But not every day. Not even every week.

At some point, when I have thought of a suitable subject, I may well start another blog. I will let you know if that happens, you can be sure. Meanwhile if you have any suggestions, let me know.

Stop Me if you’ve Heard this one Before

I do hate to repeat myself, but sometimes I am driven to it. Indicating. Why do drivers find this so hard? Do you have to put a coin in the slot every time you use them, or what?

There I was, waiting to cycle across Black Prince Road on my way to the station this morning. An oncoming truck was turning right into the road I wanted to go down  – it hadn’t indicated it was turning right in any formal sense, but the fact that it had mounted the pavement to do so had tipped me off, a bit. Behind it, a car was waiting, indicating neither to right nor to left. The lorry finally made it round the bend and the car paused. I think it was kindly waiting for me to cross the road because it was intending to turn left into the street I was in but that was just a guess. You see, I’m a cyclist. My special powers include squeezing through impossibly narrow gaps, accelerating away from you (briefly) at the lights, and having an astoundingly loud air horn*. They do not include mind reading. So I had to wait at the foot of the road, unsure exactly whether the car was pausing in order to let me out or to lure me out into the road and run me over properly. Caution got the better of me and I stayed where I was, just as the car got bored of waiting and turned left. Everybody held up, and for no good reason.

Look. There’s a little stick thing by your steering wheel. Sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right. Push it up or down and it makes an entertaining ticking noise and some flashing turn signals come on. Try it, one of these days. Trust me. You’ll be amazed how effective it is at helping people guess where you are going.

*no, babymother, I didn’t. I only just remembered it now.

Closet Cyclist

I had a day off from commuting today so I thought I’d take the opportunity to get out and go a bit further than usual on the bike. Ever since I stopped cycling to Battersea I’ve known that I’d have to get out of my comfort zone of just cycling to and from the station every day and try and extend my range, or I’d end up too scared to cycle anywhere at all (I was definitely raised in the ‘get back on the horse after you’ve fallen off’ school as a child). Anyway, it being a sunny day, and with an hour to spare, I headed off and explored the back streets and even the bigger streets around the South Bank. And it was fine. I did a couple of multi-lane roundabouts, and a right turn across two lanes of traffic, and never once felt in danger of anything except getting out of breath.

But even so, I had a nagging feeling that something was wrong. I had my scary yellow jacket on, my gloves, my trusty backpack, now complete with its own flashing hi-visibility vest; I was accompanied by the squeaks and rattles that always accompany me when I’m on my bike; my air horn was poised ready on one side of my handlebars, my bell on the other, and still something seemed to be missing, something not quite right. It was only as I got home that I realised what it was. For months now I’ve been going out in the dark and coming home in the dark whenever I’ve got on my bike. I’m simply not used to cycling in daylight any more.

Summer? It just can’t come soon enough.

Flushed with Fear

Using the toilet in the train this evening I noticed that, next to the flush button, there was a warning sign: DO NOT FLUSH WHILE SEATED. The consequences weren’t spelled out, but I have no doubt that anyone who dared to would suffer a dreadful fate. In fact, I seem to remember this was exactly the sort of cautionary tale that got passed around in the school playground, along with the one about the kid who had his head knocked off when he stuck it out of the bus window. Phew. Lucky they put up the warning notice, eh?

Of course it would have been even better had they placed the warning sign above the flush button where it could be seen by any seated person before they recklessly flushed, rather than positioning it so it was hidden by the raised seat and, indeed, the seated person. The same seat, incidentally, according to the same sign, that you had to have closed before flushing.

So please, do make sure while attempting to use any of SWT’s fine facilities that you have read ALL of the instructions before proceeding. Because you don’t want to end up as the punchline in a playground urban myth now do you?

Next thing they’ll be telling me the story about the beheaded boy is true too.

Bench Marking

Sitting at Westminster tube yesterday, waiting for one of the approximately 5 tube trains that were still running during all the engineering works, the other half and I were wondering just who the designers had in mind when they created the benches on the District line platforms. They (the benches, not the designers) had arms dividing up the notional seats, mainly I suppose to prevent people from sleeping on them. These arms were placed so that either one enormously fat person could sit in comfort, one normal person could sit in solitary splendour, or two very skinny, very close friends could sit in close proximity. Now granted, Westminster tube does have its fair share of visiting tourists*, but on the whole, most of the people that I could see on the platform were normal sized, which meant that one bench that could have comfortably seated six people had been turned into a bench that could seat four. I wonder how many international design awards that decision garnered its creator. I’m guessing several.

And while we’re on the subject of benches, is there any good reason why there would be a large puddle of liquid spreading out from under a bench on the covered part of Vauxhall’s platform 3, other than the obvious? I wasn’t taking any chances, so I stood…

*Although the usual reminder that this blog is married to an American applies before you go too far down the national stereotyping route in the comments

What’s Worse…

… than being stuck on a train with only a freebie newspaper for entertainment? Well, if this morning was anything to go by, it’s being stuck on a train with a perfectly good newspaper of my own to read but being unable to concentrate on it due to having someone sitting opposite me reading out snippets from a freebie newspaper to amuse his travelling companion with. That’s ‘amuse’ in its loosest possible sense. The companion had given him the paper to read (having a copy of his own) probably – and I’m guessing here – in the hope that it might shut him up for at least some of the journey. Sadly, it didn’t work and it meant that the rest of us were treated to such entertaining snippets as ‘Look there’s a woman here who committed suicide after giving birth to twins. I call that a bit selfish’ while his companion wearily pointed out that he was reading the same paper and was in fact a few pages ahead, and had seen that bit already. The only respite we got was when another man got on at Clapham junction and drowned out the first with a long, involved and similarly amusing anecdote about how he ended up working in the oil and gas industry. (You really don’t want to know)

Look, it’s January. It’s dark, it’s wet and it’s miserable. Proper etiquette in the train in the mornings is to acknowledge your work colleagues with a cordial nod and then resume staring out of the window at the dark, cold, wetness with a weary air. Jocular conversation is just too much for anyone to handle until at least the clocks have gone forward and there’s some daylight in the mornings. Please? Or I’ll be confiscating those papers. I mean it.

How Far…

And how fast can you reverse the wrong way down a one-way street before it stops being an acceptable parking manouevre and starts becoming taking the piss? Five yards? Fifty? The length of the street? There comes a point – as the engine starts doing that laboured whine thing – that you want to say, ‘oh just turn the damn car round and break the damn law properly.’