Commuted sentence

It's been a bad couple of weeks commuting.

Just for the record, my normal journey is by bus to East Croydon, train to either Victoria or London Bridge, then underground to Euston. In all, around 1 hour 15 -25 minutes each way.

Tuesday, 17th. Half-term week, so I was expecting a fast journey into work, with virtually no traffic on the way to the station. And I was right; in fact I got as far as Victoria underground station by 07:50 and was expecting to be at my desk by 8:05. But a train failure delayed services and, just when I finally got onto a train and reckoned I was getting somewhere, there was a signal or points failure (I can't remember which) and it was 8:45 before I made it to work. Then, in the evening, a fatality on the train line messed the train service up a fair bit.

Wednesday, 18th. Apparently there was a fatality in the early afternoon, and the rail service was starting to recover from that when there was a second fatality. This meant chaos - very few trains, throughly overcrowded (not helped by the fact that, being half term, there were lots of families expecting to travel home from a fun day out in London, with multiple children and pushchairs, who didn't seem to realise that trains might be busy in the rush hour).

Then there were a few days when things were ok.

Thursday, 26th. Signalling failure on the underground in the morning made me hot, tired and late by the time I reached work. Signalling failure on the underground in the evening made me hot, tired and late by the time I reached Victoria. Where I found there had been another fatality .....

Friday, 27th. More signalling problems on the underground in the morning. And - what a surprise - more in the evening as well.

What this really brings home to me is not that the transport services in London are unprepared for incidents of various kinds, but there are no viable alternatives. Routes cannout be bypassed. And, as all of London transport is working at capacity in the peak periods, when one part of the system fails the remainder cannot pick up the slack. There is no slack.

London will host the Olympic Games in three and a half years' time. This week, there has been an announcement about the "enhancement" of walking and cycling routes to the Olympic Park, but those will benefit a relatively small number of people in north and east London; all of London is paying an extra charge to fund the Games yet, unless something is done urgently to improve the reliability of services from other parts of the city, the Games will be completely inaccessible to millions of Londoners.

It also seems to be prioritising able-bodied spectators over those with handicaps.

But none of that is what worries me.

I am now seriously concerned that - during the lead-up to the Games, the main competitions and the Paralympic Games - so much effort will be steered towards the Olympics that other London routes will be in total disarray.

Which means no way to get to work for tens of thousands of people.

Please, Transport for London, give us some believable assurance that the council tax-paying, travel card-buying public will not be abandonned.

The Chow Mein Strikes Back

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away … well it was in a park in Sheffield exactly.

******************************************************

Earlier today, one of my colleagues was going on about her most extreme comfort food – chicken chow mein. At a suitable break in the conversation, I asked her a straightforward question. She looked at me, confused.

So I told her what happened to me about twenty five years ago.

******************************************************

A friend and I went up to Sheffield one weekend to see Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet (see, I said it was a long time ago) performing in a tent in a park in Sheffield. As you do. By the Saturday evening we’d worked out that there weren’t any restaurants in the vicinity of the park, so we got ourselves a Chinese takeaway and walked, takeaway and Kodak Instamatic camera in hand, to find a quiet park bench. You know the camera I mean; the one where the cover swings down to become a handle.

After about ten minutes we found somewhere suitable. That’s when I discovered that one of the takeaway bags had leaked, and there was chicken chow mein all over my camera.

I cleaned it up as well as I could, wiping some of the white print of the inside of the cover in the process, but then I realised something quite serious (well, in camera function terms, anyway).

There was chicken chow mein in the view finder. Not on the view finder; in the view finder.

What’s more, while the camera was closed everything was fine, but the moment I opened the case there was all all-pervading smell of chicken chow mein.

I didn’t have enough time to take the camera anywhere on Monday lunchtime but, after work, I rushed up to the top of the high street to take my camera up to the photographic department in Boots. I got their ten minutes before they were due to close, and asked the assistant if they could repair cameras. He replied that they could send them away for repair, and asked what the problem was.

“There’s chicken chow mein in the view finder”.

He looked at me disbelievingly, and opened the case. Luckily, it still smelt ok, but it was definitely chicken chow mein.

The camera was, of course, just out of warranty, so he asked how much I’d be prepared to pay for the cleaning, if it could be cleaned. He explained that the particular model I had was no longer available, but the nearest replacement model was £20, so I agreed to pay up to £10 – anything more than that, and I’d get a new camera. And keep it away from Chinese takeaways.

By this time, another assistant was hurrying him to finish and close up, but he still had to fill in the form to be sent off with the camera.

Please clean due to …… “I can’t say that. What do you want me to say?”

“Tell the truth. Besides, they’ll know the second they open it”.

“That’s true”. Please clean due to chicken chow mein in the view finder.

******************************************************

A week later, I can back from lunch to find a note on my desk telling me that Boots had rung, and my camera was ready for collection. One of my colleagues was just about to go to lunch and offered to pick it up for me, so I gave her the receipt and £10.

Half an hour later she came back with my camera and the £10 note. “There was no charge”.

Ok, that’s a bonus. I took the camera out of the bag and opened the cover. Nothing. I checked the view finder. Totally clear.

Hold on, my camera had a scratch on the top of the cover, and this doesn’t. And I wiped some of the white printing off when I cleaned it up, and this has all the printing in place. This isn’t my camera; it’s brand new. In fact, there’s even a packing note curled up in the film compartment.

******************************************************

It was about three weeks later that I opened up the back of the camera to put a new film in, and took out the slip of paper for the first time.

It wasn’t a packing note. Or, at least, it was – but not an official one. There were two comments in different handwriting.

One said “It smelled lovely”.

And the other ….. “Wot, no chopsticks?”

**********************************

Which only leaves the question that so confused my colleague this morning.

“Yes, but have you ever got chicken chow mein in the viewfinder of a camera? …… Ok, it must be only me then”

Think before you speak

I was on a train from Victoria a couple of evenings ago. For anyone who isn’t familiar with that London terminus (and the clue is in the word “terminus”), it consists of a rather large concrete/marble/whatever concourse, with 19 platforms leading down from one edge.

A family, including a teenage boy, must have walked from the concourse and down the platform before deciding to sit in the same carriage as me, seven carriages from the concourse.

As he sat in the seat in front of me, facing back the way he had walked for the oh-so-solid concourse, the teenager said “Which way is it pulling out? I hope it’s that way (pointing back towards the concourse) because I don’t like travelling backwards”.

Personally, I’d rather travel backwards onto clear track than forwards into several hundred tons of building …..

When is a pet not a pet?

Sometimes I think I’d having nothing to blog about if it wasn’t for summer holidays.

I've started looking into travel insurance for this summer, and have found that some policies I looked at had a clause headed “Pet Cover” or similar, which basically says that, should the return journey be delayed for any valid reason, the costs of additional kennel or cattery fees (presumably for pets left in the UK while their owners are on holiday) will be paid.

Which is a good idea. Except lizards don’t go to kennels or catteries; they go to a reptile sanctuary.

But the clause heading is most definitely about PETS, so perhaps they were using kennels and catteries as an inclusive term.....

So I emailed them, asking if this clause also applied to other small domestic pets, explaining that we would be boarding out lizards and, for good measure, adding that the cats would be coming with us but had their own insurance. (would that be purrsonal insurance?)

I was expecting a simple answer yes; after all, one small domestic animal is pretty much like any other small domestic animal – well, in insurance terms, anyway – and boarding fees for lizards are almost certainly going to be less than kennel or cattery fees. It’s not like I was expecting cover for stabling a horse ….

After a little more than 24 hours the answer came back.

No cover.

So we have another new definition - Pet: A domestic animal that is boarded in either a kennel or a cattery.

I wonder if I can find a kennel that accepts lizards?

Snow comment

Towards the end of January I was thinking “Thank God that’s nearly over”. Then came February, and the snow.

Last Sunday night I went to let Dyson out for his last prowl of the day, only to find it was snowing steadily and we already had about three inches of snow. Dyson therefore changed his mind about going out, and decided to wait for the morning.

He didn’t even stay to enjoy the view.

On Monday morning, it was pretty clear Dyson wasn’t going out. And neither was I.

I live in a flat and, once I leave my front door, I have a flight of stairs down to a glass and wooden porch. The door of the porch opens outwards onto a wooden platform, from which there is another small flights of wooden steps to the footpath.

Except the porch door doesn’t open outwards when there’s around eight inches of snow the other side of it.

So I emailed work and told them I’d be late. Dyson, who hates using an indoor tray, crossed his legs and went back to bed.

Later on, someone managed to get the porch door open far enough to squeeze out, so I got myself dressed up and headed out. I got as far as the road when people returning told me there were no buses or trains running.

I went back home.

In the four minutes since I’d gone out, the porch door had frozen shut. It took the help of a neighbour, a couple of kitchen knives and around a quarter of an hour for me to open the door enough to get back in.

I emailed work and told them I was working from home.

By the evening Dyson was climbing the walls. Literally. Eventually, he was carried outside, placed in an area that had been partially cleared, and left for five minutes.

He was ready and waiting to be let back in.

It was Thursday night before he went out of his own volition, and he was still very eager to come in after ten minutes.

Snowball, of course, hasn’t ventured within two feet of the front door for more than a week.

Snow, Dyson, Snowball, cats