No Business Like Snowbusiness

We've had the overture; the Beast From The East is due to hit us hard tonight.

This was my commute this morning.
I had a choice: take water, food, blankets, shovel, etc.
or take my "Donner Party" kit:
Stihl chainsaw (sweet), boning knife, camping gas stove, butcher's apron.

No contest …

Hokay, so maybe it's not as bad as this (my old commute), but the drive to Smallville still has its own little peculiarites.

Especially during harvest time, when the roads are filled with these blighters travelling at 5 mph for miles between farms.
Oncoming traffic has to get up on the verge and wait for the behemoths to pass and those of us stuck behind them get to work late.
Hey ho.

Sleeping With Drag Act And Lefty

I bumped into Drag Act in the car park this morning.
We smiled and said good morning and headed off to the train together, parting as we sought out our regular seats, which prompted me to continue where last week's "Some People I Slept With" post left off, describing the many and varied denizens - fellow damned souls - with whom I share my seven-hour-a-day commute from Hell.

Drag Act has been journeying with me across the Styx for at least five years now, yet I still have no idea what her name is.
She is a lovely, friendly woman who I imagine is in her late fifties, but it's difficult to tell because of all the make-up.
Not that she plasters it on, trailer-trash style; oh, no! It is immaculate, as is her hair and her clothing.
All three are merely unfortunate, that's all …

Let me describe her …
She must get up around midnight each week-night to give herself time to do "that" hair.
She wears a massive, and I mean MASSIVE back-combed, eighties, peroxide "blonde" frothy confection on her head.
It is a work of art but it is also strangely hilarious.

Her make-up is, as I have said already, immaculate; it's just that her lipstick is a leeetle too vampirically red and her mascara just a teensy bit too lashy for comfort.
I may have been watching too much Buffy, but when she smiles I want to take a step backwards just in case she goes for my throat.

Her suits - she always wears suits - are beautifully tailored; navy or black single-breasted jackets (and yes; shoulder pads are big for Drag Act) and pencil skirts with a white, slightly frilly blouse.
She completes her ensemble with seamed stockings (black) and black stilettos.

All of which probably makes her feel fabulous but actually makes her look the spitting image of Lily Savage (Colonials should Google our Lil … a truly glorious drag queen).

Drag Act is a lovely lady but I can't imagine her doing the washing up in anything other than long, black gloves.

Sharing a carriage with Drag Act and me is - among others from last week's post - the bona fide baffling nutjob that is Lefty.

Lefty had been a regular for many months before I noticed anything strange about him - other than that he is in his late thirties but still mistakenly wears that stupid "footballer", flicky-up-at-the-front gel hairdo, that he will look back on in years to come with deep and deserved shame and anguish.

Lefty is a therapist's wet dream; he has the most wonderful and entertaining affliction; one that I couldn't quite believe the first time I noticed and that took me several days of frankly obsessive stalking to verify.

This is what makes Lefty the strange and … er … special person he is:
Lefty simply cannot bring himself to turn right.

This is absolutely true.
When faced with a 90º right-hand corner the poor bastard instead turns 270º to the left to end up facing the way he needs to go.
He seems to have developed quite a cool little pirouette that doesn't attract much attention; he just looks like a guy who's realised he's going the wrong way and changes direction.
But the truth is - and I've travelled with him for years now so I know whereof I speak - the guy simply will not turn right.

At all.

EVER!

He has, however, developed coping strategies.
When he exits the turnstiles at the end of the platform at Liverpool Street Station he has to turn right and right again to head down onto the Central Line, but the canny bastard craftily SIDLES to the right while still facing forward until he reaches the Central Line entrance and then spins a 180º left turn to head down the tunnel.
Cunning!
On numerous occasions when the weather has been too crap for my five mile walk across the city I have caught the tube with Lefty.
Jammed like sardines into the stinking morning carriages he very gradually shifts and shuffles around to the left until he is facing the correct door. Almost imperceptible unless you are actually watching him do it.
What's more; he never faces the door straight on - just in case someone like me nudges him off line and forces him to turn all the way around again … no; he always faces about ten degrees to the right of straight on, so that when the doors open he has a little lefty leeway in the scrummage to get out safely.

I have no idea what psychological trauma in his childhood might have kicked off this tic; this unfortunate loss of the ability to turn right, but I know that an awful lot of people suffer from similar compulsive actions - though rarely one as amusing to watch as Lefty's - and cannot find a way to stop once they've started.

I once had a girlfriend who - if we were walking along, holding hands - would freak if it looked like we were about to walk one either side of a bollard or some other obstruction like a dog or a small child.
She confessed to being scared shitless that if that happened she would suddenly find herself all alone in an alternative reality with no way of getting back.

The mind is indeed a wonderful, strange and hugely amusing thing.

Anyhoo … Here's to Drag Act and Lefty.
One day I'm going to have to kidnap Lefty, carry him to the middle of Somerleyton Maze and then film him trying to get out.

Some People I Slept With

Commuters come and commuters go …
When you've been long-distance commuting for as many millennia as I have, eventually the day will come when the ever-dwindling complement of fellow-travellers who were there on your first day trickles away to nothing and leaves you alone … the sole survivor.

That day was today.

With the depressing inevitability of erosion - and yesterday's retirement of John (aka Wiggy for his ludicrously laughable baldy-rug) Old Dive has become the longest-serving commuter on my train.
Don't ask how many years … some of you might not have been born when I started.

The old familiar faces have gradually disappeared and a good many of them I actually miss in a strange and slightly disturbing way.

Here - for no reason other than wallowing in my own nostalgia, and disregarding such occasional and erotic delights as the Thumb-Sucking Girl and the Church Of Fornication - are teensy vignettes of just a few of the people I have slept, snored and drooled with over the years during my three-and-a-half hour journey to work and the three-and-a-half hour journey home again and who have since fallen by the wayside:

- Mary Hopkin, Witchfinder General (for an expalanation of which, please see the Thumb-Sucking post).

- A Woman Called Horse.
A starchy lady of indeterminate age whose grip on reality had slipped to such an extent that she habitually travelled to London dressed for horseriding (boots, jodphurs, riding jacket - the full monty - and read nothing but horse magazines.
She had a short, loud bark of a laugh that could alarm those who didn't know her.

- Underbite and Backspace.
A matching pair of imbecilic sports fans from Ipswich; Underbite because you could have used his lower jaw as a shelf for your coffee mug, and Backspace for the sheer, blank stupidity of his expression, as if God had accidentally hit "backspace" when it came time to insert his brain.

- The Ginger Pig.
A fat, florid and unfeasibly ginger-coiffed man in his sixties who snored quite entertainingly; named after a John LeCarré character.

- Stinky Perfume Girl.
Those of you who know I am anosmic will also know that all an anosmic can register of a perfume is the taste of the solvent in the air. All perfumes "smell" (taste) just like paint, turps and petrol.
Stinky Perfume Girl (after the … ahem … Madonna song of not quite the same name) used to board my train at Stowmarket and I had to hope she sat at least half a dozen seats away from me. If she came any closer I had to endure several minutes of coughing and retching into my hanky before the reeking, fœtid cloud of stench she carried around with her subsided sufficiently to allow safe inhalation.

- Breakfast Boy.
This guy was a small, bearded, gnome-like apparition who for many a year sat at one of the table seats and would entertain the rest of us daily by fussily arranging a veritable smørgasbørd of Tupperware on the table before him, after which he would painstakingly prepare his breakfast, producing cereal, milk, fruit, toast, butter and marmalade from various containers and serving them up in matching Tupperware bowls.
He would pour his coffee from a flask into yet another plastic container, add his sugar from another and then unroll a napkin to display his array of cutlery.
After all that, watching him eat was always a bit of a letdown.
The whole lot would be carefully packed away at the end of his repast; he probably got his secretary to do his washing up when he reached his office.

- Mrs. Stiff.
That's her real name and she did her best to live up to it.
And she managed it heroically while she was awake, sat ramrod-straight and staring unblinkingly at the back of the head of the person in front.
After an hour or so, however, her concentration would inevitably slip, her eyes would close and she would do a passable impersonation of a calving glacier, a slow-motion collapse of her massive bulk, sufficient to start a tsunami were it to happen at sea.
She would end up in a melted heap, mouth agape and drooling horribly, snorting and snuffling and twitching in an amusingly diverting manner.
One just had to hope when the inevitable collapse happened that she would fall away from you and not onto your lap. I've had to wake her innumerable times when several hundredweight of avoirdupois has oozed across the armrest and threatened me with broken ribs and worse.
She was also quite dreadfully warm and clammy to the touch. Icky.

- Monkey Boy.
One of the longest-surviving commuters who only dropped off the grid last Christmas, Monkey Boy was a nice enough chap but was cursed with a head that sat directly upon his torso without any sign of an intervening neck, and he walked with a bow-legged gait and his arms held out to his sides, just like an orang-utan or George W. Bush.
One had to fight the urge to offer him a banana.

There have been many more but I really can't be arsed to dredge them all up; perhaps another time …

Sadly, the modern-day replacements for my old commuting companions are a sorry lot, but I can reassure myself in the knowledge that no more than five percent of them will still be there eighteen months down the line.
Eighteen months seems to be the cut-off point where suicidal despair, physical and mental breakdown or death weed out the true, long-distance commuter from the mere dilettante.
Most of the rest give up between two and five years after starting.
Only true heroes for whom Hell holds no horror have the fortitude, the lazy-assed laissez-faire and the quite breathtaking reserves of patience necessary to become a "lifer".

Lately I have been regularly entertained by a "newbie" on the homeward leg of my journey.
He has yet to be given a name as he's only been there for six months or so, but perhaps you can come up with some suggestions and we'll see if he deserves any of them.

This guy is someone I found sitting in "my" seat one evening at the end of last summer, a big, florid-faced guy in his forties with a quite startling collection of chins that appeared to have spread well beyond the confines of his face and neck.
I smiled and nodded at him and sat in the seat in front.
Just to clarify the "my" seat thing: I like to sit in the middle seat of the carriage facing north on the east side of the train for my return journey … It means I don't get the sun in my eyes and there's a partition directly behind me, not some bastard sitting there, drumming their fingers on my seat or resting their newspaper on the back of my head while I try to sleep.

Anyhoo; the very next day "my" seat is empty and I sit in it, only to find this guy running up the aisle, red-faced and panting and looking on the verge of a massive coronary, asking me politely if I would move as I am sitting in "his" seat.
A conversation ensued, starting somewhat tense and prickly but getting friendly pretty quickly, where the situation was explained to him and it was agreed that he was welcome to the seat on the days I worked from home but if he wanted it any other time he would have to get to it first.

Not many days after that I was walking to my carriage only to see someone running full pelt up the far side of the platform, glancing back at me and trying - amusingly - to hide behind pillars and other people.
Lo and behold, it was our man, desperately and more than a little childishly trying to reach the seat before me.

I continued strolling right past him as he stood, panting alarmingly and stuck fast in the scrummage for the door and got on at the far end of the carriage (where the queue is always much shorter).
When he at last managed to board the train and found me in the seat he made one of those cartoon facial expressions … his jaw hit the floor and his eyes popped out on stalks.
"How did you …?" he gasped, pointing back down the platform in utter confusion.
Hee hee hee, said Old Dive.

And so it has gone on. I manage to beat him nine times out of ten. I may be older but I am fitter and steeped in the ancient and arcane tao of commuting.

Unfortunately I don't think he'll last much longer. I can see him collapsing with a heart attack one of these afternoons, which would be a shame as beating him to "my" seat certainly keeps me fit, and - in my own immature fashion - greatly amused.

One day I too will fall by the wayside, probably suffering a massive coronary as I run up that pesky final escalator after my regular afternoon five mile jog across London from my office in Westminster to the station.
Until that day - and from today onwards - I shall revel in the slightly dubious honour of being the longest-serving "lifer" in my own personal commuter Hell.

Eleven And A Half Hours On A Train

So if anyone is wondering where I was yesterday, I was kidnapped by my train company.
It sook me five and a half hours to get to work and six hours to get home again.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck commuting!

No Post Today

Sheesh!
I can't blog at work any more and tonight the trains were so crappy (those that weren't cancelled like mine was) that I am only just home and now off to bed with no bloody dinner, ready to get up again in the middle of the night and go back and do it again.
Sigh …

A Gentle Word On Etiquette

Hokay. Enough of that crap.
The last comment box threatened to turn this blog into a fucking sewing circle.
Sweet cheeses of Nazareth; the next thing you know photos of kittens will start appearing here.

Because I'm stupidly busy today and have no time to trawl my Profanisaurus for inspiration I shall resort to rehashing old crap from the early years of the blog.

THIS is how we post kittie photos over here …

And this is what happens when the sewing circle takes over my comments box while I'm asleep.

Don't do it again!

Right …
Time for Dive - the seven hour a day commuter - to update my old rant about how to behave on trains.

Jean-Paul Sartre was right: "L'enfer, c'est les autres".

In the mornings, les autres (my fellow long-distance commuters) generally behave themselves pretty well, slumped in their seats, mouths agape, peacefully drooling; the only disturbance being the occasional grunt or snort.

The unfortunate exception to this is the smegging school holidays, when we are joined by family groups on their way to the airport, bickering couples and their snotty, screaming kids, running up and down the aisles and clambering over the seats, kids and adults alike shouting, shrieking and arguing while they let their babies cry at pain-inducing decibels for the entire journey.
Add to that groups of twenty-somethings laden with rucksacks and drinking beer at six in the morning while they shout and laugh at the tops of their voices.
People who have to get up at 4:40AM every morning and who need to catch up on their lost sleep on the train can get exceedingly grumpy during the school holidays.
Be warned.

But most of the time the mornings are not too bad.

In the evenings, however, the carriages resemble the hellish offspring of a drunken hen night and a football riot.
So if you noisy bastards don't want one of us mild-mannered but burly six-footers going postal and spoiling your day in a terminal way, let's lay down a few ground rules:

Now … heads up, mobile phone users. If you don't want to be wearing that thing up your arse, here's a little piece of advice (this is best read slowly and clearly, as if to a small child):

• First up: the concept of the "telephone":
If you speak into your "telephone", the person you're connected to can hear your voice coming out of their "telephone". Just because they may be miles away doesn't mean you have to SHOUT to make them hear you.

Related to this point: If you cannot hear them clearly over the noise of the train, SHOUTING at them is unlikely to resolve the problem.
They will, in all likelihood, be holding their phone at arms length because you're so fucking LOUD!
It also causes other mobile users around you to stick a finger in their ear and raise their own voices, and is therefore counterproductive.
It may also result in a painful visit to the colo-rectal department of your local hospital to facilitate the removal of your phone from its rightful position.

The urge to TALK LOUDLY if you cannot hear somebody else speaking is caused by "Basic Stupidity".
We now move on to "Advanced Stupidity".

• "Hi. It's me. I'm on the train".
Whoever is waiting for you at the end of your journey (and one day it might be me, with a nasty headache and a baseball bat), you need only call them if you MISS the train, or if it breaks down.
Are you and your partner really so insecure and pathetic that you need to be constantly reassured that either one of you isn't fucking their way through the telephone book whenever you are more than ten feet apart?
I mean you've not shut your fucking mouth for the past three hours shouting asinine drivel and driving your fellow commuters into a murderous rage; what the smeg is there left to talk about when you get home?
Oh, of course … You don't talk when you're together, you simply sit on your fat arses in front of the fucking television while your brains dribble out through your ears and you stuff your balloon faces with deep fried lardy gristle from a bucket.
Get a life, you fucking morons!

So that's "Basic" and "Advanced" stupidity dealt with; "Postgraduate Stupidity" includes the following:

• The constant, repetitive and loud barking of the word "Yeah" merely informs those around you that you are a low grade moron who would lose a battle of wits with a lump of polystyrene packaging.
Stop it, you ignorant fucking bastards!

• Using your inane laugh - like an asthmatic donkey being repeatedly kicked in the lungs - as punctuation when you speak merely highlights the fact that the tedious drivel spewing from your mouth does SO not justify your whinnying cackle at the end of every boring sentence.
If you were that funny, we would all be laughing.
Look around you.
We are not …

• "Tarquin? Hi! … Yah … Yah … uhuhuhuh … Yah … Um, look. I need to go through my emails with Sally … yah … uhuhuh … yah … yah …" etc ad nauseam.
Look, you worthless piece of shit: if you are not good enough at your job to do it in office hours then get off my fucking train and go stack shelves at Tesco for a living.

• The same thing goes for Blackberries.
Look at the stupid thing. It's only a few inches wide.
So why in God's name do you need to stick your fucking elbows halfway across your neighbour's seats when you use it?
Tuck those bony bastards down at your sides, you inconsiderate twat!
Here's a hint: Jamming your elbow into somebody's ribcage and then flicking your fucking thumbs like an onanist plugged in to an electric socket is not going to earn you the respect of the person sitting next to you.
It might, however, earn you a well-deserved smack in the mouth.
Cease. Desist. Or I may make your dentist very happy.

• In the thousands of train journeys I have suffered since the dawn of mobile technology, I could count on the fingers of one hand the words I have heard bellowed into phones that actually needed to be said. THINK before letting a carriage full of annoyed people know how utterly worthless your life is and how fucking BORING you are.

• Another brief piece of advice: If you're not on the train but are actually with me and we are talking face to face and your phone rings … don't you dare answer that fucker.
If you are so mind-buggeringly crass and rude as to pick it up and start yapping into it please do not wonder why I wander off to find somebody who is actually worth talking to.

• Your ringtone is neither cool nor amusing.

In conclusion:
Mobile users: Shut the fuck up!

A Reginald Perrin Moment

Stupid bloody trains.
They got me home just in time for bed last night, so I've not had the time to go through all the weekend's photos and do another Car Porn post.
Yesterday the sun was shining so we started with "heat-related speed restrictions" being imposed and then the signals failed all over the place, the trains that had to sit in the sun broke down and the whole crappy system ground to a halt.
This happens every week of every summer.
In the winter we have "the wrong kind of snow", in the autumn, "leaves on the line" and in spring, "reduced track adhesion" (it's raining).
This morning they added a new excuse to their lame lateness list: "Llamas on the line".
You heard …
Llamas.
Fifty minutes late because creatures from Patagonia had come over here for their holidays and decided to do a bit of train-spotting.
Llamas!
For fuck's sake.
Thank goodness I'll be working from home tomorrow and Thursday.

The Happy Commuter Writes …

After yesterday's bag of shite, here's a song dedicated to my train operator, "National Express".

For anyone not familiar with them, they used to (and still do) run the crappiest coach service in the world (which this song was written to celebrate/satirise) and - in a particularly nasty bout of sadism - the government allowed them to take over my train line.

I have no idea why the lovely Neil has set his video in a National Health hospital, but listen to the lyrics for a taste of my commute (over nine hours yesterday but hopefully only seven today … ha).

As soon as I get a free moment I will catch up on my blog-visiting.
Promise.

In the meantime, here is some light music.
Everybody sing …

Crap

Holy crap!
Over nine hours of delayed train journeys today, just to get to the office and back.
Work was a heap of crap, too.
I'm trashed, emotionally and physically.
I'm just in the door and I'm going to crawl up the stairs and dump the wreckage of myself on the bed.
Tomorrow promises the same, so I'll have to catch up on all your blogs on Wednesday when - hoo-fucking-rah - I'll be working from home.

Jumpy

What's wrong with Mondays?
That's what I want to know.
They always used to do it on Mondays. Regular as clockwork. Four weeks out of every five, some inconsiderate fucker would jump under a train.
Always on Monday.
Always on my line.
Always in Essex (which at least is understandable; anyone finding themselves in Essex is bound to feel suicidal).

Today is Tuesday and we have just had two of the selfish little buggers (so far).

I've offered before and I repeat the offer here: if you feel like killing yourself by jumping under a train on my line, come and see me first. I'll be happy to kill you myself and be saved the hours of delays.
Plus - if I'm feeling generous - your relatives will have something to bury; not just a few gristly lumps in a plastic bucket and a damp patch on the verge where the rest of you has been hosed off the tracks.
Oh, and if they're going to leave flowers, tell them to leave plastic ones; it gets so dismally depressing seeing the piles of rotting vegetation festering there for weeks (though the sad little helium balloon at the Manningtree daughter/mother double jump was pretty funny).

Surely nothing in life could be so bad that dying in Essex seems preferable. If you really feel you have to top yourself, go and do it somewhere nice.
Just don't do it on my line you inconsiderate bastards!

More Moaning About Trains

Well, what a wonderful week it has been for users of Notwork Rail.

On Monday evening (having suffered the inevitable five hour journey in to work due to "over-running engineering works"), the train behind mine managed to snag and tear down over a mile of overhead electric wire.
This is the same section that got torn down several times last year … and the year before … etc.
The reason being that - while the line in Norfolk and Suffolk only dates back to the 1960s - the line through cheapskate Essex has not been replaced since before WWII.
Add to that the fact that upon privatisation of the railways, the new owners got rid of 60,000 (yes, you heard) maintenance workers across the country and paid themselves obscenely huge bonuses with the money saved.
Since then - as any glance at the news will tell you - we have suffered the most catastrophic decline in rail travel standards in history.
Quite apart from the spate of disastrous crashes with their huge loss of life, the timetables have been padded so much that it now takes longer to travel the route by electric "Fast Inter-City" service than it did in the age of steam (true).

Anyhoo … Back to this week.
Notwork Rail
(a) Immediately put out a statement vigorously denying that lack of maintenance on pre-war infrastructure was anything other than a good thing for everybody, and
(b) Took three days to repair it, and
(c) Announced that the taxpayer will be forced to foot the bill for replacing all the crappy old overhead wires (the maintenance budget for which disappeared into their bonuses) and that the work would not get done until 2012 at the earliest.
I am lucky in that I can work from home, but a lot of people cannot and risk losing their jobs because of this.

Inevitably:
Shortly before the repairs were finished, the cage of a poorly maintained cherry-picker sheared off its arm and came crashing down onto the tracks, carrying the three maintenance workers inside it straight to hospital by air ambulance and halting all repair work.

Hey ho …
They at last announced that repairs were complete late yesterday and stated that "a full service is running, with delays and cancellations due to the disruption", which – a quick check of the realtime information website revealed - actually meant only a third of trains were running and they were being delayed by hours ("full service my arse").

And this morning it was revealed to us happy commuters that a freight train derailed late last night (on poorly maintained track) halfway to London and that - should I be interested in getting to work - my usual three-and-a-half hour journey to the office would involve replacement buses and would take over five hours, with no guarantee I would get home tonight.

So …
Many apologies for getting that out of my system.

Here, to calm my savage breast and as part of my "songs that are shaping my summer" meme, is the lovely Joni (with the lovely Jaco on bass) performing Coyote.

Another Bunch Of Nothing

Big it up for Notwork Rail (calling themselves "Network Rail" is just asking for trouble).
Their spectacular incompetence has once again given me a week of working at home as the overhead train lines between here and London are currently laying on the ground in bits.
This comes in the same week as they announced six-figure "productivity" related bonuses for the bosses of the company who have presided over the most catastrophic decline in railway standards in human history.

But then who am I to complain? I'm sitting in my comfy chair, necking Cuban coffee; the sun is shining, the early summer breeze off the sea is blowing cool Heaven through my windows and I didn't have to get up at 4:40AM this morning and suffer the commute from Hell.

Tomorrow you will have to endure another track from the prehistory of Dive, but today - as I have absolutely nothing worthwhile to say - it is time to continue my meme theme of "songs that are shaping my summer".
At the top of my most played tracks on the iPod, there are always a few dozen (okay, a couple of hundred) Steely Dan songs. I've been a rabid and unapologetic Dan Fan since "Do It Again" in 1971. They appeared just after The Beatles split up and ever since that moment I have gratefully suckled at the teat of Dan.

I could have chosen any one of a hundred Dan tunes to kick off my summer, but for today I'm heading back to the tragically unhip days of back-combed hair, rolled-up jacket sleeves and Miami Vice. This is as close to disco as I get so make the most of it.
I like the home-made video, too, even though he gets a few words wrong.

So, cut yourself a line of blow and chill out to "Glamour Profession"; a glorious slice of typically cynical Dan sleaze. Rub it on like suntan lotion (make sure and smear it into all of those awkward, hard-to-reach crevices) and let the incomparable groove carry you into summer.




If anybody on the planet doesn't own a copy of "Gaucho", go buy it now. The übercool guitar on the outtro is by guest guitarist Steve Khan in case anyone other than me was wondering.

What I Did On My Holidays

Much as I love my job I hate coming back to work after a nice break.
I took last week off to do the gardens and luckily for me the weather sucked such huge arse that I could do no more than oil the lawnmower.
So I spent the whole week doing fat all.

Wonderful!

The alarms didn't go off at 4:40AM!
I lay in bed every morning, watching the news until six o'clock!
I ate breakfasts!
I took long, lazy soaks in the bath instead of snatched 5AM showers.
I read books.
I watched crappy old movies.
I watched NASA TV on the computer and saw the guys doing their spacewalks.
I cooked real meals instead of grabbing sushi on my usual dash for the train.
I wore out my old PS2 (the PS3 is coming at the weekend).
I ate the Easter Bunny.
And an octopus.
I made a great, fat, Dive shaped depression in my sofa.
I walked around the countryside, cycled and made clattering noises in my gym.
I bought way too many books.
I pounded the fuck out of the local kids at snowballs.
All in all I had a splendid time.
I can thoroughly recommend spending a week doing bugger all.
The only thing is, I forgot what a bloody awful thing my commute is …
I just suffered my usual three-and-a-half hour journey to work this morning; driving through snow to get to Norwich; enduring a crawling, uncomfortable two-and-a-quarter hour train journey accompanied by screaming kids (school holidays) and shouting chav parents on their way to the airport for a week's binge-drinking brawl on some benighted Mediterranean isle (these people were chugging back cans of Stella at six in the morning); cramming onto a stinking tube train full of halitosis and B.O. and finally walking through the rain to the office to discover I'd forgotten my security access widget …
It takes a good week of this crap to become immune to the stink of London, to re-acclimatise myself to getting home all sticky and filthy, binning my clothes and leaping into the shower.
Gack!
Repeat: I love my job, I love my job, I love my job …

Paperless Office, My Arse!

I finished my last post with the well-worn phrase "Fuck, fuck, fuckity fucking fuck!" and it seems apt to start this one with it.

I get up at 4:40AM this morning, same as usual; shower, hair-wash, dress, grab my stuff and head off on the three and a half hour commute to Westminster.

So far, so hoopy …

Getting to work I find I cannot log in to my computer.
As more people trail in, we discover that the whole office has the same problem.

That's okay. Occasionally we get a server glitch that locks us out and all we need to do is wait until IT start arriving (usually after nine) and get someone to put it right.
So the atmosphere in the office is jolly. Lattes are drunk, croissants are consumed and bitchy gossip is exchanged.

Angela arrives and finds me waiting outside the IT department with the news.
"Hokay." She smiles. "No problem."

A few minutes later and she is running from IT offices to server rooms, to my office, to the other departments and more of her lazy-assed cohorts are drafted in as they arrive.

As time drags and nerds run around shrieking and flapping like someone set fire to a battery chicken farm, it is becoming apparent that this is going to be one of those days.
After a longish while it turns out that this is not the sort of problem that will go away if you simply throw nerds at it (fun though nerd-throwing can be).

Bugger all round that. Angela lets slip it could be all day at least before things are up and running, so those of us who can work from home skedaddle pronto.

Which is why you find me just arrived home and ranty at one in the afternoon, having been up for almost eight and a half hours and having achieved precisely zip.

Paperless office? My fat, hairy arse!

Expedition Time

Hokay …
After Maria and Jules' comments on yesterday's post, I thought I'd do a little photoblog of my journey to work this morning.
If nothing else, it saves me from having to think of anything to write, and you know what a lazy bastard I am.

Here's Maria's comment:

"I rather like the image of Mr. Grumpy trousers shuffling out of a nice warm house in the dark and scraping ice, probably muttering.
And the train...I always picture you sitting by men with Star Trek logos now or little old ladies with shopping bags...
No heat would suck, though. That ruins the nice image of you in soft train lighting taking photos out of the window....
And walking along...puttering on the way to work.
Nope, can't see a grumpy trouser man in sight.....Right"

… and Jules':

"I hate to rub it in Mr Grumpy Dacks but if I told you how I got to work this morning - no smart arse it wasn't by outrigger canoe but I do have one parked next to my car and I could if I wanted to, as the school is just down the big river to the left- no I can't - it will just get you more snotty than you already are!!!!
Oh how I would love to be in London - well for a few weeks!
Bad luck re the rugby - hee hee!!!!"

Thank you, ladies.
If you would care to join me on a little expedition …

Oh, and for comparison, this link shows you how lovely my walk to work can be in midsummer.
But midsummer it ain't.

So …
4:40 AM.
Wake to the sound of two loud and exceedingly annoying alarms, inconveniently located in the furthest reaches of the bedroom.
Leap out of bed, screaming profanities …
Shower and hairwash …
Dry hair and get dressed …
Exit nice warm house, bleary-eyed …

5:10 AM
Scrape ice off the windscreen.
Drive into Norwich.

That's my crappy train on the right.
The 5:40AM to London.
Note the lovely blue sky … er … freezing black void.

Once again we have no heating.
Just as in hot weather the air conditioning always fails.
The train is pulling in to Colchester.
Still dark at 6:50AM.
In a few minutes it is standing room all the way up the aisles.

7:53 AM
Late as always.
Disembark at London Liverpool Street Station.

Buy paper.
Head out on to the street to start my walk alongside The Thames …
… but not this morning.
This morning I am going to amuse Rich by taking the tube part of the way and walk across Green Park and St. James's Park.

You are about to find out why I walk almost five miles every morning after my drive and my train journey.
The alternative is the tube … the "scenic route" as we call it.

Welcome to Hell.

Those people not coughing are drenched in repulsive perfume.
Even in the cold they are all sweating.
In olden days when I took the tube regularly, a woman sneezed a whole lungful of snotty phlegm all down the back of my lovely cashmere overcoat.
They loved that in the dry-cleaners'.

After six stops on the Central Line and a desperate, thrashing fight down endless underground passages to change to the Victoria Line, I eventually emerge into Green Park, just by The Ritz.
At last!
Sanity.
"The sun is up. The sky is blue. It's beautiful and so are you …"
Singing Dear Prudence (Hi, Prudence!) I amble across the park toward the Parasite House and St. James's Park and my office beyond.

Here are a couple of shots for Lynn, to make up for hiding it behind gates yesterday.
The Parasite House from the top of The Mall.

… and from the bridge in St. James's Park at around ten to nine.
Just time to buy coffee and a croissant before bumping into the office door and realising I've left my electronic keytag on my bedside table again …

In a few hours I'll have to do the whole damned thing in reverse.
Hey ho.

Not The Monday Melee

Fucking trains …
It's Monday morning so it must be "over-running engineering works."

Mister Grumpytrousers leaves home at ten past five this morning in the pitch fucking dark, chipping ice off my car windscreen; drives to the station, gets on the stupid train and sits in the dark in the middle of fucking nowhere for hours.
With no heating.

I've just arrived at the office.
Four hours, fifty minutes to get to work this morning.
And as it's Monday, we'll probably have a fucking jumper this evening and have to sit for another couple of hours while the police hose and scrape the inconsiderate twat off the bottom of the train.

So, no time to write a Monday Melee this morning.
Instead you get a couple more shots taken this morning on the way in to work.

Nothing much to report.
The Thames is still wet.

The Parasite House looks a lot better hidden behind gates.

But at long last, some of the trees are beginning to take a hint that it's almost November and they should really be taking their kit off.

金曜日 Crapfest

金曜日 already.

Another seven crappy days to stick in the box marked "USED WEEKS" and kick under the bed.
Friday in Japanese (yes, I had Japanese class last night; can't you tell?) is 金曜日(きんようび - "gold" day).

Let's hope this Friday is slightly more "gold" than last week's somewhat browner attempt.
Last Friday, the Safety Officer for Essex Fire Brigade was driving up the A12 beside the mainline railway when his van caught fire (yup; that's a hee hee).
Being the Safety Officer, he pulled over, got out and legged it.
Unfortunately, his van contained some gas bottles and the latest Health and Safety Executive guidelines specify that once the fire is put out, nobody can approach the van within a ludicrously large radius for twenty-four hours.
This meant that both the A12 (the only major road into the area) and the mainline railway running alongside it were effectively shut down for a day and a night.

Through long and bitter experience, Old Dive always checks the real-time rail website from lunchtime onwards every day. Which meant that I wasn't one of the tens of thousands of angry commuters at Liverpool Street Station in the evening rush hour being informed that they must find accommodation in London for the night (HA! Yeah, right! Form a queue for the cardboard boxes) …

As soon as the bad news hit the website I immediately emailed the gang (the bolshie and extremely litigious Radical Wing of the Norwich to London Commuter Club … We took the bastards to the European Court last year and won compensation and improved conditions and we're itching to do it again).
Then I jogged the five miles to the station (the quickest way across London), leaping aboard the last train out to Cambridge (on the face of it, completely the wrong way) with thirty seconds to go before the whole lot shut down, and dragging with me a little old lady from my village who I found staring in horror and confusion at the big board with all the "CANCELLED" signs on it.

Fourteen crawling stops and an hour-and-a-half later, having been stood, jammed against the doors all the way, we reached Cambridge. Only to find the platforms so full we couldn't get off the train.
There was a virtual riot going on there and after much tactical use of both the elbow and brandishing an old lady at people, I managed to get us two seats on a train heading in what would appear to those with less bitter experience to be yet another wrong direction.

Another fifty minutes brought us to a little used intersection with the Central Line, somewhere in the midlands.
This is the "last resort" route home. Kinda like going from Noo Yawk to Chicago via Miami, but not many people know about it.
There stood most of the gang; sweat-drenched, clothes awry, but grinning that we had made it out. Dive, Wiggy, Spike, A Woman Called Horse, Underbite and Backspace, Monkey-boy, Scab-head, Breakfast Boy and Mary Hopkin (Witchfinder General); all the regulars, plus my little old lady and her miraculously unscathed shopping bags.
We picked up a stopper coming from Liverpool to Norwich and spent another hour-and-a-half dawdling our way home.
Having grabbed my car and dropped the old lady at her house in the village I actually pulled in to my driveway at exactly the same time I usually do. The entire trip took seven hours instead of my usual three-and-a-half, but I was home in time to watch the chaos on the news.

Then on Monday we broke down …

I love commuting.
It's a constant stream of unfettered joy and great training for when I descend into the lower circles of Hell.

It Puts The Lotion In The Basket

A piece of junk mail awaited me on my return home last night.
Apparently our lovely rail franchise is running a competition to win first class tickets from Norwich to London at weekends.
I could be a lucky winner.
They have also spent tens of thousands of pounds of my own and my fellow commuters' season ticket money on an embarrassing campaign of TV ads promoting weekend breaks in London by train.

and yet …

The rail line is closed at weekends for "essential engineering works" (which is why I'm late in every Monday morning due to "over-running engineering works").
The "essential engineering works" have been going on for over four years now.
They run a replacement bus service at weekends.
Which takes hours longer and is many times more expensive than sitting on a scheduled coach from National Express (whose own dubious delights were so memorably and hilariously "praised" by the Divine Comedy in the song "National Express").

Before I walk to the station and start shooting people I'll just run through the salient points again:
Our rail franchise company has spent tens of thousands of pounds advertising weekend train breaks in London.
There are no trains at weekends.

PUTTHEFUCKINGLOTIONINTHEFUCKINGBASKET!

And you wonder why I twitch.

Don't Jump

Hokay.
Back to the fragrant joys of long distance commuting.

Some of you may remember the statistic (absolutely true - I have meticulous records going back many years) that my rail company has to date provided me with more trains that have burst into flames than trains that have deposited me at my destination exactly on time.

And I may have related the 'delightful' feeling of screaming horror when my two alarm clocks - at opposite ends of the bedroom - go apeshit at four-forty every morning and propel me out of my lovely bed to stagger blindly down the landing toward the shower.

And my minimum seven hours a day travelling to get to work and back (thank God I love my job).

And my amiable feelings toward my fellow travellers (anyone who has not read the advice contained in this link should do so now. I mean it).

And the odd things that I have to put up with on the train, such as being invited to fornicate with cultists, the erotic yet weird thumb-sucking girl and the happy time I spent with the one-armed man …

Well today, for the edification of non-commuters I am going to talk about jumpers.
By jumpers I mean the selfish, fucked-up worthless pieces of shit who jump in front of trains.

Apparently not everybody shares my deep sense of joy at Mondays. Over the past five Mondays we have had three jumpers. And that's only because there were no trains to jump under on the other two Mondays; one was a bank holiday and so the line was closed for engineering works, and on the other the overhead lines fell down so no trains could run anyway …
There may well have been jumpers on those days too, but the most they could have hoped for was a twisted ankle from landing awkwardly.

We do get an awful lot of these useless fuckwits on my line. And though it is by no means exclusive, Monday seems to be the most popular day to piss Dive off by making my journey home a couple of hours longer than the three and a half hour pit of misery that it already is if everything runs smoothly (which it does on average once a year).

If you're thinking of jumping, here's some advice.
DON'T!
At least don't do it on my line.
An Intercity train travels (allegedly) at over a hundred miles an hour (HA!).
Sure, when the occasional loco does manage to struggle and wheeze up to speed stepping in front of one is a nice quick way to check out but believe me there's not much left afterwards.
It's not like jumping in front of a tube train or a local stopping service where there are still recognisable bits of you scattered around; with an Intercity it takes the police and rail staff at least an hour to hose what's left of you into the verge and there are very rarely any lumps left that are too big to plop into a bucket.

I've been on a train that hit a jumper. We started braking and then there was this icky banging sound that travelled back down the floor of the carriages as the larger bits of skull or pelvis got bounced between the train and the stones and concrete sleepers.
Then we just sat there for ages, not one of us feeling in the least bit sorry for the twat smeared along the bottom of the train and seeping into the landscape just underneath our feet.
And the poor drivers have to have time off whenever they hit a jumper; we are running out of drivers!

So …
If you really want to end it all, and those nice folk at Samaritans cannot dissuade you, just let me know and I'll happily strangle you.
Just don't jump under my fucking train, you bastard!