Ramblings of a Ruislip Commuter

The mangling of statistics

2012-02-10T11:37:00.000Z

I don't commute as much as I used to so there is more time to study the web. This morning a story about Sainsbury's changing their advice about when to freeze food, on the BBC news site, caught my eye.

"The average UK family wastes up to £50 worth of perfectly good food a month."

Sorry, but the author of this sentence. and it is not clear who is the author, is writing nonsense. Either "the average family wastes £xx" where average denotes either the arithmetic mean of families sampled or the median (but whatever it is, you should tell us anyway) Or "some families waste up to £50". But you cannot have "up to" being the maximum in the same phrase as "average". If you still don't get this point, and would like to, consider this sentence:
"The average Premier league footballer scores up to 38 goals a season". Obviously some footballers, a small number one imagines, might score a lot of goals. The average footballer must score a lot less given that teams play roughly 50 competitive games a season and 1 or 2 goals a match is a reasonable amount to get. So this sentence is simply wrong.

The horrible wording that gets me angry is "up to". Everybody uses it in adverts when they are trying to lie. Broadband suppliers talk about speeds "up to " 24mbs or whatever, utterly meaningless because if you are considering switching the only speed that matters is the one you will get. Comparison and insurance ads talk about savings "up to" some figure that they never explain. And now the BBC has joined in.

When I am King, anyone using "up to" without fully qualifying what they mean, in text at least as large as the headline, will go to the Tower, will go directly to the Tower without passing Go and will stay there until they pay a fine up to £25,0000.

The meaning of 0 degrees

2012-02-04T23:12:00.001Z

The disc of ice on the left came out of the saucer this morning. I refilled the saucer with water (for the benefit of birds, not one of whom subsequently bothered to come into the garden, but I digress). Some time later, with the temperature on our garden thermometer reading exactly 0c, the ice was intact and the water still liquid. Funny stuff water.

Just like old times

2012-02-02T18:44:00.000Z

I don't travel into London as much as I used to so am a little more tolerant of the foibles and irritations of the Tube experience. Yesterday, sadly, was a reminder of what I am happy to put behind me. In the morning we were delayed due to a stalled train at Finchley Road. In the evening, earlier signal failure at Ruislip and an ongoing problem on the Piccadilly made for some ominous announcements but, fortunately, I did not have to wait too long - in the freezing Harrow air - for an Uxbridge bound Met. It continues to irritate when they announce "Severe delays" without giving an indication of how many trains are running and what the average interval between them is. Having an internet app on the smartphone that reads and displays the departure info is a godsend, but even that packed it in for a while when I arrived in the evening at Baker Street. Once it came back it was clear that the intervals were not a problem and the delays not that severe at all.

The current very cold (but very dry) weather focuses the mind when there is a choice of trains. Standing around at Harrow is fine on a balmy Autumn evening with a rosy sunset glow adding lustre to the warm air [Keats? Tennyson? Give us a clue :Ed] but a pain when it is a few degrees below zero and the icy winds are whipping across the North Sea direct from Novosibirsk. However it was minus 20, or something similar, in Munich today and two of my work colleagues are off there. There's always someone worse off isn't there?

Sunset over Ruislip

2012-01-12T21:45:00.000Z

Mrs. Commuter drew my attention to this lovely sunset - the photo doesn't reproduce all the vibrant colours but I think it marks a nice end to the day. Especially as I wasn't working today.

The People and the Union

2012-01-12T14:41:00.002Z

Let us leave matters commuterial alone for a moment and consider the fascinating constitutional crisis that is threatening the continuance of the United Kingdom. Though united through the person of James VI of Scotland (and I of England) in 1603, the two kingdoms were separate states until the Act of Union in 1707. During the hundred years of shared monarchy there was open warfare in the Bishops' Wars 1637-40 and the vicious internecine strife of the Civil Wars. The union in 1707 did not prevent the Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745 but rapidly afterwards the two kingdoms did indeed seem to become a truly united kingdom. Now, with the Scottish National Party threatening a referendum on independence and the intervention of the Prime Minister, and others, to force their hands, we may be in living in times that will see a reversal of 1707.

There is much to draw on from history, though it seems unlikely Mr. Cameron is aware of it. The Scots have always reacted instinctively against anything seeming to emanate from England. They remain convinced that any policy drawn up in Westminster must be a conspiracy to do them down. It was certainly thus in 1637 when Charles I tried to force his particular brand of religion on to his mainly Calvinist subjects north of the border. The resulting struggle kicked off the "English" Civil Wars and Charles lost his throne and his head, ironically at a time when the Scots were more or less fighting on his side, having decided that the King they knew was preferable to the Cromwell that they were scared of. So the lesson for Cameron is to keep schtum and leave it to the many Scots who oppose independence.

As to the referendum itself, we will watch with some interest the machinations of Mr Salmond, leader of the SNP and one of the most arrogant politicians this blog has had the pleasure to follow. He is currently declaiming that the decision is for the "Scottish people" alone. I would love to be able to propose a referendum on whether Scotland should be permitted to remain in the union that would be put to the voters in England, Wales and Northern Ireland - but not in Scotland - and see what Mr Salmond would say to that. I fail to see why he can choose whether to be in a club but the other members have no say on his membership.

In addition, the word "people" may trip him up. Just who are the Scottish People? Those who live in Scotland or those of Scottish birth? Many Scots live abroad (some even in England, believe it or not). Do they get to vote? How, if they are on the English electoral roll? And if they do, where is the line to be drawn? And why should, for example, a rich film actor or racing driver who chooses not to live in Scotland so he can avoid paying taxes to the Scottish treasury, be entitled to vote? If you have a Scottish father and an English mother and you live in England, are you part of the Scottish people? Huge numbers of Scots emigrated to the USA and Canada in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Are their descendants Scottish? And if you live in Scotland and are registered to vote but were born elsewhere and retain the nationality of your birthplace, as do many migrants from the EU, then do you get to vote about the future of Scotland? What about emigrants from Hong Kong, or from the Commonwealth? If they have become citizens, then they are citizens of the United Kingdom, not of Scotland.

There is so much here to trip up the SNP that I have no doubt they will duck the question altogether, wrap themselves in a tartan banner and a subtext of "We hate the English bastards" and wait for the anniversary of Bannockburn.

Freedom

2012-01-06T23:14:00.001Z

This morning, with impeccable timing, as I was about to go to work for the first time this year, my Freedom Pass arrived. At a stroke my expensive journey into London from beautiful Ruislip ceases to cost me a penny. Had legislation not recently changed, I might have received this invaluable piece of plastic when I turned 60 but alas, the qualifying age is up to nearly 61 and future generations will have to wait longer still.

There was something deeply satisfying when I first presented my gleaming new card to the yellow button on the entrance gate at the station, a bit like a flower breeder mating one rare orchid to another [eh?: Ed]. The tiniest of pauses while the system thought about it and then the magic moment when the gate opened. Yes, it worked. I have joined the ranks of the travelling pensioners, or whatever they call people of a certain age who can swan into a station or onto a bus any time they choose and go wherever they please and as often as they like and they can't touch you for it.

There are a few stations and bits of line I rather fancy visiting. Some of them because they are so distant, some because, well, quite frankly, it's hard to believe in them*. Upney. Canning Town. Mudchute. Penge. The eastern end of the Central. The southern bits beyond New Cross. My head tells me they exist but my heart says, Prove it! So one fine day in the near future I shall pack my thermos and my marmalade sandwiches, check that the Freedom Pass is ensconced [is this right? Researcher!: Ed] in the right-hand jacket pocket and the entire Tube system, not forgetting the Overground and the DLR, will await me.

*of course, I accept that the denizens of these benighted regions might feel the same way about some of the more obscure parts of the Metropolitan. Except that they would be wrong.

A blizzard remembered

2011-12-21T22:15:00.000Z

A year ago I was writing about the big freeze. It had been uncommonly cold since the end of November. On 18th of December a blizzard shut the UK's airports. A couple of days later the ice was still thick on the platforms at Neasden where I was forced to detrain. Ah, but that was a year ago. Today we bask in temperatures close to double figures (Celsius). It promises to be a sunny warm Christmas. Manufacturers of thermal underwear are gloomily contemplating the long drop from their top floor windows. Drivers of ice-cream vans are whistling while they polish up the giant plastic cones with which they are adorned (the vans, the vans, ok?). Thomas Cook closes high street branches because, let's face it, why go abroad for winter sunshine when you can swelter in beautiful Ruislip without the risk of earthquake/ferry disaster/tsunami/wildfires/collapse of local economy/violent overthrow of dictator/insert your choice of calamity here, there's been plenty to choose from in 2011.

They've brought in a new timetable for the Metropolitan Line. As far as I can tell this now means having clusters of Uxbridges and then Watfords, with fast Cheshams in between. The changes have produced much debate on the District Dave site but this commuter has yet to see much difference. There are rumours that the introduction of the new "S" stock trains has slowed. This could mean that the dear old "A" stock continues to provide much of the service well into 2012. In which year I will mark a full 50 years of travelling on them, because, dear reader, I started regular train travel in September 1962 as a bare-kneed, cap-wearing schoolboy shuttling between Preston Road and Northwood Hills. There cannot be many forms of transport that have provided a half-century of continuous service. Or indeed people who have used them over that period. Maybe I shall receive some sort of long-service award [I expect something can be arranged: Ed]

Nothing up my nose, officer

2011-12-02T11:25:00.001Z

Wonderful quote in this morning's Guardian. As I don't commute on Fridays any more (or most days, come to that) I feel I have the time to share it with you. The story is that some 11% of British banknotes have traces of cocaine and a drugs expert from the Kent Police, PC Adrian Parsons explained how the fuzz go to work when they think they've found a white-powder merchant in a crowded pub.

"You can spot people in the queue who when they get to me its 'game on' that they will provide a positive sample," said Parsons. "They are louder than normal people. They are non-stop talkers. They are arrogant and feel invincible. They are happy to ridicule bystanders who are not part of their group, particularly police officers. They are jaw-clenching, sweaty, with clammy skin. They are extremely paranoid, especially if you try to look up their nose, and have eyes the size of saucers. These are the symptoms we teach police officers to look for."
It was lucky I was not drinking tea as I read that deathless line about looking up people's noses. It would have spattered all over the paper. Anyway, the scene is a crowded pub in Kent and a loud, talkative. sweaty jaw-clencher is at the bar whilst a gent with a raincoat and notebook crouches at his knees. The lines just write themselves.

Jaw-clencher: "Eight pints of triple X love and have a double vodka yourself. And pass me that napkin, I'm drenched here"
Plainclothesman: "Sorry sir would you mind just flaring your nostrils a little"
Jaw-clencher "What the hell are you doing? And wearing that stupid coat in here, you look like a nonce, you pathetic little worm"
Plainclothesman "Please don't ridicule me sir, I'm only doing my duty. It's bad enough you staring at me with those huge saucer-like eyes."
Jaw-clencher "You're out to get me! All of you. You're all out to get me!!"
Plainclothesman whispers into microphone sewed into lapel "I think I've got one, Super."
Jaw-clencher "Do your worst, copper, you'll never pin one on me, Captain Superbo, the toughest man in the galaxy"
Plainclothesman "That'll do nicely sunshine, you're nicked"

with grateful thanks to Michael Frayn in whose satirical footsteps I am not worthy to follow

Bus Arrivals Boards

2011-11-21T22:16:00.001Z

I don't know how long this info has been available but I noticed today that you can now see bus arrival times in the same way as for trains. On the LU web site you can select a location to bring up a street map then click on a bus stop symbol on the map and up pops a list of the buses due to call there with estimated times of arrival. I don't travel much by bus but for those who this information is a real boon. I wonder if there is a smart-phone app for it? Bus travellers have it worse in some ways because they have nobody to ask if the buses don't run. At least we have the pleasure of clicking on a big green "Help" button and hearing a recorded announcement that there is nobody available to answer the call.

I exaggerate, of course [No! Really?: Ed]. In the main there is plenty of information about the state of the Tube and I think the service level has been pretty good in recent months. I don't bother about the Help buttons because I can see on the phone how the trains are running. It is not easy to convey how amazing this facility still is to me. I once stood for an hour at a bus stop, ignorant that they had cancelled the services for a while. I have spent God knows how many hours wondering where my Piccadilly service had got to - in the bad old days when I had to go that way into London. The buses may be stuck in traffic and the trains held up by signal failures but at least you can get to know about it and knowledge is power.

A matter of timing

2011-11-11T17:23:00.001Z

There has been some interest, in the local online paper in Ruislip, the Ruislip Online forum and on District Dave, about changes to the Metropolitan Line timetable due to commence in December. They want to move from the current 10 trains per hour at peak times and 6 off peak, to a steady 8 tph all day. The reasoning behind this is not at all clear. The system has always run more trains at peak because, well, peak means peak, dunnit? That's when more passengers travel. Having more trains off peak that will be simply be emptier than at present, whilst forcing more people to stand for longer thanks to the fewer seats in the new S stock trains as well as a reduced service, seems fairly illogical, Captain.

Having to wait a minute or so longer for a train to arrive is neither here or there. The problem is that they fill up so quickly and any delay, or longer gap in the normal service, makes it unpleasant to travel the relatively long distance to central London. However if, as may also be planned, there will be more fast trains from Harrow then changing there may make more sense than at present, where you never quite know if the so-called fast train will actually overtake the slow train you left and whether you will get a seat on it.

These are considerations lost to passengers on all the other lines (perhaps with the exception of the District/Piccadilly junction at Acton Town) and I think they are therefore not important to the people planning the Met schedules. Shame really. When you have to pay zone 6 fares, you might at least be sure of a seat. Just think, once upon a time the Met proudly ran Pullman coaches out to Amersham, Aylesbury and on into the wilds of outer Buckinghamshire. Of course, in those days it was a proper railway service, not a business with "customers".

A Withdrawal of Service

2011-10-21T11:24:00.002+01:00

The title of today's post may mislead you into thinking this another groan of despair about gaps in the tube schedules. It is not. It is a warning that things may be changing around here. [he is referring to this blog: Ed]. My working routine has changed significantly since the summer and I now go into my office at Waterloo no more than 2 times a week. And what do I do the rest of the time you may well ask? Well, ask away, for you ask in vain. This blog is about commuting and not about my private life, albeit that I may have made the occasional reference to non-work doings in the past.

So today's question for the panel is - does going into London twice a week constitute commuting, by which I mean real, old-fashioned,<start Yorkshire accent> when I were a lad we had to travel 26 hours a day and thank railway company for t'privilege <end accent>, sort of commuting? Because it doesn't really feel like commuting. Partly because I am no particular obligation to be at my office at a given time, partly because the knowledge that one is not travelling tomorrow makes it so much easier to face, and even enjoy, going in today. On the other hand I continue to be reliant under the good offices of London Underground to make it possible to leave beautiful Ruislip and venture, gasp, south of the river. The raison d'etre of this blog has therefore not really changed. But perhaps the emphasis may shift from the daily struggle with packed trains to a more eclectic, ephemeral, nay, evanescent, view of life in the subway. [I am waiting for "eldritch" to make its long overdue appearance: Ed]

Standing for it

2011-10-03T20:49:00.001+01:00

As the unseasonable heatwave continues, in the south-east at any rate, it was sweltering down in the Tube this afternoon. A nicely air-conditioned "S" stock provided some relief up from Baker Street to Harrow but sadly no spare seats so it was stand all the way for me and many others. LU invited me by email to undertake a survey into the new trains the other day, and I duly went to their website and filled in a set of "satisfied" and "very unsatisfied" and the like on the usual multi-choice questions (Did I like the grab-bars? being something they obviously consider important), and when given the chance, hammered home the point that there are not enough seats on trains intended for relatively long journeys. But it is futile. The design of the S stock was fixed long ago, the trains are being made and we won't get any new ones for another 50 years. So why ask for opinions now?

A turn-up for the book*

2011-09-29T15:38:00.001+01:00

My old dad liked to describe any unlikely event that actually occurred as a turn-up for the book. We've certainly had one of those this week as the temperatures in London have soared to the mid 20s and seem set fair through the weekend. It felt as hot in the sun today as it had a couple of weeks ago when we were in Spain. And to crown it all, I am not going in to the office until next week and so can enjoy this last burst of the summer of 2011 without having to face the undoubted pressure-cooker of the tube. Oh joy.

*[This title has been used once before. In Feb 2009. Just to show you I am on the case: Ed]

Slow southbound? - forget it, squire

2011-09-26T14:06:00.000+01:00

I usually take the 8:30 into town from Ruislip Manor. This morning a Met came in at 8:29 as I was still going down the street to the station and given the 45 odd steps up to the platform, this was one train that I was always going to miss. Naturally there was then a gap, filled by two Piccadillys, and the next Met arrived at 8:41. Our station announcer said that, apart from minor delays on the Victoria, there was a good service on all other lines. Ah. We left and our driver informed us that we were terminating at Harrow. So something amiss surely, Inspector? And on arrival at Harrow the announcer there told us, barely holding back tears of overflowing joy, that anyone stupid enough to want to go to Preston Road or Northwick Park (my words, not his, I hasten to add) had another 6 minutes to wait because the only alternative was a fast train (which I took) that stopped, unusually, at Wembley Park to take on some grateful commuters who must have scrambled hastily over the bridge from the normal southbound platform.

Never mind, all this clearly amounts to what the Met regard as a good service and no doubt there will be bonuses all round and much clinking of cocoa-mugs in the train-operator's canteen tonight.

Still here

2011-09-21T21:49:00.000+01:00

Been a month since my last post. Part of that was spent on a most pleasant, if excessively hot, holiday in Spain, travelling all the way by train. Top marks to the Barcelona-Madrid high speed train where the service and efficiency rivals anything I have experienced before. A so-so to the Joan Miro hotel train that provided us with overnight transit between Paris and Barcelona - not happy about being told by the restaurant car staff to go away when we were turning up for our prepaid breakfast, and the carriages always felt cramped, whether the beds were folded away or made up. Possibly one of the most unpalatable ham and cheese sandwiches in French gastronomic history was served on the TGV on our otherwise enjoyable homeward journey. And for giving us a real flavour of the size and appearance of the Spanish, and particularly Basque country, landscape, the Salamanca-San Sebastian line was superb.

Well, this blog is not meant to be a travelogue. So how about a little moan instead. Delays on the Met this morning, attributed to a faulty train earlier at Harrow. And just for once the Bakerloo was worse, even longer delays as we got stuck in the tunnels due to a faulty signal at Lambeth. Result, thirty precious minutes of my life down the drain, although it did give me a chance to hammer the chess programme on my new Android phone. The "undo" button came in handy as well, 'nuff said.

Summer recedes

2011-08-26T11:15:00.000+01:00

I welcomed the warmer weather a couple of posts ago. That was merely the prelude to days of rain and coolness. There have been flash floods all round the country - we had plenty of downpour in beautiful Ruislip but fortunately it didn't hang around (though living on the side of hill definitely has its advantages). I had hoped that the trains would revert to the half-empty state of past summers but each morning they cancel one or two on the Met just before mine arrives so they are as crowded as ever. However the rain does not appear to have affected the service levels which have actually been pretty good in recent weeks.

I have to admit that as I move closer to standing down from my job and taking a back seat at work, the prospect of not having to get up each day in order to sit on a train for nearly an hour becomes brighter and brighter. One can endure commuting and learn to adapt to it but does one ever enjoy it? Reading books on paper or on screen, or listening to radio comedy can make the time pass but there is always the feeling that these activities would be so much more pleasurable if one was not being jolted back and forth, weaving one's body to avoid one's fellow travellers as they jostle past and not having the endless announcements running in the background. And behind that is the pressure of working fixed hours, the need to wake up regardless of how well one has slept, the need to leave the house no matter how grim the weather or how disrupted the trains.

So it does seem that these ramblings will become less fixated on the Tube and will either transmogrify [does putting this word in win a bet or something?: Ed] into a more general commentary on early 21st century living in London or will gently fade into the middle distance. Let us await developments.

Madness

2011-08-09T20:30:00.000+01:00

Criminals rioting in London and other cities, financial markets tumbling. Are we as a species bonkers?

The riots followed a police shooting in North London. After a brief peaceful protest the looters and firebrands moved in and have burnt and destroyed shops and buildings in many boroughs. It has gone on for three nights. All day today, I could see smoke rising from a fire somewhere away to the north of my office in Waterloo, possibly the giant Sony distribution centre burnt to the ground in Enfield. Does a youth in a mask who smashes in a shop window to steal the electricals inside do it to make a political point? Or those who torched a bus or buildings with people inside? Are these the same kids who complain about the lack of opportunities and jobs in their neighbourhoods?

As for the markets, the far east goes down because the Dow Jones goes down and the FTSE follows the far east and then the US markets follow the trend. This has been going on for over a week. The rerating of US National debt from AAA to AA+ by Standard & Poors contributed to the "fear" (not my word, the Guardian newspaper). But the rerating followed the trend, it did not make it. If the people selling could not work out for themselves that the huge US debt made it less likely to meet its obligations (and I use my words very carefully here, the word "less" does not mean the same as "unlikely") and had to wait for a credit agency to do it for them, then they should not be investing. Using an agency to get a snapshot about corporate health is one thing, using it to make an essentially political judgement is another. Fear doesn't come into it. We are dealing with stupidity. The debt problems have been there for a long while. Either you think the major economies will continue or you don't. If you don't then why hold any investments?

This morning the FTSE fell 3% then it went up to close 2% higher on the day. Absolutely ridiculous. These sort of swings exhibit the same crowd mentality that makes kids think it cool to burn and loot - because everyone else is doing it.

So the answer to my question is, I am sorry to say, yes. There is a fundamental stupidity built into the human psyche. We are terrified of making independent decisions or acting rationally. We protest about poor opportunities by taking actions that will further reduce what opportunities there are. We value our economies according to the rules of a gaming-house. And here in the UK where maybe some careful investment might have improved conditions in the poorer London boroughs and helped strengthen our economy, we waste billions on the farce of the Olympic Games. I was against the bid to stage the Olympics and when I think what might have been done with the money I could almost weep with frustration.

An Augustan summer

2011-08-03T12:52:00.000+01:00

Temperatures soared at the weekend and we have some real summery weather at last. Glorious it may be outside but travelling on the tube has not improved. Although many of the regular commuters are missing, the trains are jammed with tourists and school groups. Coming home last night on the Bakerloo was bad enough, but at least it is a short journey. I hoped to catch a nice cold S stock at Baker Street but all that was on offer was the A stock, crowded and not air-conditioned. Standing seemed preferable to being crushed into a seat but it wasn't that great. Still, I managed to escape for a while to the Los Angeles of the 1940s, where men carry guns, dames are deadly and only a tough guy defies the cops. I was reading Raymond Chandler on my new smart phone. And it is amazing how many others are doing something similar, whether it be reading, playing games, web-browsing or email catch up. Social historians may care to note that it was in 2010/11 that the smart phone replaced the mp3 player, the radio and the laptop as the single comms/entertainment device that almost everyone is carrying. I used to marvel that I could carry my entire music and radio comedy collection in my pocket. Now it holds a library as well.

The beginning of the end

2011-07-27T14:54:00.000+01:00

This week I will have travelled to work for four days, my normal pattern since last summer when I cut down from full-time. Next week it could be three and by the end of August two (or maybe even one). For, having reached a respectable age, and with a new appointment in my firm who is steadily taking over the greater part of my work, I am able to move into a state of semi-retirement. What, you will be asking [I certainly am: Ed] of the future of this blog, founded as it is on the depiction of everything commuterial? (is that a word? [it is now: Ed]. My mission has been to describe the everyday journey so that historians from some future age, when robots do everything and humans loll about all day playing 4-D computer games, can marvel at the primitive and barbaric nature of our "civilisation". Now how can I hope to continue to grip the attention of these unknown scholars if I cease to be fully immersed in the cut-and-thrust of the daily challenge that is Tube travel today?

This needs thought. I'll get back to you.

A crush on the Bakerloo

2011-07-25T22:18:00.000+01:00

I am used to the Bakerloo running full (if not over-full) trains during the morning and evening peaks. But as with the Met, one might expect the trains at weekends, and especially on the fringes of the line, to be less congested. Not so. Last Saturday Mrs. Commuter and I took ourselves to be overwhelmed by Kevin Spacey's performance in Richard III at the Old Vic. Weekend engineering work forced us to take the Bakerloo starting from South Kenton. This little station, dominated by the high speed mainline services up to the Midlands, is but two stops from the terminus at Harrow & Wealdstone. No problems, we thought.

Wrong. The first train to arrive was so full we did not board. The second, about five minutes later, had a few seats available and was fairly full all the way in. Coming home we obtained seats at Waterloo and, although this was an early evening Saturday, nonetheless, just like in the normal working week the train filled at Charing Cross and remained almost oppressively full until Wembley. Ah, we thought, everyone is going to a concert. Wrong again, plenty stayed and were still there when we disembarked. Where on earth were they all going? On to Watford to celebrate closing-time in the Harlequin Centre? Was there some amazing street event in the dull terraced streets of Wealdstone that had passed us by? We may never know [or indeed care. Ed]

How thick can you get

2011-07-18T14:44:00.000+01:00

My firm has its incoming email scanned by a specialist computer company and they make a very good job of identifying spam. We still need to check what they have blocked because now and then genuine mail gets blocked. And so it was that this afternoon I found in my junked email list the following remarkable mail. We only see the subject line and have to click to read the body but obviously my correspondent was wise to this and so stuffed the entire contents of their email into the subject. Therefore the header of this missive reads as follows:

Greetings to you dear beloved friend in the lord, I am Mrs Jean Jackson a widow to late mr Williams Jackson. I am 58years old ,from neitherland, a retired accountant. I am presently in the hospital with my laptop suffering from cancer of the larynx and th

It cuts off with that poignant half-definite article (or is it thence? or thus?) because there is a limit on the size of the subject. I was already reaching for my chequebook, my heart wrenched at the thought of a laptop suffering from cancer but now I will never know what other affliction has beset this innocent device. For there is nothing in the body of the message at all other than a plaintive Please get back to me.

I don't think I'll be bothering, Mrs Jackson, I think they have excellent facilities in the neitherland (or should that be the neverland) but do beware of ticking crocodiles and villainous one-handed pirates.

Branch Blues

2011-07-14T23:00:00.000+01:00

The trouble with any tube line with branches is the tendency to a lack of balance. Tonight, on my homeward journey, I took an Amersham to Harrow, hoping as usual to catch up with a slower Uxbridge. No chance, not even a sign of one leaving as we came in, even though we had made very good time up the fast track from Wembley Park and we were supposed to be just behind one. Then in came not one, not two but three Watfords. The last was so delayed getting away that the driver made a point of announcing that his train was "finally departing". And still we waited for an Uxbridge.

Now I will admit that there are times that the Uxbridges are thick and fast leaving the other branches bereft. Which only opens up the obvious question - why? Why can't the service run roughly equal numbers? What is the point in scheduling, assuming they were scheduled, three trains to run up one track at five minute intervals while an announcer tells us, with obvious joy, (or at any rate a total absence of apology) that the next train on the other branch is 14 minutes away? Oh, and inevitably, tells us that a good service is running. And given that the Uxbridge frequency is a train every 6-7 minutes, as you can see from the screenshot from the TFL site, I fancy a hint of apology would be, shall we say, appropriate.

When I am king I will put passengers in charge of deciding whether the service is good or not. That should sort it.

Postcript or Stuck in the Back of beyond

2011-07-12T22:24:00.001+01:00

Earlier today I wrote lightly about a circular email sent by the Met's general manager, one Angela Back. It lauded the new trains coming into service this year. So how ironic that on arrival at Harrow tonight aboard a fast Amersham, and hoping to continue my journey to beautiful Ruislip merely by crossing the platform to a waiting Uxbridge, the plan failed fully and irrevocably because the said Uxbridge was a shiny new S stock and it was being taken out of service.

So I joined the large throng of people expelled from the stricken train, swelled by others leaving the Amersham and not long after another hopeful bunch as a semifast Watford slid in. The next Uxbridge arrived, we jammed in and set off on our merry way. Or so we thought. Soon after leaving West Harrow we stopped in the middle of no-mans-land 'twixt Harrow and Rayners Lane. And waited. and waited.

Eventually our driver told us he had obtained permission to pass a presumably stuck red signal, the train lurched forward, the brakes came on, he released them and we proceeded at the statutory 10mph to the next signal block and then all was well. And somehow my 55 minute journey had taken 80 minutes.

So on tonight's showing nul points to the S stock, nul points to the signalling system and a round of applause to the trusty old A stock that got us home.

Do keep up at the back (er, Back)

2011-07-12T13:33:00.001+01:00

I received an email today from Angela Back, General Manager of the Metropolitan Line. And before you nod admiringly and chalk me up in your estimation, this was a round robin. The curious thing is not therefore that Ms. Back should communicate with people registered to receive emails from TFL but that her message begins thus:

I am writing to let you know that new trains are being introduced on the Metropolitan line for the first time in 50 years. The trains are fully equipped with air-conditioning, walk-through carriages, improved customer information and CCTV for safer journeys.

The first of the "S" stock trains began trials in the spring of 2010 and additional units have been introduced to service regularly since. Regular readers of this blog [here we go again: Ed] will know that I have written about them on a number of times, my first mention being here Alas, Ms Back is clearly not numbered amongst those who value these little jottings. But where has she been for the past year? Anyone who travels regularly on the Met will be fully aware of the new trains - they will have seen them even if they have not yet had a chance to travel on one. I suppose the email may be aimed at people who, though they do not travel regularly (or hardly ever, in fact) but who still wish to keep in touch with the old firm, in the same way that emigrants keep in touch with the folks back home. Well good for them but I do find it a bit dispiriting to be given "news" about something I and plenty of other commuters know all about.

You don't need to read this unless you really have nothing much else to do

2011-07-05T22:11:00.001+01:00

Monday morning and the Met had delays (due to an earlier stalled train, according to our driver) resulting in congestion on the southbound track into the City. I faced the always fascinating dilemma* - to cross the platform at Wembley Park and take a Jubbly - with a strong chance of having to stand all the way - or remain on my motionless Met and hope that the signals would clear. I stayed put, we moved off and I think we more or less kept pace with the little train to our right.
Tuesday morning and again there are delays. This time as we arrived at Wembley Park on the slow line, a fast train pulled in alongside. Usually they move off first but this one disgorged its load and a lot of obviously disgruntled commuters raced over the bridges to join us. Except that just as the first of them were hot-footing down the last steps, and with exquisite timing, our train shut its doors and moved off. As we were already pretty full, this was not as heartless as it may sound, but I bet there was some strong language in our wake. Today's reason for another wasted 15 minutes was a person under a train at Farringdon. That was our driver's version. Or, for readers of the TFL website, a person taken ill on a train at Farringdon.
I also had the odd experience, when I boarded the train in the first place, of sitting down with a group of people around me and instantly knowing that they were travelling together and were unfamiliar with the train. There were about half a dozen men and a woman. The men were all wearing jackets but not ties but one or two carried suitcases (not the luggage type, the type you fold up a suit into). They talked about insurance using the language of insiders and were obviously going to a conference or sales meeting, or maybe a company do, near Liverpool Street. I fancied that they had driven up from somewhere like Swindon and parked at Hillingdon (though taking the train to Paddington would make much more sense). The train terminated at Baker Street and no doubt I will never see them again.

*not everyone finds this quite as gripping. put more sex in if you want a wider readership: Ed]

The cold whisper of air-con

2011-06-27T22:09:00.001+01:00

I wrote last week [he's getting very self-referential, I'm not sure the readers like this sort of thing: Ed] about the coming heatwave and how the new "S" stock trains on the Metropolitan would cope. This morning I planned to catch number 441, starting from Uxbridge at 8:16, as the first test (The estimable Metcontrol on District Dave having kindly published the timetable of S stock workings). The weather certainly obliged with a real hottie but alas as 441 hove into view at Ruislip Manor it was an A stock.
Time for plan B. The day proved as hot as had been forecast and the Bakerloo up from Waterloo at the end of a long day's deskwork was as sticky and uncomfortable as you may imagine. An S stock service was scheduled to leave Baker Street at 18:22 and I was there with minutes to spare. To my joy the S train was sitting at the platform, with all its doors tight shut. I pressed the button, the door flew open and I was hit with a blast of chilled air like walking into the frozen food section of a supermarket. Glorious. The system works. 30c outside and a perfectly comfortable atmosphere in (it wasn't really that cold but the contrast with the steamy heat of London made it feel well nippy).
We left several minutes late, as it happened, but I couldn't have cared less. Simply not being on the hot, crowded and sweaty A stock trains that came up from the city and were sent out ahead of us, hence the delay, made it all worthwhile.

The strike that wasn't continued

2011-06-24T10:52:00.000+01:00

As a postscript to my last piece, the tribunal found in favour of the dismissed driver, LT have reinstated him and the strikes set for next week have been called off by the RMT. And just as well given that it is the second week of Wimbledon and, more important, the musical ensemble looked after by Mrs. Commuter need to be able to travel freely round town.

And in other news, whilst it has continued to rain almost every day recently, the weather does seem to be brightening up with some real hot stuff coming our way. For about two days. Monday is forecast to reach 27c - an interesting test for the new, air-conditioned, "S" stock trains that are steadily taking over on the Met. Then it gets cool and wet again. Not sure if this is all the summer we are going to have this year but on the record of the last four years, it could well be.

Services on the underground have been fairly good in the past couple of months. I haven't put in a Customer Charter refund claim for a while, A few years ago, when commuting regularly on the Piccadilly, I even kept a log of the claims because I was making so many. On the other hand, the drivers are becoming increasingly chatty. The moment the train stops they either tell you, or play a recorded announcement, on the lines of "This train is being held at a red signal and should be on the move shortly". Yes, we know that. We know that if a train stops unexpectedly then it is because the signals are red. Otherwise it would not stop. We also know that they expect to be on the move shortly. This is because when you are held at a signal it is because there is either a train in the next block or the points are switched the wrong way and if there is no major problem on the system then the track will soon clear. If there is a major problem we would hope that the driver had been informed by radio and would then inform us. So we really don't need the routine announcements at all.

Even more irritating was the driver on the Bakerloo the other morning who lectured us all about using all available doors to leave the train because there were people waiting to get on. She even tried this line at Regent's Park, one of the least-used stations on the system where if a single person actually enters the carriage one raises one's eyebrows to register surprise (or at least I do, or at least metaphorically, as I save my real eyebrow-raising moments for more gob-smacking events such as people switching off their music players when asked). The underlying subtext about this sort of announcement is "what a wonderful service we could run if only these wretched people did not insist on using our trains".

The strike that wasn't

2011-06-21T14:10:00.000+01:00

On Sunday night the RMT union called a strike in defense of a member whose employment with LT is currently subject to a tribunal hearing. Your correspondent was, as it happens, due to travel into town. Was his journey disrupted?

Not a bit. The TFL website advised passengers to travel as normal and a normal service was what we got, including the late-night service back to beautiful Ruislip. No donkey-jacketed strikers grouped round the braziers outside the stations. No chants of "What do we want? A huge pay rise and guaranteed jobs for life even if there are serious disciplinary proceedings and regardless of which way a tribunal finds". Not a single placard or discarded flyer. Bugger all.

I learn from the ever-valuable District Dave site that the union, having held a ballot some time ago, had to call action or lose the right so to do. It was presumably premature to have a real strike right now So they picked a time when it seems all their members were working normally anyway, and honour was satisfied.

I guess the next one, scheduled for the 27th, will be for real. Here's hoping that the two sides can sort it out before then.

Turn up the heating

2011-05-27T22:46:00.000+01:00

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the warm, almost balmy, weather that accompanied the two 4-day Bank Holidays. And I was right to highlight the unusual nature of the airs because today, at the start of our last such weekend until the end of the summer, the mercury has plummetted, the grey clouds have invaded from the west once more and a damp and chilling miasma is rising from the dank fields to nourish dark thoughts of gloom in the very soul. [He's trying to get some sort of poetry award. Humour him: Ed]. Still, it's been better than yesterday when the Atlantic emptied itself over London, followed by a spectacular rainbow.

Not the End of the World

2011-05-22T10:57:00.000+01:00

An insane "Christian", Harold Camping, predicted that God would begin destroying the world yesterday. In Ruislip, at any rate, the earthquakes were fairly mild, the great winds did little more than blow down a few rose petals, and the tsunami in our little pond merely disturbed a couple of pond-skaters.

How anybody can claim to believe in an eternal and omnipotent spirit of love and at the same time claim to believe that that spirit will destroy the glory of his creation is beyond my comprehension. But I wish I had a few of Mr Camping's moronic followers living nearby - I could have made a fortune buying up their property last week.

Some of these people are quoted as saying they managed their affairs so as to spend everything they had, based on the double delusion that the world would end and that they would be amongst those to be taken up. We have been here before - with the nutters who took to the woods in December 1999 believing that the millenium bug would end civilisation. I think God puts them on the earth to give the rest of us a good laugh. I mean - do you really think the world will end before the last matchday of the Premier League season?

No strike

2011-05-10T22:25:00.000+01:00

Seems like the RMT strike planned for next week is off. Good. The problems it would have caused to Londoners, including your correspondent, were considerable. But another strike is pending on the Jubilee Line and Mr. Crow and his pals seems happy to down tools, fire up the braziers and loiter about closed stations at the drop of a ticket. They invariably talk about the management-union relationship. The tube-passenger relationship means nothing. There is something fundamentally rotten with a system where public sector workers can treat their paying customers with such contempt. Yes, there are times when the union has a good case and needs to defend its members. But there has got to be a better way than the general strike in which both sides lose something and the passengers, who have no say in the matter, lose as well.

My solution? To reduce my dependance on the Tube. I'll be working less this year and if that results in not going into town at all, no problem. No problem at all. [er, what about the future of this blog? Ed]

The long bank holiday

2011-05-02T18:22:00.000+01:00

The royal wedding bank holiday on Friday coupled with the normal one today has given us a two four-day holiday periods back-to-back. The weather has been perfect. Brilliant sunshine, plenty of breeze to keep the air fresh and the right hint of chill in the air to make a sharp contrast to the direct heat of the sun. Everything in our garden is bursting into life. There is so much natural food, larva and the like in our pond, that the fish have begun to disdain the food that I usually give them round about tea-time on warm days.

We are not used to such pleasant bank holidays. The one in May has always seemed to be the signal for icy blasts of cold rain and wind. Staying at home to read about traffic jams, floods and ruined holidays for others used to be our main source of pleasure at this time. Although I wonder where everyone has gone this year. Mrs. Commuter took the coach to Oxford yesterday and reported the M40 deserted. Perhaps people are simply staying at home and enjoying it.

A Dutch interlude

2011-04-24T18:29:00.000+01:00

Back from a week in Amsterdam. The unexpected hot weather all over northern Europe took us by surprise and Mrs. Commuter and myself were somewhat too warmly dressed for comfort. No matter, we had a great room (at an superb rate) at the Hilton and the pleasure of the excellent tram system to get us about. However my picture is from The Hague where you don't even have to leave the main station to catch one.

The strangest travelling moment was on our return. As we waited at Amsterdam for the high speed Thalys train for Brussels, to make our Eurostar connection, we were somewhat disconcerted when they flagged it as 50 minutes late. This would still leave us enough time to make the connection but boded ill. One of our fellow passengers photographed the indicator, doubtless to help in his claim for compensation. However, dead on time, the train arrived and when we asked a train attendant about the delays she looked puzzled and said there was no problem. And there was no problem and the train arrived at Brussels Midi on time. Mind you, we had a further minor panic because that station is also called Brussels Zuid and we thought Zuid meant South (which it does) and that we had been taken on to Brussels Sud by mistake. But we were wrong. Zuid is the Flemish for Midi, or something. Anyway, it was the right station and the only weak link in the whole travelling chain was London Underground, who had the usual weekend cancellations going. But you have to expect that, sadly. Had we been heading eastbound from St. Pancras we would have had to take a detour but westbound they were at least running some Hammersmith & City trains and once at Baker Street all was back to normal.

Nature corner

2011-04-11T22:33:00.000+01:00

I promised an update on the amphibian breeding programme on my estate back in mid-February. The keen frog watchers amongst you will be glad to know that they showed up at last about four weeks ago, produced about 1/3 the normal amount of frogspawn and vanished almost at once. There are tadpoles now, still squirming around in what remains of the jelly but they will disperse into the pond soon and that will probably be the last I see of them.

In previous years there have been up to ten frogs splashing about at the height of the mating season - I think the maximum this year was four. Too early to tell if this is a consequence of climate change or some other factor but a little worrying.

Mediocrity returns

2011-04-11T20:23:00.001+01:00

As usual, no sooner do I write that the Tube is doing ok, an opinion I let loose on the world only yesterday, than everything goes wrong. This evening I missed my northbound Bakerloo at Waterloo by a whisker - really, no exaggeration, my hand was in the door when it closed and rather than risk getting jammed, I pulled back. Never mind, I thought (ah, sweet rashness of youth), there's another one in a minute. See there it is in yellow and black on the departure board.

Several minutes later there was no train and the board no longer showed any times against the next four arrivals. Now I had carefully timed my exit from work to get to Baker Street at a time when two Uxbridges run in quick succession. When the Bakerloo finally arrived, it was likely I would miss them. Arriving at Baker Street, after a slow journey due to the overcrowding, it was clear that I had. The next was due out in 10 minutes.

A fast Chesham arrived and it might have overtaken the second Uxbridge (which my invaluable London Tube live app on the phone showed to be about five minutes ahead) but it was so very full I gave it up and took a Watford that was starting from platform 1 instead. No problem getting to Harrow where I joined plenty of others waiting for the Uxbridge (Why, oh why, can't we have a fast service now and then?), And we waited. After about 8 minutes I checked my app again and there was the Uxbridge, just leaving Preston Road, still 6 minutes away. The announcers were now mournfully telling us that there delays on the Bakerloo due to - wait for it - signal failure on the Queens Park to Harrow & Wealdstone section. I don't know why they dont scrap those signals and have a man with a red flag cycle down the track in front of each train. I'm sure it would be faster.

So I arrived home 82 minutes after leaving work, on a journey that should have taken no more than 55. Or 60. Still massively over the 15 minutes you need to claim a refund. And that, my friends, is what I will be doing as soon as I complete this post. Which is now.

A spot of spring

2011-04-10T14:57:00.000+01:00

Spring-like, nay, summer-like, weather in London all week. The temperature up to 20c. The air warm, full of the freshness of the spring and the evocative scent of newly-cut grass and blossom. Oh, and barbecues. And it is only the second week in April. Amazing. The warm, long-sleeved shirts are back in the wardrobe and the T-shirts are being unearthed from the depths of the chest-of-drawers. But I can't find my straw hat and I need that for doing a spot of gardening under the blazing sun.

And the Tube has been pretty good lately too. Morning trains have been arriving on time. Clearly the teething troubles of the "S" stock trains are being surmounted. My regular journey on the Met has been pretty well untroubled and, especially when boarding an empty train starting from Baker Street rather than the sardine cans coming up from the City, fairly pleasant.

I have been adding some games to my brand new smartphone. I do this with a sort of professional interest, you understand. For a number of years I made my living in the computer games business. The little screen on the phone is reminiscent of the standard C64/Spectrum displays, and the games are in many ways based on those we used to publish for the 8-bit computers of the day. The touch screen makes the key difference - nothing from those days could be directly ported to a phone because they all relied on joystick or keyboard input. Although text-only adventures might work well. But would today's kids, texting obsessively, have the patience to play them?

I still love the London Tube app, showing the arrival boards from the TFL website. I had to collect Mrs. Commuter late at night yesterday and was able to track her progress from East Acton to Ruislip Gardens (yes, the Central line because once again the Met was closed for maintenance) and just as I arrived at the Gardens and my phone told me her train was at the platform, there she was! [Exclamation marks should be used only when necessary: Ed] Well, you might not be impressed, Ed, you cynical old sod, but I was.

The pleasures of technology

2011-03-21T21:08:00.000Z

Got a new phone at the weekend. It has internet access, GPS, maps and so on. Those of you used to smartphones may yawn at this point. But it's my first [and he is rather excited: Ed] and this morning I trialled it on the Underground. And what a day to choose. Arriving at my home station of Ruislip Manor there was the usual System Status display on the screen and I noticed that the Metropolitan was partially suspended. Which bit? Ah, this is where we rely on an older-fashioned technology. Or at least, we ought to be able to. But the handwritten message board by the entrance was blank. And the station attendant standing at the barrier vouchsafed not a word. So, dismayed and clueless, I ascended to the platform to join a large throng of patently fed-up commuters.

No announcements were made. Never mind, I switched on my new phone, found the tube site and learned that a signal failure at Moorgate was the culprit. But were trains running normally to Baker Street? Alas, LU in their wisdom have disabled the vital Departure Boards screen on the mobile version of their website so I had no idea when the next London-bound train might arrive. A Piccadilly drew in and I took it, arriving at work 15 minutes later than planned.

This evening I searched the Android market and found a wonderful - and free - app that displays the departure board information. Nothing fancy, just instantly provides the information that you really need when confronted by messages about delays - the times of the next trains due in. If ever the internet needed to be justified, this is exactly the sort of app that does it.

District Dave

2011-03-17T23:12:00.000Z

Sadly tonight, as I checked out the District Dave forum, I discovered that Dave had died today and many of the forum regulars were posting tributes.

I have mentioned this site more than once. It is a goldmine of information about the Tube, many of the contributors being drivers, station assistants, signalmen, line controllers and the like. The site will go on, of course, but without its presiding spirit. What a great contribution to the Web he made.

Access Your Brain

2011-03-02T22:18:00.000Z

This ad caught my eye whilst travelling home tonight on the Metropolitan, a journey made slightly more fraught than usual thanks to a suspect package alert that closed the Bakerloo exactly at the time that I was seeking to travel on it. As it turned out, the journey was no problem, but what on earth is the ad about? What is the Clear Pill? At first sight a ludicrous and biological impossible claim - Accessing 100% of your Brain indeed. So I took a quick photo with my trusty but ageing Nokia phone (which is why the pic is a bit blurred when you blow it up big enough to read it) and had a closer look when I got home.

The disclaimers in the middle white panel makes interesting reading. The side effects may include paralysis, psychosis, amnesia, extreme sexual appetite, brain damage, irreversible coma, homicidal blackouts (well we all get those) and sudden death. Hmmm - a high price to pay for brain access. But disarmingly honest. It must be true, surely. I'd certainly like to be limitless. I think I might try a couple and see how far I can get before the homicidal blackouts cause me to do unspeakable things to anyone carrying a suspect package.

Earthquakes

2011-02-23T12:53:00.000Z

Political upheavals in the Middle East, turning very nasty in Libya, and a devastating earthquake in New Zealand are the events dominating the news, although I was taken with the story that the Prime Minister’s new cat might belong to someone else, making him potentially a receiver of stolen goods. [stick with the main topic, why don’t you: Ed]. It all makes the stresses of the normal journey into work rather trivial, but never mind. Buoyed by an email confirming that the only people I know in New Zealand live a long way from the earthquake zone, I was unfazed to see one of the S stock new trains sitting for a long while at my home station Ruislip Manor whilst I made my way toward the London-bound platform. Yesterday one of them was just ahead of the train that I was on, and our driver made an interesting reference as we were waiting at Rayners Lane to “delays caused by that new train”. Today, as I gained the platform, the new train had left and my usual, soon-to-be-scrapped A stock train arrived, and once more we followed the future a little more slowly than our usual speed. The combination of the train ahead and it being half-term for most of the schools in the area made for a pleasantly half-empty carriage, spoilt only by the aroma of wet clothes and the odd choice of ringtones that some of my fellow passengers had installed on their mobile phones.

The grey and damp weather make for a strange view from my Waterloo office building. The Shard now dominates the eastern skyline, towering many floors over Guy’s Hospital. But the top ten floors of the central column are shrouded in mist and quite invisible so that the Shard seems to be poking its head up into a different world. Here’s a clumsy camera phone picture so you can see what I’m on about.

A Quirk of the Schedules

2011-02-17T14:56:00.001Z

Morning departures from Ruislip Manor on the Met are supposed to roughly every 6 minutes, a reasonable gap that nonetheless generates pretty full trains most mornings. I normally aim to catch the 8:30. Recently the 8:24 has been coming in around 8:27, a fraction too early for me to catch it without sprinting down the street and up the stairs at the station [you can't expect it at his time of life. Ed] . But the 8:30 has been coming in on time. This reduced gap has of course cut the number of people on my train with all the early birds crowding onto the earlier departure.
I doubt if this happy state of affairs will last. It is probably down to problems with the new S stock trains. The 8:27s in recent days have been S stock whilst my train is usually the old faithful A stock. Still I shall enjoy it, together with the wonderfully mild weather we have had for the past couple of weeks. The freeze of December is truly behind us and the winds are warm and moist, surely heralding an early spring. The snowdrops are flourishing and the crocuses and daffs are on their way. Oddly, no sign yet of the frogs who make an annual pilgrimage to the little pond in my garden to breed. I’ll keep you posted.

And nul points to the addon for Word that is supposed to make it seamless to publish to blogs. It has started to bleat that it cannot publish my posts but refuses to say why.

A taste of the high life

2011-02-11T16:19:00.001Z

It was my 21st birthday today [Are you sure?: Ed] so Mrs. Commuter and I foreswore work for the day and drove down the M40 for a little light refreshment at a local restaurant. OK, it was Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, 2 Michelin stars, and it was a stonking great lunch and I am a little older than that, but as you can tell from my photo, not much more. [Hmmm - pictures can lie, can't they?: Ed]

So if you are hoping for a juicy blast of invective about today's delays on the Met, or whatever, then I am afraid you will be disappointed. Normal service will be resumed on Monday.

The new and the old

2011-02-07T22:27:00.000Z

Our old friend "signal failure" made another unwelcome appearance tonight, at Moorgate for a change, causing severe delays on the Metropolitan. Or did it? The departure boards appeared to show a normal service and when I arrived at Baker Street around 6:25pm there was an Uxbridge train waiting for me and ready to leave. So far so good. And it was one of the new "S" Stock. But not so fast, Inspector. It was jammed almost full and the internal indicators said "Not in service".

Hmmm...if it was really out of service then why were so many of my fellow commuters aboard? I decided to go with the majority for once and ignore the message. And I was right for we did leave pretty shortly, with the driver assuring us that the indicators were wrong. I must admit that when he started his announcement I thought he was going to say that, as the boards were faulty, the whole train was going out of service. That would indeed have been loads of fun. Or not.

So I was not, in the end, delayed at all but the price of a fast journey home was having to stand all the way to Harrow. Plenty of people left at the intermediate stations but the train was so very full, and as I have commented on other occasions, these new trains have markedly fewer seats than the "A" stock that they are replacing, so standing room only it was.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a new signalling system as well as the new trains?

The joys of commuting

2011-02-04T14:27:00.004Z

There was no hint of anything wrong when I started my homeward journey last night from Waterloo but on arrival at Baker Street I encountered a flood of fellow commuters making their way down from the Metropolitan platforms to the depths below and knew something was awry. It turned out to be a defective train and all services to Wembley Park were suspended. LU’s helpful advice was to take the Jubilee but the announcer then added, blithely and with a hint of great joy, that there were severe delays on that line.
Disdaining the doubtful pleasures of a grossly overcrowded Jubbly, I chose a different route and made my weary way back to Oxford Circus, thence to go Central-linewards to Ruislip Gardens, where I daintily alighted* after a trouble free and fully seated journey.
Normally a defective train is fixed within an hour but last night was a total bodge. Mrs. Commuter, travelling home after a concert, found herself in a queue of barely moving trains outside Harrow at 11:30pm. I collected her there and was almost unable to reach the back entrance of the station, so many were the vehicles parked there on identical errands.
This morning the web site reported no service between Harrow and Uxbridge due to signal failure but the departure boards showed train movements so I left anyway for the station. On arrival a Met came in and I raced through the booking hall and up 45 steps to catch it. The doors closed as I reached the top and I resigned myself to a long wait but then they opened just long enough for me to sprint across the platform and, gasping but mildly elated, take a welcoming seat. The signal problem was obviously fixed but now there was a new problem at Wembley Park so we moved slowly and another precious fifteen minutes of my life was wasted. Well, not entirely. I played Another Case of Milton Jones** on my obsolescent but still functioning mp3 player and the journey passed in pleasure

*with thanks to John Betjeman
** A BBC Radio 4 comedy and it’s about time he had a new series

Of Time and Tramways

2011-02-01T22:12:00.002Z

I have previously written about the Brill Tramway, a route that the Metropolitan Railway inherited in 1890 and which it tried to incorporate into its commuter network, only for the newly formed London Underground to close it in 1935. A few photos of the line survive, and some of the rolling stock is on show at the excellent Buckingham Railway Centre. But until today I did not know there was a movie showing the aptly-described "quaint" railway in operation. View it here and marvel. It took 40 minutes (or longer) to travel about 7 miles from Brill to the junction at Quainton Road, where passengers could change for trains to London (or Verney Junction if they really wanted to end up in the middle of nowhere). And there are still days when the Met runs slower than that [a bit unfair, surely?: Ed]

When to ignore

2011-01-18T21:45:00.000Z

My morning train today was one of the shiny new "S" stock but our driver wasn't happy. Coming into Harrow he warned us that there was trouble ahead and advised everyone to take the fast train that was coming in alongside us. I thought about it and stayed put. I don't know why, other than that I had a comfortable window seat and didn't fancy the crowded, standing, alternative. And they would save little more than a couple of minutes anyway.

We left and the fast train remained. We went more or less normally down to Wembley Park, where it was rumoured there might have been a defective train, but all I noticed was that we overtook another train on the fast track, empty and forlornly waiting outside Preston Road. And at Wembley Park we continued normally. So anyone who had left my train at Harrow was still stuck way behind, going nowhere. Possibly the train we had passed was the defective one. Or maybe it had decided to join in the fun and become defective as well.

As if that wasn't enough raw excitement for one day, at Baker Street on the homeward leg they were dispensing with trains for Watford and telling passengers inclined to go in that general direction to take the first train to Harrow. And as if to compensate there were plenty of Uxbridges. Mine pulled in to Harrow and then onward, with quite a fair sized crowd on the Watford platforms left behind to wait. Ah me. Plenty of times I've stood awaiting an Uxbridge whilst the other lot sailed through. But the stumper is this - the explanation for the problem was a defective train at Farringdon. And it is mostly Uxbridges that come up from that neck of the woods. So where did all the Watfords go? And was this defective train any relation of this morning's casualties?

Driver in the Dark

2011-01-10T12:57:00.000Z

It was strange that our all-stations London bound Met came into Harrow this morning on platform 6 (the "fast" platform) and my fears were confirmed by the station announcer telling us that the train was terminating there. As we all sighed and tutted, though pleased that there was a train on platform 5 waiting for us, we were informed by the driver that he had not known until that moment that his own journey into town had ended. He told us, rather plaintively, that the "Line Controller had not told him".

The waiting train proved to be a false hope. Due to signal failure (the reason that the first train was terminated) we crawled down the track to Wembley and I was over 20 minutes later arriving at work. However I made one good decision. As we arrived at Wembley Park there was a Jubbly coming in. I opted to stay put and you may imagine my relief when, though it pulled out well ahead of us, we overtook it at Neasden and then another immediately ahead, signifying a problem on that line as well.

Oh well, at least the weather is back to seasonal normal and the amazing cold spell that froze the country throughout December is just a chilling memory [is this some sort of pun?: Ed]

The year begins in familiar style

2011-01-04T14:59:00.001Z

So, 2011, what may be in store for us? Travelling-wise, the mixture as before, I fear. This morning I thought I might get in to my office a little earlier and aimed to catch the 8:26 from Ruislip Manor. But no. A nicely printed poster at the station entrance explained that two trains had been removed temporarily from the timetable. And, yes, the 8:26 was one of them.

A train then arrived pretty soon after but terminated at platform 5, Harrow. With a sense of timing bordering on the exquisite, a fast train on platform 6 closed its doors and left the very second that ours opened. No matter, it's fun to mill about waiting for the next train with about 1000 others. And one did come in and we all packed on and heard the following announcement "There will be a short delay while we wait for a driver". Followed by "Apparently a driver is on his way". Which, fortunately, was indeed the case. But I savoured the unspoken assumption that in some way LU was doing all us a huge favour by providing a driver and that in future we should all watch our step or they might withdraw the privilege.

The last commute of the year

2010-12-22T20:11:00.000Z

I've worked my last day in 2010. The morning journey was fine, once more in a new "S" stock train that this time came in promptly and was not too full. The Bakerloo was good, as it normally is, and my door to door time to Waterloo was under 55 minutes. Hard to do it in less.

So of course I assumed it would be a total Bovril this evening and when I looked at the TFL website around 4pm and saw that the Uxbridge branch was suspended entirely (person "ill" on a train at Ickenham) it seemed only right and proper. But miracles can happen. Around 5pm the trains began running again. I left for home soon after when the service appeared back to normal. Or was it? At Waterloo they also have an display of the website near the escalators and it showed "Partial suspension" for the Met. Odd - had the invalid had a sudden relapse? I reached the Bakerloo platform and they began to make a service announcement but naturally my train arrived at that moment and drowned out the loudspeaker. So it was not until I reached Baker Street that I discovered it was the Amersham end that was now Ovaltined good and proper. An Amersham train drew in but they said it was terminating at Rickmansworth. No sweat for yours truly, I took it to Harrow, hoping to overtake a slow Uxbridge, failed so to do, but caught the one that I knew was a few minutes behind us instead.

At Harrow they helpfully told the Amersham crowd to take the first train as far as they could and then make alternative arrangements. Not quite like the Heathrow staff telling would-be flyers that not only were their flights cancelled but those flights that were going out later this week were fully booked (which they have indeed been doing since the blizzard whitewashed the airport last Saturday), but it had a similar sort of ring. You can't make alternative arrangements to get to Amersham and area, unless by some form of divine intervention you find a taxi waiting for you at Ricky. We are talking countryside here, towns separated from one another by miles of open fields. Hitching a ride on a passing cow might be the only way.

The problem had cleared up by 8pm - the most sensible thing for the stranded passengers to do was to go to a friendly pub for a bit.

It's not been the Met's best year. It has been increasingly prone to signal failures and defective trains. I shall say goodbye to 2010 without regret.

More on the "S" stock

2010-12-21T22:47:00.000Z

For the first time I travelled from Ruislip Manor to Baker Street in one of the new "S" stock trains. It arrived after a thirteen minute gap (par for the course at the moment) so was full at Eastcote, and because of the reduced number of seats, there were lots more people standing than in the old trains. We hung around at West Harrow while the station supervisor was sought, according to the driver, to lend him assistance (I have no idea with what). We approached Harrow gingerly and Wembley Park at the pace of a snail on cough medicine (may cause drowsiness). So it was a lengthy sort of journey and I didn't find the seating that comfortable. These trains are great for short journeys, no doubt of it, but I very much hope they keep the "A" stock in service just a few years yet. Then I will retire from regular commuting into London and they can do what they want with the rolling stock.

Nice homeward journey though. Took a fast Watford from Baker Street and we flew up the line to Harrow, overtaking an Uxbridge on the slow line on which I completed my journey. Riding the Met at speed, especially hurtling past the Jubblies as they stop at all those tedious stations south of Wembley Park, is still one of the great experiences on the Tube. One can imagine oneself in a luxury Pullman racing up to Scotland or on the Golden Arrow to Dover, thence to ferry to Calais and a continental sojourn. You need a pretty good imagination though. Especially when you arrive at Harrow and it is snowing again.

Detrained at Neasden

2010-12-20T14:18:00.001Z

I had vaguely hoped things might be ok this morning on the Met, given that they had the weekend to sort out problems created by the blizzard on Saturday lunchtime. Naturally I was wrong. After a ten minute wait a train arrived at Ruislip Manor, moved somewhat slower than normal to Wembley Park and then creaked to a halt near Neasden. We were told there was a signal problem, then we bumped through the signal and the driver decided the train was defective and we all had to get out at Neasden and cram onto the Jubbly.

And here we all are, more than 700 people trying to reach the bridge that you can just see in the distance so we can cross the line to the Jubbly platform. This took more than ten minutes in itself.

I suppose we are fortunate to have the Jubbly as a back-up but, given that this was the third journey in less than a week where I have had 30 minutes added to my travelling time, I wasn't feeling that charitable. Nor were one or two of my fellow passengers, who engaged the driver in a heated debate. You can see the people looking into the carriage on the right where the colloquy was in full swing. Oh, and what you can't see is that the platform is covered in snow and ice, just to add to our enjoyment.

The blizzard strikes...

2010-12-18T18:21:00.000Z

Well, not a blizzard by Canadian standards but pretty impressive compared to what we are used to. I took a couple of photos at around 12:10pm this morning when there was a light dusting. Two hours later there was 6 -8 inches, the roads were almost at a standstill, Heathrow and Gatwick were shut and just venturing round my local streets to take a few more pictures meant putting on my boots. On the BBC and Sky news channels the weather was the only story.

You can see the photos in the new link on the right. These are stored on Picasa web albums, the first time I have used this particular medium and I am not sure if I have got it all right yet.

Stopping and starting

2010-12-16T22:25:00.000Z

No apparent problems this evening at Baker Street when at 7:00pm I boarded a northbound train. We moved off, slowed down and stopped, barely out of the station. We waited a minute, crawled forward very slowly for a few minutes then stopped. Repeated a further 10 times, all the way up to Harrow, this resulted in a delay of about half an hour to my journey home.

Cause - signal failure at Willesden Green. But this very excuse was used a couple of nights ago when there was another slow run, albeit not as bum-achingly slow as tonight's barrel of laughs. And why did we continue to grind along having passed through the said problem area? And why, when I changed at Harrow for an Uxbridge, knowing there was one right behind, did it take a further five minutes to arrive? And did the out-of-service train that went into the siding at Harrow and was then run back down to the fast track to Wembley Park have anything to do with it?

I think we should be told.

A thundering good read

2010-12-16T12:33:00.000Z

"That work of fiction known as the timetable".

Not my words. Those of the driver of our London-bound Metropolitan train this morning (I won't identify him any further). He was unhappy that the destination of the train according to his roster seemed to differ from the information available to him as we reached Harrow.

I'm sorry, I really can't help myself, and as it is nearly Xmas, I am going to indulge.

The Timetable.

[insert lush swirling romantic strings and a gravelly voice-over]
"Theirs was a passion that knew no bounds. They dared to be different. They defied convention and changed platforms to be on the trains that they loved. Read the book that every line controller is talking about. Gasp at the early morning departures from the depot. Marvel at the gaps in the Sunday services. Be shaken to your very core as you ponder the 8:38 from Amersham to Aldgate, not stopping at Preston Road. Yes, The Timetable, available from all good station buffets and also from that bloke who gives away free copies of the Evening Standard." [very fast and breathless voice over] "no resemblance is intended to any actual train movements. Your fares may go up (but never down) and your season ticket is at risk if you lose it".

The gap in the (good) service

2010-12-13T21:17:00.000Z

I hoped to be in to work a little early today. But the train I aimed to catch at 8:24 did not appear. Nor did the one at 8:30 or the one at 8:36. Then they announced that a "good service was operating". Fed up with waiting on a cold platform, and unhappy about being lied to, I took the trouble to press the green information button on the Help point podule (or whatever they call it) and ask what they meant. The man in the nice warm booking office replied that that was what he was being told by the information system. I suggested that maybe his information was incorrect. Reluctantly he agreed.

A few minutes later he made the following announcement. "There is a good service operating on all lines. I know there is a gap in the service but there is a good service now". And yes a train did at length arrive, the one due at around 8:42 which came in at around that time.

So my friends. It doesn't matter what ghastly errors you may make, or however unpleasant the situation you think you are in. Just remember the magic mantra "It's all right now" and nothing can ever be held against you. You are blameless and free from sin. I wonder if this would work on a policeman - "Yes officer, I did nick the handbag then but I am not actually nicking it right now." Maybe not.

The big freeze goes on

2010-12-02T12:57:00.000Z

The cold snap is going on and on, and it is now the coldest weather at this time of the year for 17 years, or 50 years, or maybe since just after the little Ice Age in the 17th century. The glaciers are not returning yet but one can easily imagine that a few miles north of Watford the cliffs of ice are once more astride the land. Certainly that could easily be the case given the failure of the national transport system which, surprise surprise, has massive cancellations,

Actually the Tube has performed reasonably well, though fewer signal failures would be helpful, bringing as they did problems to at least 5 lines this morning and giving me an uncomfortable 15 minutes in the cold waiting for a Met.

Today we have snow in central London, just a dusting, but enough to whiten the rooftops and lay down some wet slush on the half-cleared pavements. This is a sharp contrast to the rest of the country where the snow is many inches deep. There is also a dispiriting layer of grey cloud, reducing the view to dullness. [it's a bit miserable. The public don't want to read this sort of thing: Ed]

A cold snap in November

2010-11-30T17:39:00.000Z

In recent years it has been mild, if not warm, at this time of year. Not in 2010. We have had several freezing days in the sunny south and much of the country is blanketed in deep snow and reporting record low temperatures. In the past I have written of how unseasonable it has often seemed. This year there is no doubt that winter is on us, and the sharp contrast with autumn has been unusually distinct. Despite that there are still leaves clinging to the oak and horse-chestnut trees that are of a feature of Ruislip - maybe they are frozen in place.

There was another tube strike yesterday and once more I used up part of what remains of my annual leave in staying home. This morning the trains were crawling at less than walking speed over the bridge into Ruislip Manor station and the inevitable delays were attributed to signal failure here, my home station. They were working on the tracks at this spot over the weekend so one wonders if they put everything back correctly. Then we had further delays waiting at Wembley Park for fast trains to go on by. Oh well, at least I had the bonus of an almost empty Bakerloo waiting for me at Baker Street.

Winter approaches

2010-11-24T14:21:00.002Z

Not a particularly fast journey into work today (but better than yesterday). At Harrow, instead of pulling alongside a fast train on platform 6, we encountered one of the new "S" stock trains instead. It was not in service so all the people who might otherwise have taken it crowded on to the slow train that I was on and we stayed crowded to Baker Street.

I don't mind them testing the new trains, of course, but why, oh why, must they take out much needed services at peak hours in order to do this?

In other news the first cold snap of the year is with us. The heating is on so high in my office that it feels like summer. The tube is warm enough. I dress up with a thick jacket, hat and scarf in order to brave the elements for a just a few minutes to the station. [Not much of a point here, I feel: Ed] Yeah, well, you're not the one who takes the gamble, every time there is a risk of snow, that the trains will simply cease to run and one will be stranded in central London miles from home [No, lucky for me, eh?: Ed]

Season of Splutter

2010-11-17T12:42:00.001Z

There was plenty of noise in my London-bound Metropolitan train this morning. Coughs, sneezes and one young man with a persistent sniff that suggested a fondness for certain nasally-ingested substances. Or maybe it was just a sniff. Either way I was glad to be sitting on the other side of the carriage.

In other news, the BBC website is carrying a story headlined "William 'happy' to be engaged". This refers to the forthcoming nuptials of a royal sprog and his bird. I spent some time wondering what would happen if he were not to be too chuffed about it. I mean, he has just got engaged, you expect him to be pleased. Similar stories that the BBC could carry include "Pope - moderately glad to be Catholic", "Berlusconi says he quite likes women" and "Henman: I wouldn't have minded winning Wimbledon (or anything else really)".

Boris bike headache

2010-11-16T22:32:00.000Z

My office overlooks the approach to Waterloo station and for the past couple of weeks they have been digging up the pavement to put down stands for the Barclays Bicycle scheme. Good news for commuters perhaps. Bad for us whose heads are ringing after hours of drilling. Why do compressed air devices have to be so bloody noisy?

Metropolitan madness

2010-10-28T11:38:00.001+01:00

Stupid incident at Harrow last night. There was some signal trouble on the Uxbridge branch. About 100 passengers were waiting with me on the usual platform (3) for a train up from Baker Street. Unannounced and unnoticed a train crept in to platform 1, the fast southbound platform. Then there was a single announcement, on that platform (so not obviously aimed at us) that mentioned Uxbridge but before anyone could move the train left, reversing back across the southbound tracks to go to Uxbridge. It was empty because nobody knew about it and all the passengers waiting on that particular platform were going south. Great. We all stand there like lemons and an empty train is run.

I and another passenger bothered to climb the steps to the main entrance, there to remonstrate with a bloke by the gates with a radio. He expressed surprise at our story but seemed disinclined to be concerned, other than to promise to find out when the next Uxbridge was due. And to give him his due there was an announcement a few minutes later to reassure us that our train was imminent.

Moral? None. The platform signals at Harrow are a disgrace to the line. But even with modern ones, we would not have realised that our train was standing at the wrong platform because you are only told about trains coming in for the platform you are standing on, unless you wait in the ticket hall where there are no seats.

However the idea of a ghost-like train that leaves from a deserted platform bearing a few lost souls onto the line that leads to damnation (or shall we say Hillingdon) has a powerful resonance and I may work it into a popular short story. Editors and Radio 4 play producers, place your bids now.
[and I get 10%: Ed]

That's enough for one week

2010-10-21T22:17:00.001+01:00

Tonight's headline in the Evening Standard - "Commuter Misery in Tube Meltdown" (or something similar, I didn't bring a copy home) sums it up. Trains stuck in tunnels. Power failures. Signal failures. The Jubbly in particular has had major problems, causing instant overcrowding on other lines. The Met continues to have shortages of trains as they fix the newly discovered cracks in the shoe beam, whatever they are.

I'm calling it a day. I don't work on Fridays anymore (unless I really have to) and tomorrow I don't have to. So they can have their fill of passenger incidents, severe delays and persons ill on a train (yes, we had one of those today as well, bringing the Piccadilly to a halt 'twixt Acton and Rayners, ah such sweet memories of my commuting days between 1998 and 2006) and frankly my dear, I don't mind a bit.

Maybe all will be sorted out when I brave the system once more, on Monday.

Another typical Monday morning

2010-10-18T13:58:00.004+01:00

I arrived in time to catch my normal train to Waterloo at 8:30. It failed to appear and the first arrival was at 8:42. We were held outside Wembley Park with what the driver first described as a faulty signal and then as a problem with the signals computer not recognising the train ahead of us (the first time this particular excuse has ever been heard on Ramblings). It did not help that there was a severe power failure on the Jubbly and they were actually detraining people in the tunnels between Finchley Road and Green Park, so of course our train was as packed as it could be when we finally left Wembley Park.

Arriving at Baker Street more than 20 minutes later than normal my mood was, shall we say, strangely heightened to discover that the down escalator to the Bakerloo was out of action.

The perfect start to the commuting week? Time will tell.

[later]

The evening journey could also have been poor but I lucked in. The Met had delays all day due withdrawal of trains for maintenance, according to a rather strange* printed announcement from the Head of Operations, and some of the intervals were daunting - if you have to wait 15 minutes for a train coming up from the City it will be full when it reaches Baker Street. But the first train out was for Uxbridge and started from Baker Street. Nevertheless by the time it left it was full and stayed full with people standing right up to Eastcote. I was fortunate that I boarded when there were still plenty of seats available.

*Why strange? One assumes that maintenance is normally planned and should not result in a shortage of trains. So this was unplanned, or the planning went wrong. But the notice just said the trains were withdrawn, leaving us to speculate whether anyone actually knows what they are doing or whether someone took the decision to pull half the fleet out of service on a whim, perhaps to try to spread a little joy this Monday.

[later still - I don't normally add addenda to posts but you're worth it]

My friends at District Dave's forums have the answer.

It is more than a minor problem - some sort of cracking that needs investigation and a work to rule in the depot that is slowing down normal working, hence trains out of service. It's going to be a fun-filled Autumn.

The future arrives

2010-10-16T21:13:00.001+01:00

I was travelling north from Harrow on Friday around 4:15pm and imagine my surprise when one of the new S stock trains drew in. This was my first journey on the train that will replace the venerable A stock set, first introduced in 1959. I remember when they began replacing the brown, slam-door, T stock and from 1962 – 1968 I travelled regularly from Preston Road to school in Northwood Hills on the glamorous new "silver" trains.

The first impressions bear out what others have been saying. The trains feel wider and are noticeably smoother. You can walk from one end to the other. And although there is now room under some of the seats for luggage (a big improvement), the familiar overhead racks have gone (shame). And of course there are fewer seats. For most of this week my regular train has arrived almost full (because the earlier one has been cancelled). On the new stock this could mean no seats for people making a journey of 35 minutes to Baker Street and 50 minutes to the City.

The feature that makes me angry is the provision of wheelchair spaces. Nothing wrong with that in itself of course, but only a handful of stations have step-free access. Wheelchair users cannot use the Tube to make almost every common journey the rest of us take for granted. They cannot use Baker Street, the busiest station on the Met. Or Harrow. Or Euston Square. Or Rayners Lane. So either there should be a programme to put in lifts in all the stations, or the designer who removed seats for wheelchairs that will never ever use the trains should be named, shamed and vilified for grossly wasting our money on a stupid propaganda stunt.

The signals of doom

2010-10-14T22:29:00.002+01:00

I wrote about signal failures at Baker Street only a couple of days ago. Tonight we had another one. I left work with the tube website mentioning "minor delays". I reached Baker Street about 15 minutes later and as I detrained they announced that all Mets were suspended so it's everyone pile onto the Jubbly, or in my case, to the second one that fortunately was hard on the heels of the first. At Finchley Road they announced that we should stay on board and change at Wembley Park but we were overtaken by a northbound Met before we arrived. Not to worry, there was another one waiting for us. Just for once the Uxbridge services were ok and it was the Watfordians (Watfordites? Watforders?) who had a bit of wait in store.

Now I'm not the brightest chap in the world but even I can deduce that there may be something fundamentally wrong with the signals at Baker Street. Not to mention the way that information is dispensed but then I've been moaning about that for a long time.

Marr speaks

2010-10-13T12:34:00.002+01:00

Speaking at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, BBC journalist and broadcaster Andrew Marr, has dismissed bloggers as "inadequate, pimpled and single", and citizen journalism as the "spewings and rantings of very drunk people late at night".

Yes, I admit, all my pieces are spewed up late at night after I down half a bottle of whisky, scratch my pimples and consider my ghastly inadequate life. But I am not single. So there.

The useless boards

2010-10-12T16:27:00.002+01:00

More than four years ago my home station, Ruislip Manor, was extensively rebuilt. New electronic displays appeared on the platform. I expressed the hope that at last we might be shown the times of the next few arriving trains, just like on so many other Tube stations (and even on some bus stops)

My hopes were in vain. In a post on this blog in April 2006 I lamented that the boards display nothing except the wholly incorrect geographic description of "northbound" or "southbound" trains. As the trains go east and west this is so stupid as to be bordering on the moronic.

And here we are, four and a half years later, and still that is all they display (and the odd "no smoking" warning to ensure that those on standing on the open, concrete, platforms are protected against incineration). There is a nice display in the platform foyer showing the LU website page with the system status. To show the departures from the station would be more useful but it is better than nothing). But on the station platforms? Chuck a few tea leaves in the air and read them – they'll be more useful than the expensive display system that you and I, my friend, have paid for out of ludicrously expensive fares.

I gather that there are some so called technical reasons why the boards won't work until we get the all-new, Metropolitan/Piccadilly integrated signalling system , scheduled for the twenty-fourth century, just after tea-time. Balderdash. The website shows arrivals and departures for every station. Why on earth cannot they hook the display boards up to their own internet servers?

Signal failures – the old old story

2010-10-09T11:27:00.001+01:00

The Metropolitan Line has had a rough week. Let me give but two examples:

1) I was travelling home late on Thursday night. On arrival at Baker Street I noticed that there was no Uxbridge flagged on the departure boards but saw no reason to worry. And as a fast Amersham was about to leave I ran for it, in the hope that we would overtake an Uxbridge that might have left within the past couple of minutes. No such luck. We reached Harrow having overtaken nothing. The station announcer told us, with a certain grim pride, that the next Uxbridge was due in nineteen minutes. Trains to Watford came and went. Another Amersham came and went. A couple of trains arrived only to be taken out to service and turned round. And we sat on until at last our train came in, not in the usual way from the south but running as a shuttle from Uxbridge, and coming into platform 6, normally reserved for fast southbound trains. The driver was good enough to tell us that the delays were due to signal problems at Baker Street (yawn) and, get this one readers, trespassers near Pinner. Now we all know that Pinner is on the Watford branch. So how come that a problem on this part of the line screwed up the Uxbridge branch?

2) Yesterday evening there was no problem reported around 5pm. But at 5:30, as I had a another quick check up on the web, once more we had severe delays and suspensions on the Met caused by – wait for it – signal failure at Baker Street. I had this strange feeling of déjà vu. Anyway, acting on a hunch I went home my normal way (rather than divert on the Piccadilly or Central, my emergency but much slower options), found the platforms at Baker Street thick with passengers but the first train in was for Uxbridge and it left within 5 minutes of my arrival. Wembley Park also had very large crowds waiting so the system had clearly been in turmoil for some time. But I was firmly ensconced in a corner seat and could view my struggling commuters with a distant but kindly disdain.

It always surprises me how civilised we are in these situations. If you have a seat, nobody ever under any circumstances will ask you to give it up for them. People on the platforms move in an orderly manner to board, albeit that a certain amount of shoving takes place with those trying to get out being obstructed by those standing near the doors who are trying their damndest to remain in place. But voices are not raised nor are fists brandished. People on crutches or visibly blind are given space. Having been a crutch-user myself a few years ago I can verify this from first-hand experience. All this is somehow typical of Britain but of course every nationality and culture on Earth may be found travelling into London on the tube. Must be something in the air that makes them conform.

You know what I mean, like

2010-09-30T20:06:00.001+01:00

Between Eastcote and Ruislip Manor on the Metropolitan Line is a short journey, perhaps 2 minutes. This evening I sat next to two young people on this final leg of my journey home. During this brief interlude the young man, who discoursed pretty much all of the time, uttered the word "like" no less than eleven times throughout his conversation. At no time did the word add any content to what he was saying. Perhaps he was unconscious of using it, perhaps he uses it deliberately to avoid saying "err", or "you know". Or maybe he lives in a world full of simile, a world where every person and experience must always be compared to something else through the ubiquitous "like".

You may wonder why I bothered to count the offending syllable. [You're right: Ed]. Well, I had just failed to complete the game of Battleships in a copy of the Evening Standard some kind fellow commuter had left by my seat and I had a bet with myself that he would reach 10 "likes" before I left the train. I lost.

Noise pollution

2010-09-20T17:05:00.000+01:00

I don't like Akio Morita, the Sony top man who, if he did not invent the Walkman idea, certainly was responsible for bringing it to market. He sold this prototype for the mp3 player/mobile phone with earbud style headphones and the sod did not think to ensure that these things worked without creating noise for the rest of us.

This morning I got on my usual train and found a young man adjacent listening to a melange of high pitched percussion and drums. After a couple of stops he left. Another young man took his place and he too was blaring out some wretched mind-numbing 4-4 beat "music". So I did what I rarely do, nudged him and asked him to turn it down. And he did. And got off at the next station, so all my psyching myself up to do the unthinkable and actually speak to another commuter was in vain. But at least we had an undisturbed journey then on in and I continued reading my absorbing but very demanding 650 page study of the European political and strategic crisis years 1801-5.

Reflections on a strike

2010-09-08T14:30:00.001+01:00

The tube unions were on strike yesterday. They oppose plans to reduce the number of staff in ticket offices. I suspect they have a point but as usual their tactics hit their customers and alienate them. I had plenty of work that was suitable to do at home so home was where I stayed, checking the tube website departure boards from time to time in a form of schadenfreude. The next strike is due in a month and I will do the same (although some trains did run on the Met and Bakerloo so it may be feasible to get into work anyway).

Working from home is a strange feeling. With the broadband connection, email and document sharing works just like being in the office but there is no buzz or backchat, nobody offering to make tea and always a slightly guilty feeling that one is not at one’s proper desk. Never mind all that, I managed to do what I had set out to do, and redesigned the code behind a couple of reports in our accounts system as a bonus.

Coming to work this morning as usual, there was a nice comedy of manners. A man was slumped in one of the front seats, head right over on his knees, snoring gently from time to time. He was not visible from the doors so people kept boarding, moving swiftly up to what seemed like an empty seat, then recoiling as they encountered the slumbering form. But nobody bothered to wake him or to sit beside him (he may have been drunk and reeking of alcohol; I didn’t get close enough to find out). I wonder how far he went or whether he was woken on arrival back at his departure point

Summer fizzles out

2010-09-01T22:51:00.000+01:00

August ended pleasantly, but cool. No heatwave. No thunderstorms. Days of grey cloud and the odd bright afternoon. Odd. I really thought that we would get a scorcher this year. And the Met put up a feeble effort too. The LU website showed all clear as I left my office last night. I got to Baker Street and heard an announcement that due to a "passenger taken ill on a train at Barbican" we were advised to use the Jubbly to go north west. So I did and it was very slow and then there was a wait at Wembley Park (boo) and the indicator board said the incoming train was for Uxbridge (cheers) but the train header said Watford (boo) then it waited while several drivers and a couple of signalmen held an impromptu conference (boo) then they announced it was going to Uxbridge (cheers) then we waited again for no apparent reason and at last we left. Result, the 16 mile journey home took 1:25. Oh, and of course there were only "minor " delays according to the line announcers.

Now we all know that "taken ill" means dead, and "on a train" probably means "under it" but why oh why do they have to cancel trains and take them out of service ( I saw several running empty southbound into the Neasden depot)? Why can't they turn them all round at Baker Street with its 4 (count them, 4) available platforms?

So I'm putting in my customer refund claim (cheers) and we shall see if LU pay up (even more cheers) or not (sullen silence broken by angry mutterings).

A change of lifestyle

2010-08-14T17:20:00.000+01:00

I have begun working a 4 day week. After 38 years doing the standard 5 day week, circumstances have made it feasible to take a small step toward a more flexible lifestyle. One of the contributing factors is the pressure of commuting. Two hours a day going back and forth by Tube is not fun. I'm tired of being at the mercy of stroppy unions, badly maintained signals and the sheer nastiness of some of my fellow passengers, like the young man who forced his way down the "up" steps at Baker Street earlier this week and swore violently when a woman walking up remonstrated.

Speaking of unions, there was another one day strike on the Met this week. Although some trains were cancelled, LU cunningly decided that whatever trains were on would constitute the normal schedule for the day, so they could claim that there was a good service even with 15 minute gaps (I know this is so, I checked it on the TFT website and looked carefully at the departure boards, then had it confirmed by the knowledgable insiders on the District Dave site.) I didn't bother with the Met and took the Piccadilly on both the inward and the homebound journeys. Just like old times, before my office moved from the obscure bit of Hammersmith to Waterloo. Actually the Picc was on good form and each journey only (only!) took about 15 minutes longer than the Met route and I even managed to get a seat at the start of the homeward run (try doing that when the school holidays finish). It's a shame it is such a slow line.

At last the good news

2010-07-26T13:08:00.000+01:00

To my considerable surprise, Metropolitan Line trains were running normally this morning and were stopping at Baker Street. "So what?" I hear you say "Is that not normally the case?". [That's certainly what I would have said: Ed]. Leaving aside that there are often problems on Mondays due to late completion of the weekend engineering works, for the past three weeks they have been rebuilding platform 3 at Baker Street and through trains to Aldgate have not stopped there. Most of the London-bound Met trains in the morning go to Aldgate, so this has caused a lot of disruption. The works were planned to finish last weekend but I naturally assumed that they would overrun as this is par for the course.

So not only did my usual Aldgate arrive on time and get to Baker Street on time, but platform 3 was open and it was the usual crush down the stupidly narrow stairs into the nether world of the deep tube. Except that as the school holidays have started, it wasn't much of a crush. And the ever-dependable Bakerloo obliged with a train within a minute. Result - arrival at work unflustered and not late.

I don't know what has happened to our summer though. It is 100% cloud cover this morning with dense black stuff piling up from the west and a curious misty look around the tall buildings visible from my office, notably Canary Wharf, the rapidly growing Shard and the soon-to-be-dwarfed Guys Hospital tower. London takes on a hazy, dream-like look in such weather with some building on the horizon appearing and disappearing as the clouds roll by. Still, it's better than the heatwave of a couple of weeks ago.

The fun continues

2010-07-21T14:31:00.002+01:00

I document my regular travelling problems as a service to future historians and students of the raw details of 21st century commuting. So purely for the record, let me note that there were more delays last night coming home on the Met (the driver said something about a defective train at Wembley Park, but as I was listening to something far more interesting, viz an edition of the radio comedy show RadioActive on the trusty Creative Zen player, I missed most of the announcement). And this morning there was some sort of strike by ASLEF members which, coupled with the continuing disruption of southbound services into Baker Street made me about 15 minutes later getting to work. And again this evening I had the enjoyable experience of sitting on an absolutely packed train at Baker Street which waited for nearly 15 minutes despite the indicator boards showing it as ready to leave. Arriving at Wembley Park there was a little huddle of men in blue overalls outside the control centre - presumably drivers having a union meeting or maybe just taking in the warm evening air and having a good laugh at the sweltering, helpless passengers waiting for one of them to take the train on up the line. I took a picture on my phone but it is not really worth reproducing here unless there is some popular demand for it [what planet is he on? Ed]

Wouldnt it be nice if they were told, at the end of the week, that due to a defect there were minor delays in the tube wages system and they would be paid a couple of weeks late and they were not allowed to grumble because it was officially just "minor" delays.

There was a bit in one of the daily papers that all tube maintenance line closures are to be stopped during the period of the Olympics. Well. You see, the point is, it is not so much the closures, irritating though they may be that is the nub of the issue. It is the constant delays caused by signal failures, defective trains, things on the track, people "taken ill" (i.e. throwing themselves under) on a train and the like that will screw up the experience of sport-loving tourists in 2012. It won't affect the rest of us - we have enough sense to say well away from the whole benighted affair for which, let me remind you, I did not vote and neither did you because we were not allowed to express our views on it, even though we will be taxed to pay for the whole wretched circus.

Jams and suspensions

2010-07-20T10:15:00.000+01:00

Before leaving my office last night for my homeward journey from Waterloo I checked the TFL website. Delays on the Jubilee (which I don't normally use), Bakerloo ok. So off I set and imagine my surprise when I find three fire engines and an ambulance waiting outside the tube's South Bank entrance. No sign of any firemen or paramedics in the station though. Down the escalators we go and lo! the Bakerloo is suspended with the metal gates drawn across the entrance to the platforms and station staff standing by. A hand written board informs us that the service is suspended due to a defective train.

Guessing that the emergency services are there to help passengers out of the tunnels, and therefore that this will be a long job there is no point in waiting. There is an announcement that we should take the Northern and change for a Piccadillly and then back to the Bakerloo at Piccadilly circus. Sod that. I take my chance with the Jubbly, arrive on a heavily crowded platform, notice a train is due with another 2 minutes behind, let the first one go and manage to squeeze into the second. As full as it can be but at least it moves quickly. Baker Street is attained.

Naturally the first trains out are going to Watford. They are rebuilding platform 3 for the new S stock due next year (or maybe in 2016 depending on who you ask) and Uxbridge services are restricted. So I get to Harrow, wait for the Uxbridge that was suppposed to be right behind the Watfords but which arrives several minutes later and get home about 15 minutes later than planned. Pretty much par for the course these days. Oh, and whilst at Harrow they announce that the Northern is part suspended, but in the usual helpful way they don't bother to say which part, so leaving any would-be travellers on that line without any idea whether they should or should not change their route. So that is all three of the tube lines going through Waterloo screwed up. What are the chances of that happening?

Excuses, excuses

2010-07-16T16:59:00.000+01:00

There were severe delays on the Metropolitan line last night. But why? At Baker Street they told us it was all down to something on the track (a train???) at Faringdon. At Wembley Park they didn't bother telling us anything at all. At Harrow, where they ran several trains to Watford before bothering to put on one for Uxbridge (my route) they began blathering about points failure at Wembley Park.

I don't buy any of it. The Met can turn trains round in a number of places. I remember this knee-jerk reaction of cutting services, rather than attempting to run some, from the dark days of the Piccadilly. Not good enough. You can run shuttles, say from Rayners Lane to Harrow, if you want to help Uxbridge-bound commuters on their way.

At least it was a nice summer evening. And I did appreciate the priority given by the station announcers at Harrow to Amersham-bound passengers (all two of them), compared to the couple of hundred or so waiting for an Uxbridge train. After all they had the awful problem of having to wait 5 minutes. I sat there for more than 15.

Continental sojourn

2010-07-12T21:10:00.000+01:00

Back from a very pleasant holiday in Germany and Czech, travelling by rail all the way. Deutsche Bahn failed to impress, running one intercity train an hour late and so mixing up the wagon and seat layout on another that we had angry scenes with people occupying the seats we had reserved (and vice versa). But the first class service on Eurostar was a joy as always and we enjoyed the excellent metro system in Prague where the air-conditioned stations and trains were beautifully cold despite the heatwave that made it almost unbearable to be out in the sun during the afternoons. And so home to the non air-conditioned trains on the tube but at least there was no delay in our final journey of the holiday, the Uxbridge bound Metropolitan from Kings Cross.

You may be wondering why there are no pictures of the ice-cream stalls in the section of this website devoted to that subject. We did not eat a lot of ice-cream on this trip, oddly enough. One of us drank a lot of beer and the other iced tea. The one day we did indulge was at the Movenpick Hotel in Prague where they certainly know how to charge. The most exotic ice-cream stalls were in Nuremburg, a city that, sadly, had the medieval heart ripped out during the war and has been rebuilt as a modern shopping centre. We did not linger.

After the match

2010-06-27T20:38:00.000+01:00

No penalty shoot-out after all. Just outclassed. Now we can join France and Italy and think about what might have been. I am disappointed but not surprised. Ah, the fragility of hope. And it will all start up again in four years time with more media-led rubbish about "This time we can win it".

A touch of heat

2010-06-27T11:50:00.000+01:00

I was writing recently about how dull and gloomy June was. Not any more. This weekend the temperature has soared, so much so that an old thermometer, left on a table in our conservatory by a sun-facing window, broke; though as I was not there at the time I could not tell if it was one of those cartoon-type moments where the top bursts off and the mercury shoots into the air.

Today may be one of the hottest days this year with the shade temperature reaching 30c. How fitting then that most of us, this afternoon, will be huddled around a television with the curtains drawn, wondering if we can survive the penalty shoot-out with the Germans with some sort of dignity. Yes, the heat is on in more ways than one (well, two ways to be precise).

Things that go bump

2010-06-23T13:56:00.001+01:00

I had a little moan about the Metropolitan Line yesterday and on my way home last night with the Bakerloo doing its usual excellent thing and my Uxbridge train waiting for me at Baker Street, I thought I might have been a bit harsh. But no. Arriving at Rayners Lane we were informed that there was a signal failure ahead that might delay us. The faulty signal was the one at the platform on Eastcote and a man in an orange safety jacket was peering at it anxiously. Our train driver was reassuring, explaining he was going to go past it anyway and we would feel a bump so anyone standing should sit down. We moved off, there was a jolt, not particularly heavy as we were doing barely walking speed, caused by the train emergency brakes coming on as the safety system kicked in. Then there was a wait until the air pressure was restored and we lurched down the track to Ruislip Manor in a curious stop-start form of motion.

It is a long time since I was last in a train that had to bump through a stuck signal. At times like this you realise how antiquated the Tube systems are. The driver knew it was safe to proceed, obviously the Line Controller had authorised it yet still he could not override the train's braking systems and we had to continue crawling until we left the section controlled by the failed signal.

And speaking of failure and things that crawl along, England's shaky World Cup bid reaches make or break time this afternoon. Will we be derailed or off down the fast track? More on this later...

The Met creaks

2010-06-22T14:33:00.000+01:00

Is it me or is the Metropolitan Line going through another awkward phase? A bit like a surly teenager who now and then brightens up and says something intelligible before lapsing into reticence. Many journeys are marred by some sort of niggly problem, be it signal failure (the old favourite), or too many trains on a stretch of track, or trains with problems or passenger related stuff like the dreaded "person taken ill" a.k.a. another one's snuffed it. Nothing terribly serious to report in the past few weeks, just this on-going set of faults that somehow, every day, add 5 or 10 minutes to a journey. Doesn't sound too much? Let's restate that as a 12 - 25% increase in journey times. It all adds up but you can't ever make a Customer Charter refund claim because a delay has to be 15 minutes on a single journey to count.

I've written about this sort of thing before and then comes a period when the trains just run as they should and nobody is taken ill and one begins to get used to one's train coming in on time and arriving on time. And of course this creates a kind of "golden age" in the mind to compare to when the usual problems recur.

Oh well, at least the summer is nearly here so the trains should become less crowded, and the heatwave that seemed to be threatening us has vanished into a dull grey and downright chilly late June murk. The English football team performed about as badly as we feared in the opening stages of the World Cup but what the hell, the French are worse, Italy could only draw with New Zealand and the Germans lost to Serbia and missed a penalty. I almost expected a man with a monocle, a duelling scar and a plumed hat to call in at the Serb Embassy the next day and hand in a final note demanding reparations.

A spot of gloom

2010-06-01T17:53:00.001+01:00

Continuing with the meterological theme of my last posting, it is the first of June today. It should be bright and warm, with fluffy white cumulus chasing across the deep blue sky. It should lift the heart.

Actually it has been raining most of the day. A heavy grey cloud over London has reduced visibility to about a mile. From my window high over Waterloo I can barely see St. Pauls and the three Barbican towers are mere grey fingers against a shapeless background. Everyone on foot outside scuttles along under umbrellas.

Meanwhile BP are in deep dudu as the oil flows unstoppably out of a big hole in the Gulf of Texas, the Euro is struggling with a loss of confidence and England are finalising their squad for the "Is this our year?" - "No it isn't, you berk, not unless Brazil, Argentina, France, Italy, Germany and Spain all get knocked out first" World Cup.

I suppose the only happy thing to report is that this morning my "slow" London-bound train arrived at Harrow alongside a "fast". Most people left my train to fill the other. We left first. At Wembley Park I could see them behind us in the distance and assumed they would thunder past as we waited to follow them on the Met's single track. But no. We glided swiftly in (in recent weeks trains have stopped regularly just outside the station then crawled along) and pulled out almost at once. I sat in my snug corner seat and reflected on the unfairness of life.

...and there goes the sun

2010-05-25T18:02:00.000+01:00

After 4 warm days we are back to normal. Actually it is a beautiful spring day, with bright blue skies and just a few fluffy clouds, albeit some 10 degrees cooler than yesterday. But apparently we are in for a cooler than usual summer [source?: Ed}, thus perpeptuating the sequence that begin with the dismal 2007. Is it a coincidence that this news matched yet another sharp decline in the world's stock markets? Could it be that the run of disappointing summers (in the UK at any rate) in the past four years is the cause of the financial turmoil which also began in 2007?

Some may blame sunspots, long held to do nasty things to agricultural cycles. Others might conjecture that magnetic anomalies are interfering with human rational and emotional systems. Or is just that duller weather makes us all depressed and jittery? I have long been a fan of Keynes' "animal spirits" theory of investment. Stand by for the pathbreaking combination of economics, meteorology and astronomy that I call "The General Theory Of Weather And Why Everything Goes Pear-shaped So Quickly". Available in all good bookshops the moment that it gets published (and subsequently distributed to all good bookshops).

Here comes the sun

2010-05-21T21:56:00.001+01:00

Yes after a dismal winter and delayed spring, the temperature finally dragged itself into the upper 20s today. Indeed it was positively balmy to be driving through North West London, as I happened to be doing this afternoon. And we only turned our central heating off a couple of days ago (and not for the first time this year, having been suckered by an earlier mild spell that failed to deliver).

A few years ago I was seriously worried about the prospect of a series of heatwaves in the summers to come, something for which us commuters are not well prepared. Well, that was then. Now it is rather pleasant, though what it may be like on the tube next week we shall find out in due course and you my faithful readers [shouldn't that be reader, arf-arf: Ed] will be kept fully informed. They are supposed to be bringing new air-conditioned trains into service on the dear old Metropolitan this year - now would be an excellent time to give them a trial run.

Bumping along

2010-05-14T14:37:00.001+01:00

It's very odd. They close the Met most weekends to do maintenance. And the quality of the ride gets worse and worse. Between Wembley Park and Neasden, and through the tunnels toward Baker Street we are thrown back and forth, bounced up and down, ears are assailed by squeaks and rattles and the whole is punctuated with the occasional loud thud and jolt as though something has broken in the chassis.

For those of us struggling to listen to recorded radio programmes on the old Zen player, or attempting to fill in word puzzles, it's not pleasant. But will the new trains be better? we ask ourselves. Fewer seats but a more comfortable ride. It's a complex trade-off.

Waiting for the call

2010-05-13T10:36:00.000+01:00

The coalition government is being formed even as I pen these words, and, given that this blog exclusively predicted the outcome of the election, surely a call to assume Ministerial office must be just hours away. My loyal readers must therefore forgive me for having neglected commuting-related matters recently. It is possible that I will be unable to reconcile my dearly held principles with whatever Messrs.Cameron & Clegg now subscribe to and that, once again, high office will pass me by. In which case normal service will be resumed. We shall see. [Some slight exaggerations above but I think we can get away with it: Ed]

Election update

2010-04-30T21:37:00.000+01:00

A week in Cornwall has refreshed Mrs. Commuter and myself but left me perilously out of touch with the General Election. We failed to watch the second and third leaders' debate and the only story that seems to have been of much interest is 'Bigotgate', Gordon Brown's unguarded comments about an awkward encounter with a supporter that were conveniently recorded on a Sky News radio mike (that should have been unclipped before GB drove off) and instantly broadcast to the world.

David Cameron seems to have regained some momentum and is on course to head the largest party in the new Parliament but we won't know if he will have a majority until the day after - this at least makes it a highly exciting poll. The best part of this is that many voters will feel that their votes actually matter and that can only be good for democracy. Mine, alas, does not, living as I do in a fairly safe Tory seat.

The long-term question is whether the LibDems can sustain their apparent support and become a genuinely third player, and thereby break up the two party system that has worked, one way or another, since the early eighteenth century. Whig and Tory, Liberal and Conservative, Labour and Conservative - the stark either/or choice has been the essence of British politics for so long that we really no experience of anything else. Actually that is not quite right, given the influence of the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales, as well as the welter of parties in Northern Ireland, but it is reasonably true for the UK parliament.

I think that a more fluid system will be profoundly good for democracy and in making Governments more responsible to Parliament, and Parliament in turn to the people. So let us hope that some sensible voting takes place next week, and a sense of what may be won has more influence than the smell of fear.

Notes from an ashen-faced commentator

2010-04-22T22:24:00.000+01:00

A volcano erupted last week in Iceland and British airspace was closed from Thursday until yesterday. It is amazing how instantly disruptive this was. Thousands of people have been stranded and huge damage has been done to businesses, including the one I work for. Several members of my family are still stuck in various places and though the airlines are now free to fly, the schedules will be screwed up for some time to come as the planes and the crews are brought back to base.

The ash from the volcano - especially dangerous because it exploded its way through a glacier on top of the vent - was thought likely to damage aircraft engines. After a few days the news was dominated by stories of desperate people fighting over hotel rooms, taking taxis hundreds of miles, running out of money and finding their visas invalid in foreign countries. The airlines were incurring huge losses and they put huge pressure on the authorities and the official line changed. Ash concentrations thought to be dangerous were downgraded and suddenly it was ok to fly, provided the volcano continued to die down.

We will no doubt continue to import food and flowers and other perishables from all over the world. Perhaps we will try to be just a little less dependant in future. There will be other volcanoes and they could erupt a lot longer and a lot bigger next time. I have long been disenchanted with air travel and this year Mrs. Commuter and I will be using train and car instead, and if this restricts us to the UK and Western Europe, no problem at all.

The Clegg Effect

2010-04-20T22:25:00.000+01:00

Together with about 9 million others, I watched the first-ever British live debate between the main party leaders contesting the forthcoming General Election. And what, you may ask, did I make of the instant success of hitherto little-known LibDem hopeful Nick Clegg? Not a lot actually. Yes he has boyish charm and enthusiasm, nicely contrasting with Gordon Brown's forced smile and David Cameron's look-I'm-really-just-like-you manner. But almost anyone would have done well against those two. His line about the "two old parties" may come back to haunt him as those of us with some sense of history recall dear old Mr. Gladstone & his pals. What he really has going for him is that he is not laden by the baggage of either New Labour or the ghost of Mrs. Thatcher.

Voters have been drifting away from Labour for some time, but there does not seem to be a sense of real enthusiasm for the Tory altenative, certainly compared to the landmark election of 1997. It is remarkable how few survive from those days. Of all Cameron's team I think only William Hague saw office before. When Mrs. Thatcher toppled Callaghan's enfeebled government she had plenty of experienced men (and they were all men in those days) to call on. Now Labour can at least put forward a tried and tested, if not trusted, team [this alliteration is super: Ed]. But will electors fearful of recession and change cling to what they know? Is this the Safety First election to compare to 1931? There are signs that Labour are moving in that direction and I think this may be discomforting the Tories. But how does that help the LibDems? I suspect that the Clegg balloon will deflate as fast as it has gone up when people start thinking of whether things can really get better under a different administration.

Hotmail’s Spam Bodyguard

2010-04-15T13:17:00.002+01:00

Regular readers will know that I am fascinated by certain tube ads – those that so badly designed or convey a message in such clumsy fashion that one spends far longer wondering about the brains of the people who designed them than in absorbing the meaning of the content, if any. And today I present to you a specimen of singular interest.

On the face of it this is something about Microsoft's web-based email service, Hotmail. I have nothing against Hotmail. I use it myself from time to time. My interest is in what I can only describe as the ineffable naffness of this ad.

What on earth is a "new busy"? Busy is an adjective. You cannot have a new one. You can have a new, busy person (although that does not have very much meaning, unless by new you denote a synthetically produced human). In the 1930s the word busy was slang for a policeman in the UK and I am pretty sure that nobody in Microsoft's advertising department will know that. So what do they mean? Beats me. There is the outside chance that they think this is popular usage for Businessperson. If so it still produces a meaningless image. Businesspeople do not use Hotmail for business. It is a personal email product, not suitable for collaborative use of email, calendars and resource scheduling, archiving of mail to meet legal requirements and so forth. But let us move on.

What is a spam bodyguard? Why would it be personal? Spam is impersonal mail sent by people you do not know or wish to do business with. If you know them then their emails are not spam, though their receipt may be irritating. So there is no such thing as a personal spam bodyguard. Only an impersonal one, based on identifying emails that are being spammed indiscriminately can do the job. Otherwise you start with the idea that everything you receive must be ok unless you flag it as spam, and this is a model which has been shown not to work.

What in any case is a bodyguard in this context? Viruses, worms and web exploits, all part of the general class of computer software known as "malware", can cause real damage and require a degree of protection for unwary computer users. But spam? Clogs up the mailbox and wastes bandwidth to be sure. But does it do real damage? No. So the image of a bodyguard is without foundation. Possibly this particular bodyguard also protects against malware. But the ad doesn't bother to tell us.

And now we turn to the image itself, the attention-grabbing part of this strange publication. A rusty, corrugated-iron fence nearly meets a crumbling concrete pavement. Poking its face and paws into the gap is a sad looking animal, probably a dog, though wolf, gerbil on steroids and baboon-hound from the Planet Tharg all come to mind [not sure what a baboon-hound is, but I don't know very much about Sci-Fi so let it pass: Ed]. This creature is about to cut its forehead quite badly on the sharp part of the fence and will no doubt go whining back to its owner, or Thargian overlord, as the case may be. But it is associated with the idea of being a bodyguard? Would you entrust your safety to this animal? Not me, Mr. Gates, not me.

So there it is. I don't know what they are advertising or why I should care. I do not wish to be called a "new busy". I don't need, or even believe in the existence of, a "personal spam bodyguard". And nor do you. But if you would like a copy of my new book "Rogue Baboon-Hounds from Tharg destroy the Galaxy", please do get in touch. And Ed – only dorks call SF "Sci-Fi".

Defining our principles

2010-04-09T13:22:00.001+01:00

People are asking where Ramblings stands on the great issues of the day, now that the General Election is under way. Let us be firm, but not autocratic, decisive yet flexible. Action must undoubtedly be taken but let it not be too hasty, or too protracted. We must preserve the best from the past but never be afraid to modernise. We must go boldly into the bright future, always aware of our glorious heritage. Youth has much to offer but we shall not lightly cast outside the experience of the old. The hand of government must be gentle, yet powerful but tempered with mercy and always mindful of public opinion, though we disdain popular prejudices. Public spending must be protected but waste will be eradicated. We believe in the finest national health, education, pensions and social policies and will always set taxes at the lowest possible level. The spirit of enterprise must be free and unfettered from red tape, but we will resolutely defy the unacceptable faces of capitalism. Part of Europe but proud of our non-European bits as well. In favour of devolution so long as it does not give anyone more power than we wish them to have.

I think this covers all necessary bases
[must we have Americanisms? Ed], er, puts fieldsmen into all the right places only allowing quick singles.

A press conference to launch these themes will be held just as soon any journalist expresses any kind of interest.

Cash and politicians

2010-03-23T14:28:00.001Z

Funny how history repeats itself. In the mid 1990s the Conservative Party had been in power for over 15 years. It was running out of the drive to govern that characterises parties in their opposition years and in the early years of government. It was beset by scandals in which the disdain of certain ministers and members of parliament for normal standards of morality was clear. The prevailing attitude exuded by some was that "We are the natural party of government and we can do what we like. We are the law". When Labour won its landslide victory in 1997 there was a sense of a radical change in the political atmosphere. A party obsessed with money and the casual destruction of the common property of the country (e.g. the railways) was out. The incomers were unsullied and uncorrupted.

Or so we thought.

Now, with the expenses scandal (that covers all parties), with the astonishing perfidy of Tony Blair in taking this country to war in order to get rich personally on the US lecture circuit and through dubious political contacts (for no other explanation of the facts seems to fit) and with the news this week that some ex-ministers are hawking their favours to any lobbyist with a few thousand pounds to spare, we are close to stepping back 13 years. Then, the word "sleaze" was shorthand for the corruption of the Tories. Now it seems that the "new" Labour party is falling headlong into the same trap. And it really is the same trap. Cash for questions then, cash for lobbying now. Exposure by investigate journalists. Suspension of the offenders from their parties. The questions left hanging in the air over everyone else.

Britain is not a corrupt country. I have been driving for more than 40 years and have never once been stopped by the police in circumstances where a bribe would let me go freely on my way, Actually I have only ever been stopped twice, once when they were stopping everyone who looked young to ask if they were driving their own car, once when an alert officer spotted that my MG sports car lacked a road tax disc (I was racing up the M4 at all of 60mph with the roof down and it had blown off the windscreen). But I digress. We are lucky to have a fundamentally sound civil service and a free press. Our politicians sell themselves for amounts that would be considered pathetically small in some countries. Yet corruption is still corruption and they will pay for it at the next election. All we can say with certainty is that if Cameron's lot get in for a period of more than 10 years then we can expect another round of scandals around the year 2022. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Dept. of Snappy Replies

2010-03-19T10:23:00.001Z

Arriving at Waterloo station this morning, I was at the ticket barrier when I overheard the man next to me inquire of a station attendant "What is the quickest way to High Barnet?"

Suppressing the urge to say "Helicopter" I moved away.

Pre-election musings

2010-03-18T15:25:00.002Z

Five years ago this blog blazed a trail in investigative reporting, bringing the British General Election campaign into sharp relief on your computer screen, mercilessly exposing the hype and the spin, cutting away the layers of waffle to reach the juicy meaty content of the underlying issues. [do waffles have meaty content? Researcher!: Ed] It all started here. Now it is about to start up all over again. Last time the timing of the election was in doubt until it was announced. This year, we know the last date that the election may legally be held and therefore the race is on. This blog pledges that it will, once more, be the eyes and ears of the people in the quest for truth. [mmm, pretty good stuff: Ed]

From the commuting viewpoint all is quiet. There are no election posters in the streets, nor are vans driving around with loudspeakers on the roof announcing "Vote for crackle crackle". No handbills have been delivered. Nobody has phoned me or Mrs. Commuter to ask our opinions. Well, what the hell, the spring weather is here, the trains are running on time, why spoil it all with a bit of politics?

Ill on a train, again

2010-03-12T17:57:00.003Z

Tonight there are "severe delays" on the Met and Circle and District and Hammersmith, due to a person "taken ill on a train" at Great Portland Street. I've written about this phenomenon of tube train operations before and am still confused. If someone is ill, surely you get them off the train as soon as possible. There are first aid facilities and trained staff at each station. Why should the, undoubtedly regrettable, illness of a passenger create severe delays? Minor delays perhaps. But this smacks more of a knee-jerk reaction by the Line Controllers. What? - someone has lightly bruised their upper arm on a seat support?! – help, panic, cancel all trains, close the barriers, update the website, and where did I put that headless chicken mask?

update: I wrote the forgoing just before leaving for home. When I reached Baker Street the announcement had changed. Now it was "a fatality" that had caused the problem. Well this makes the delays totally understandable, of course. And now we know that "ill" means "dead" in Tubespeak.

Blogger for Word reborn

2010-03-11T16:13:00.001Z

Once upon a time I raved about an add-on for Word, called Blogger for Word. It linked a Word document directly to Blogger. Then Google withdrew it and a dark cloud enveloped my heart [poetic rubbish: Ed]. But that is all in the past for I have discovered that in Office 2007 you can link directly to Blogger (and other blogging sites). And this posting is written in Word 2007 and has been posted automatically.

Isn't technology wonderful?

Why a poll?

2010-03-04T12:31:00.003Z

You may be wondering what the poll on the top right is all about. Nothing, really. A couple of years ago I tried to put up a poll and it failed to appear no matter what options were tried. Today I had another go and lo! it has appeared. You don't need to take any notice of it. [don't suppose they would anyway: Ed]
Update: the poll has been removed. It was, by my standards anyway, an outstanding success and proof that the interactive nature of the internet is changing social relations beyond recognition. Three votes were recorded. I account for two of them.

Three in a row

2010-03-02T13:52:00.002Z

Jubbly was screwed this morning and a huge number of people were waiting at Wembley Park when the Met I was on arrived. That in itself is unusual (er, the crowd on the platform, not the trivial fact of my arrival which is something I do every working day) but it is not what I want to write about today. For earlier, waiting (as is my wont) at Ruislip Manor for the self-same Met, I watched three Piccadillys go eastwards between 8:30 and 8:35. Now one is normal. Two in a row can happen (and indeed was in the regular timetable until a few years ago). But three?

In earlier times 'twould have been seen as an evil omen, young sir, and a warning of great consequence to them as would take notice in these dark days (or perhaps those dark days as we have slipped into a past tense). It would presage the death of kings and the onset of plague. Today, I guess it presages no service on the Jubilee and the pound falling like a stone against the US dollar. Such indeed are the times in which we live. [so what?: Ed]

May I just check your Oystercard, Mr. Bond?

2010-02-27T12:17:00.003Z

An advert in the train has the strapline "What is the date of birth of the person sitting on your right? You have three stops". The logos at the top read MI6 and SIS. I say logos but since these are the initials of the British Secret Service, one can hardly think that they form part of a brand recognition programme. They look like something knocked up by Moneypenny in Wordstar 3.0 during her lunchbreak.

Anyway this is a recruitment ad and they want people in search of an interesting career to apply. All so different from the cosy world of the past where promising young men would be approached by their tutors at University and given the chance of a lifetime to explore their latent homosexuality and then spy on behalf of the Russians.
[added a few days later]
Here at last is the ad, hastily snapped on the Bakerloo just before everyone crowded in at Piccadilly Circus tonight.