Commuting causes anxiety - Official

I've been writing about it for a long time and now the Office for National Statistics has confirmed, as reported in the Guardian yesterday, that commuting causes unhappiness, compared to working from or near home. Furthermore the level of unhappiness increases for each minute of a commute, although it tails off and reduces for people doing extreme commuting (journeys of several hours).

All pretty obvious, really. Commuting is a fairly unnatural sort of experience. Throughout human history until very recently people worked where they lived. When you commute you are no longer in control but dependent on the service of the transport provider. You are often forced into uncomfortably close proximity to other people. It can be difficult to concentrate on anything other than the rigours of the journey. Modern technology - in the form of tablets/smartphones/music players - as well that old standby of something decent to read can help but never fully alleviate the problem. People travelling by car or on wheels were happier than those going by bus or train, and cyclists the happiest of all (but I am sceptical about applying this to general commuting because typically cyclists do not have a long distance to cover; for someone like me to try to cycle into central London would be exhausting, extremely dangerous and more stressful, due to the nature of the main roads, than almost anything else).

As for those making very long journeys - that is not so much commuting, more choosing to live a substantial chunk of your life on the move and requires a very different mindset to that employed by the rest of us.

I am not sure quite what the point of the survey is, given that it tells us nothing we did not already know.  If you are interested in further research, my groundbreaking study Why doing nice things makes us happier than doing unpleasant things is available on request for a modest 25 bitcoins [whatever they are: Ed]

Watching the waters

The flooding of significant parts of southern England has continued and in some places is now worse than ever. The West Country and the Severn valley have been in difficulties since early January. In the last couple of weeks the Thames has risen to record levels and some of the most desirable (or they were, up until recently) towns in the country are under water. At first glance the areas affected seem the wrong ones - the upper Thames from its source to Oxford is ok, even though these areas often flood even in reasonable times, and there are no flood warnings of any sort below Richmond. But in between, where the river itself is not particularly wide, the waters have risen sharply and are pushing up groundwater. It is almost as if the Thames is itself acting as a barrier to the water and is protecting central London.

There is no danger in beautiful Ruislip although our own dear River Pinn is overflowing onto its flood plain (if one can call a few soggy strips of open meadow and woodland that) downstream where it meets the Colne at Uxbridge; and there have been warnings where the Colne itself meets the Thames not much farther on. Some back gardens that back on to the rivers are under water. This morning the warnings were removed but there is a lot more rain on the way.

Will these unheard-of wet conditions favour the amphibian population? In the past couple of years the frogs have ceased to come to our little pond - fifteen years ago we might have had a dozen taking up residence during the mating season - and this is part of a national crisis. We shall know in a few weeks.

www.ruislip.commuter?

A couple of ISPs*, with whom I have a business relationship, have emailed me to advise of the new domains that are coming into effect. There has never been any particularly good reason for internet addresses to be restricted to ".com", ".org", ".co.uk" and the like. Now a plethora of new dot endings are here, or will be here shortly,  including ".clothing", ".bike" and ".plumbing". I can see how this sort of name will be useful. But the contents of an email I received today from one of the ISPs are giving me some considerable difficulty for this one suggests that I should rush to register a new name ending ".guru".

Now why on earth would I do that? What does www.anthonyg.guru say to you? To me it says pretentious tosser. And how many real gurus are there? And of those, how many are customers of the ISP that is touting this particular domain extension? There are millions more commuters than there are gurus. Why don't we have our own domain? Strong and worthy questions, I think you'll agree. I think I might even pay real money for ruislip.commuter. Not a lot, mind. But when you have a valuable brand you need to protect it. So when the sunrise process, or whatever they call it, begins for this particular domain I shall be first in the queue. Unless it costs more than £5. In which case I won't be.


[Internet Service Provider: Ed]

The Wycombe Hole

One of the minor news stories of the day concerns the sinister car-swallowing sinkhole of Wycombe, and shows the perils we all face in our daily lives. Fans of writers such as H.P. Lovecraft and Ramsey Campbell will recognise the scene at once, as some ghastly demonic being from beyond the galaxy issues forth, growing fat on a diet of Vauxhall Corsa fricassee garnished with petrol. But leaving aside the horror story potboiler possibilities (and I do so with reluctance),  I was taken by the brief comment issued by the Buckinghamshire Fire Service which included these words "Firefighters placed a cordon around it and gave safety advice". (Presumably the advice was given to members of the public, not to the hole). Somehow this induced an image of a bunch of burly blokes in helmets and breathing apparatus standing in a ring around the hole, facing outwards and holding hands, whilst issuing the following vital safety advice to onlookers
"Do not fall down the hole. Repeat - do not fall down the hole. Falling down the hole may cause injuries. So do not fall down it."

And it must be working because so far nobody has been reported as having fallen in it.

Search is back

The search box seems to be working again. So I have reinstated it.
[and jolly handy it is too: Ed]