Friday, April 11, 2008

A gross over-generalisation follows

I have the feeling that services on the Underground are better than they used to be. You can get a rough idea just by looking at the service status page. Most of the time the tubes run without delays (although what they mean by delays is not always what you and I understand by this term) and the two lines that I use daily, the Metropolitan and the Bakerloo, rarely let me down. The trains may be crowded and much of the technology is so out of date it hurts (literally, when a Met comes into a station with its brakes squealing like young ladies of a certain impressionable age at a performance given by a popular beat combo) but somehow the system grinds on. I have no faith in its ability to cope with the Olympics or with a heatwave but these aside, there is a confidence that one can go on relying on the Tube to get around London.

This page will be heavily edited if from tonight onward the service deteriorates, and will instead say that I think things are getting worse. Always right, that's me.

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Happy New Year

It is April 6th and I wish you all a very happy new year. Tax year, that is. The United Kingdom is still stuck with a medieval calendar that used to finish on March 25, but was adjusted by 11 days when the Gregorian calendar was adopted in 1752. Anyway, it seems a more appropriate time of year to celebrate a new year. The days are lightening and the cold of winter is behind us. Or is it? This was the scene that greeted us this morning.



Still, it is a Sunday so no need to go to work and endure the usual litany of extensive delays caused by snow falling down the back of the signalman's neck, or whatever they come up with these days