Freedom

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

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

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

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 do 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

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".