2003 revisited

The searingly hot summer of 2003 will be long remembered as providing one of the longest and most unpleasant weather conditions for many years. We have had few such summers since, and certainly 2012 has been wet and cold in comparison. Yet once again, this week, Europe is sweltering. Paris was 38c today whilst even in beautiful Ruislip we were looking at 31 or so. Just mowing the lawn in the late afternoon induced a stream of sweat [no unpleasant personal details please: Ed] and a disinclination to do any more. Thankfully we had our summer holiday in Switzerland last week because it is pretty damn hot even in the Alps right now.

Commuting on the dear old Met has changed fundamentally for the better this year, now that the air-conditioned "S" stock trains provide 100% of the normal service (although I still gripe about the removal of a third of the seats compared to their venerable "A" stock predecessors), and the Jubbly also offers a cool way into central London. Alas no such comfort on the Bakerloo whose oven-like conditions can hardly be described for fear that my readers will accuse me of hyperbole and sensationalism.  Oh well, my office is supposed to be moving sometime soon and with a bit of luck it will be "S" stock all the way in and out in future.

From the Alps

The Games have come and gone, the tube has never before carried so many passengers and the whole thing ended with a strange mixture of pop stars old and new in a ceremony that went on so long I was in bed long before the end. A bed in Cologne, mark you, because the closing ceremony coincided with the last night of a holiday in Switzerland during which Mrs. Commuter and your correspondent clocked up many thousands of miles riding the highly efficient Swiss Railway system. Highlights included the mountain railway above Zermatt, the Glacier Express and the Bernina Express, with a trolley bus in Montreux and various local runs as the icing on the cake (or the crevasse over the bergschrund if you will. [umm - help please: Ed] Oh just look it up Ed, we were in the mountains, didn't you do 'O' level geography?.

For all those fans of trams out there, this time I omitted to take the usual tasty snaps so here instead is the Bernina Express at the Alp Grum station. Not your normal commute.

London during the Games

Travelling home yesterday, on a Met  bearing a half-load of fellow commuters, we heard an extraordinary announcement. We were advised not to try shopping in Westfield at Stratford because it was open only to athletes and workers at the games. We were also told not to try to buy tickets, other than on-line. I suppose this might have made sense directed at people travelling on the Central or Jubilee and getting close to Stratford. I merely shook my head in quiet disbelief, since I have yet to shop in any Westfield and am probably unlikely so to do in the next thirty years or so, nor do I have the slightest intention of going anywhere near Stratford (other than on a jaunt to explore the DLR).
I took a lunchtime stroll along the South Bank yesterday and found it thronged by holiday-makers and well stocked with live statues, food stalls, a colourful sand pit for the very small and a dance-themed series of exhibits outside the Festival Hall. Yet the London Eye had no queue at all - anyone turning up went straight to the ramps where they do the security checks and then into a pod. And from the Eye to the National Theatre not a policeman to be seen. Perhaps they are all busy frisking Olympic visitors for contraband such as sandwiches made with the wrong kind of pickle.

An Olympic commute*

[* warning: misleading title: Ed]

I made my usual journey to Waterloo yesterday morning, returning to beautiful Ruislip late afternoon. Trains were fine, though crowded on the homeward leg, weather most pleasant, nothing to report really. Except that this was the first "working" day since the Games began on Friday evening and was my first chance to see how the system would cope.
The morning inward leg was a typical summer's day, noticeably fewer people actually going to work more or less balanced by tourists. Coming home, as usual whilst waiting for a Met at Finchley Road the Jubblies were shuttling through at the rate of about 3 every 5 minutes, so full marks there for the service to Stratford. The Mets were full, almost everyone seemed to be a non-native and many debarked at Wembley Park so I guess they were all games-goers, but there was little sense of it. No flags or scarves in national colours, no chanting, no flaunting of approved sponsor products (or guiltily hiding away of offending materials).
So from this utterly non-representative sample, I can report that the Tube is coping well and Londoners can go about their business much as usual. This has been AnthonyG for Ramblings, somewhere in Ruislip, and now back to the studio.

A musical interlude

A few hectic days away, in Dorset and Yorkshire, have provided a nice counterpoint to the normal semi-commuting routine. One reason for this was to chauffeur Mrs. Commuter as she managed a major tour by the superb young "Arakaender Bolivia Choir" who obtained rave reviews as they performed long-lost music from the days of the Jesuit missions to South America. In York, always a good place to visit, the heavy rains of recent days flooded the River Ouse so rapidly that a riverside path that was mainly dry in the morning was under two foot of water later that afternoon.

And here is that self-same path - the water on the left is also floodwater, rather than the normal riverbank.  At least York is built to withstand flooding - all the properties along the river bank are raised and there was headroom under the bridges - but of course many other towns have suffered.

The tube seems to be coping ok during this extreme weather, although, thanks to my non-commuting day yesterday, I managed to avoid a system failure at Hillingdon possibly caused by a lightning strike on the electrical power supply.  The new "S" stock trains now supply the bulk of the Met's rolling stock and sightings of the old A60s and 62s are becoming rare but the new trains still can't take advantage of the promised new signalling systems. Every morning journey into Baker Street recently has been dogged by slow running and stoppages between stations. The evening runs have been fine. But my word, the evening trains do get crowded.

And now a note about the future. My office is likely to move north of the river in a few months and I will cease to use the Bakerloo. No regrets about losing the jammed evening trains but it has been a remarkably good service over the past 6 years. Instead it looks like my Met journeys will be extended beyond Baker Street toward Moorgate, an itinerary I used to do many many years ago whilst a young accountant. So it will be farewell to the deep tunnels and a warm welcome to the ancient cut and cover of the world's oldest underground system.  [Sounds romantic - I'm looking forward to it: Ed]