Don't travel at weekends.

I managed to have a good weekend despite being held hostage at various times by England’s decaying public transport system. Unless a miracle happens in the next twelve months or so, my advice to anyone coming to the country for the Olympics is to stay at home and watch it on the telly unless you like endless delays, cancellations and diversions on public transport. Assuming the drivers are not on strike, of course.

There are maybe four times in every twelve months when I need the Bakerloo Line. Friday was one of them. It was subject to severe delays, so I had to find an alternative route to Marylebone. That’s not too difficult, but it is time-consuming and entails a bit of a walk around parts of London I am entirely unfamiliar with. Again, the distance was not overly great, but trying to find my way through a maze of unfamiliar streets fair took me back 25 years to when I was a noob Londoner.

Coming home yesterday was another adventure. Arriving at High Wycombe on Friday night revealed the comedy building works that mean you have to walk a quarter of a mile to get to the car park and a bit further to get to the main road. This is all supposed to be temporary, of course, while the car park and access is improved, but I have enough prior experience of this sort of thing to be able to assume safely that it will still be a mess in 12 months’ time. Anyway, with all this going on, if there was a notice posted explaining that London-bound trains (only) would not be stopping at the station on Sunday, well, it must have been on a board behind the dug up car park.

So I ended up on a rail replacement service to Amersham. That is effectively travelling seven miles further out to come back in. Now there is a compensatory aspect to that, or so you would think. Amersham is one of those rare stations, well outside the Metropolitan area, that is nonetheless on the London Underground system. Except that the Metropolitan Line this Sunday was operating between Amersham and Harrow but nowhere else. There are no connections at Harrow. So it was train to Marylebone and the usual game of weekend closure roulette. For once, the Central Line was working so I managed to get to Stratford from Oxford Circus (don’t ask) easily enough, but at Stratford they had decided to close the usual Ilford bound platform and forgotten to signpost the alternative.

I’m not sure how far Marlow is from Ilford, but I am pretty sure that since the invention of the railway, it should take substantially less than three and a half hours to travel. I mean it has to be less than 50 miles (in fact I have just Googled it and driving via Harrow it is about 27 miles. Let’s say 30 to be on the safe side).

Despite the joys of weekend travel, I managed to have a good time playing various board games with friends and catching up generally.

Next weekend I am travelling up to Shrewsbury to see the folks. I already know that the train service across the Chilterns has been discontinued, so I shall have to take the old, over subscribed and ludicrously expensive route up from Euston using a Virgin Pandemonium Pandolino.

Don't travel at weekends.

I managed to have a good weekend despite being held hostage at various times by England’s decaying public transport system. Unless a miracle happens in the next twelve months or so, my advice to anyone coming to the country for the Olympics is to stay at home and watch it on the telly unless you like endless delays, cancellations and diversions on public transport. Assuming the drivers are not on strike, of course.

There are maybe four times in every twelve months when I need the Bakerloo Line. Friday was one of them. It was subject to severe delays, so I had to find an alternative route to Marylebone. That’s not too difficult, but it is time-consuming and entails a bit of a walk around parts of London I am entirely unfamiliar with. Again, the distance was not overly great, but trying to find my way through a maze of unfamiliar streets fair took me back 25 years to when I was a noob Londoner.

Coming home yesterday was another adventure. Arriving at High Wycombe on Friday night revealed the comedy building works that mean you have to walk a quarter of a mile to get to the car park and a bit further to get to the main road. This is all supposed to be temporary, of course, while the car park and access is improved, but I have enough prior experience of this sort of thing to be able to assume safely that it will still be a mess in 12 months’ time. Anyway, with all this going on, if there was a notice posted explaining that London-bound trains (only) would not be stopping at the station on Sunday, well, it must have been on a board behind the dug up car park.

So I ended up on a rail replacement service to Amersham. That is effectively travelling seven miles further out to come back in. Now there is a compensatory aspect to that, or so you would think. Amersham is one of those rare stations, well outside the Metropolitan area, that is nonetheless on the London Underground system. Except that the Metropolitan Line this Sunday was operating between Amersham and Harrow but nowhere else. There are no connections at Harrow. So it was train to Marylebone and the usual game of weekend closure roulette. For once, the Central Line was working so I managed to get to Stratford from Oxford Circus (don’t ask) easily enough, but at Stratford they had decided to close the usual Ilford bound platform and forgotten to signpost the alternative.

I’m not sure how far Marlow is from Ilford, but I am pretty sure that since the invention of the railway, it should take substantially less than three and a half hours to travel. I mean it has to be less than 50 miles (in fact I have just Googled it and driving via Harrow it is about 27 miles. Let’s say 30 to be on the safe side).

Despite the joys of weekend travel, I managed to have a good time playing various board games with friends and catching up generally.

Next weekend I am travelling up to Shrewsbury to see the folks. I already know that the train service across the Chilterns has been discontinued, so I shall have to take the old, over subscribed and ludicrously expensive route up from Euston using a Virgin Pandemonium Pandolino.

Anniversaries

I have just been reminded by an exchange between my niece and nephew over on Facebook that today is the fourth anniversary of Dad’s passing.

The reminder has left me feeling a little down and slightly annoyed with myself for forgetting. I may take a leaf out of my nephew’s book and have a half pint of beer tonight in his memory.

Dad could never finish a full pint. Well, not after one spectacular Christmas works do sometime around 1974 when he was just a couple of years older than I am now. He came home so profoundly sluiced that he dozed off at home while Mum, my sister and I were out doing the weekly shopping. Unfortunately he’d locked the door and left the key in, so we were stuck outside. I can’t remember now how we got in; I think we may have woken him up sufficiently to get him to let us in, but he dozed off again while Mum was yelling at him and I had to half carry him to bed.

He was very poorly indeed.

For a few years after that, he would have an occasional pint of beer, but as he got older, it became a half pint from time to time for old time’s sake and even that was a struggle.

That was some party, I guess. We never found out the details.

Anniversaries

I have just been reminded by an exchange between my niece and nephew over on Facebook that today is the fourth anniversary of Dad’s passing.

The reminder has left me feeling a little down and slightly annoyed with myself for forgetting. I may take a leaf out of my nephew’s book and have a half pint of beer tonight in his memory.

Dad could never finish a full pint. Well, not after one spectacular Christmas works do sometime around 1974 when he was just a couple of years older than I am now. He came home so profoundly sluiced that he dozed off at home while Mum, my sister and I were out doing the weekly shopping. Unfortunately he’d locked the door and left the key in, so we were stuck outside. I can’t remember now how we got in; I think we may have woken him up sufficiently to get him to let us in, but he dozed off again while Mum was yelling at him and I had to half carry him to bed.

He was very poorly indeed.

For a few years after that, he would have an occasional pint of beer, but as he got older, it became a half pint from time to time for old time’s sake and even that was a struggle.

That was some party, I guess. We never found out the details.