Transportation Anticipation

[b] This was written last Thursday on the 28th Feb, sorry for the delay! (yeah, like you care lol!)[/b]

Ok so I'm writing this post in TextEdit on the train back home, so this will be posted after the event but the long and short of it is that I am hopefully about to pick up my shiny new(ish) Matt Mobile (as it will be named until such a time as Hannah names it properly). Rather helpfully the public transport system has chosen to continue highlight the wisdom of this otherwise ludicrous seeming purchase.

Firstly, luggage. I've brought a messenger bag, a small rucksack and a laptop bag. I needed an extra bag as I am away until next Wednesday and Mr Maccy the laptop because I am on call later. Even these relatively small items can cause quite a lot of trouble on things like busses and trains, but I am a seasoned veteran and have long since worked out the best way of getting your bags to inhale. No matter how good you are though, any luggage larger than an Oyster card holder earns you scowls and frowns from anyone on the Tube. Child murderers are greeted with more friendly glances than anyone daring to carry luggage.

So I leave my house at a little after 9:15am, catch the bus which is about 15 minutes late at 9:45. Pensioners scowling at me, but then this is Surrey - most people scowl at you, it's a county where the equivalent of Friendly is 'Less Unfriendly'. Anyway, got a train to Waterloo - less scowls here, was quite a lot of space on this train and it actually managed to arrive on time which was impressive - public transport making a last ditch effort to retain my custom!

The efforts were in vain thanks to a guy, I don't know his name - let's just call him Vapid Organ Sack or VOS for short. Don't get me wrong, I understand why bluetooth headsets exist - they are good for people with no arms. And that is it. You shouldn't be on the phone when you are driving, no one is that important and if you think you are the get in the line marked 'Future Bio-Fuel'. Anyway, that point is moot because this particular gimp was on a train with one of those unnecessarily big blue-tooth jobbies on his ear. I work in IT, I've seen what a bluetooth aerial looks like and I can assure you nothing that big is required to hold it - the form factor of those things is purely for people who want to look important, nothing more. VOS proved my point. He was sat on the train, holding his phone IN HIS FUCKING HAND whilst having a lengthy and pointless and loud conversation into his bluetooth ear piece. I can't imagine there was anyone on the other end who could stand to talk to him for that long, I suspect he was trying to make friends with the talking clock.

*breathe*

Vauxhall. I got on a tube train here then appeared to get trapped in some kind of time warp because when I arrived there I had a little over an hour to get to London Euston in order to catch my train, as it was I arrived in Euston with a little under 15 minutes to spare. Most bizarre. Know one really knew why because rather cunningly every time we pulled into a station, the driver would speak over the 2 watt speakers on the train to explain the delay but just as you strain to make out what was being said, the station announcer comes on to warn us to be ever on our guard against suspicious behaviour (Daily Mail definition : Anyone with slightly swarthy skin) on her much more impressive speakers.

Got my train at Euston where I was reminded how fantastic this kind of travel CAN be sometimes. The luggage provision on these things isn't great, which is sort of fine for me with my selection of smallish bags so long as the train isn't too full but for suitcase people it can be a complete nightmare. This guy and his girlfriend got on with the biggest suitcase known to man and were looking for somewhere to put it. I didn't appreciate the size of the thing at this point, I wasn't paying huge amount of attention but I did call him over because the rack near me looked like it could accommodate another case. As it was, his case was too big - at least in the current arrangement. Within about a minute the rack was surrounded by owners of the bags currently in the rack playing a luggage based Bedlam Cube style game in order to get all their belongings plus this new comers case into the rack. It was really pleasant to see to be honest. The extra time spent meant the guy didn't disembark in time (turns out he was just dropping his girlfriend off) and is now doomed to a round trip to Chester, but still.

So now I am hoping we arrive on time, my dad picks me up at Chester station to drive back to Wales so I can proceed to get the car. I know me though, something will almost certainly go wrong, I will have forgotten something fundamental so I can't get the car or I will forget to turn the steering wheel or something.

So this is the most efficient journey home public transport has to offer and by the time I get there I will have taken a little over 5 hours - which really isn't that bad at all. By car it's anywhere between 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 hours (or 9 if you are my dad and don't believe in maps or directions). but there is the luggage thing, the convenience thing and the fact I can just go based on my timetable not someone else's. That and the fact that it took me longer to get from Fetcham to Euston that it will from Euston to Chester.

Maybe now they have lost such a valued customer we will get the radical public transport overhaul we have all craved for!


PS - Don't worry I still won't be saying 'I need a car'. If I needed one, I would have bought one that was necessary, not shiny and buttony!

Surrey encourages Global Warming

Seriously, like this county could become any more intrinsically Evil. I bet if we dig hard enough we'll discover that Celine Dion has roots here...."This is for the Children". Really, cos it looks to us like it's for the huge sacks of cash you screeching harpy.

Anyway, Surrey and it's quest for Palm trees in Horsham. To lay it entirely at the feet of Surrey may seem a little extreme to you, but first you need to see Surrey in the same way as that Island in Lost* in that it has it's own character and personality. Stop seeing it as a place where people live and more like a big, greasy, introverted money and hope vaccuum and you'll get a good starting point.

So if I want to travel anywhere I have to take the train or some other public transport. Something I was doing for years before I moved down here, coping without a car very well thankyouverymuch! And nothing has really changed in terms of the coping and need. What has changed is the pain, hassle and expense of going anywhere that isn't here. If you go by train, the fares seem to suggest that they are going to take you to your destination on a gilded, supersonic hover-train. This is not the case. Not at all. Think Dutch Veal calves.

The National Express can be really good if you get one of their cheap fares and manage to locate a direct service that has a short journey time (for short, read 'under a week'). While you're looking, can you also pick me up some chicken teeth and rocking horse poo?

So, you may have guessed I have been off on my travels. I went to Plymouth to visit Laura for a weekend of booze, junk food and Transformers. It was very more awesomer and a good time was had by all. Well, by me. I'm sure you'll agree that's the only bit that matters. We had drinks, we mooched around Plymouth and went to see Hollywood amazingly NOT shatter one of my childhood memories. Was great to see Laura again, and meet her 'Vince from The Boosh'-esque blokey and consume soem ropey take aways. the only flaw was that it all in all it was a total journey time of 15.5 hours to travel 400 miles.

All of this started kicking my gadget senses trying to persuade me to buy a car again. Which is frustrating because I am all in favour of public transport but there isn't enough of it outside London, it's too expensive and the entire system appears to be run by blind monkeys with no hands. No, that's wrong. Blind Monkeys with no hands that instead of bananas and stuff, can only subsist on a constant supply of the public's money that has to be fed to them by Celine Dion tribute acts.

Maybe it's not all Surrey's fault that it's difficult and expensive to go everywhere. Maybe just because everything else is dificult and expensive here I don't have to lay the blame of Public transport and my ultimate move towards automotiveness firmly at it's feet? Nah....sod it! Global Warming starts and ends with Surrey. "Burn the Big 'ouse! Are ya with me laaaaads?!"

Tomorrow - How the Daily Mail started the inquisition.......

*I gave up on Lost half way through season 2 after it disappeared up it's own arse and my urge to kill Jack, Kate and Sawyer could no longer be contained. As ever, a lack of actual knowledge will not prevent me from commenting.

Trains, Big Brother, Training Wheels

I travelled back to wales yesterday, I have a Christening to go to on Sunday and various other events to celebrate, my 30th and my Mum's birthday included.

Most people have the good sense not to invite me to Christenings or Weddings, with the only church related activity I've had to endure being funerals. This is my Mum's brother though, and I've yet to meet his new wife so I kind of had to make the effort. So long as the Lord can refrain from smiting me in his House whilst the baby dunking is going on all will be well.

Anyway, it took a little over 2 hours to get from my flat to Euston, probably a distance of 23 miles. It took a little less time to get from Euston to Chester, a distance of 192 miles. That sentence was just to add justification for buying a car later in the year - moving on.
I took my seat at Euston and my standard train experience looked like it was about to begin. The seat next to mine was reserved, a small 1-2 year old child was in the seat immediately to my front and the train was filling up.

Now under normal circumstances this means that the moment the journey begins, the child will attempt the world's longest, loudest and most irritating scream-a-thon whilst the mother looks on tsking and attempting to placate the child with some technique she thinks she saw once on some crappy reality show. The reserved seat would be occupied by someone of questionable personal hygiene who either:

1) Has an intensely boring hobby that he feels must be shared with the world. Collecting Word Fonts, eyebrow classification, window frame spotting - things of this nature.

2) Just got released from prison.

3) Sleeps, snores, drools.

4) You're not sure what's wrong but you have a feeling he used to dissect things as a child to 'see how they worked'.

5) All of the above.

I was ready. I had my Zune, my DS, a book, my phone and a set of headphones.

None of which I needed. The child gurgled and played the whole journey without whining once, my would be murderous, boring cannibal failed to show and I had a pleasant and uneventful journey. Even the normal contingent of shambolic mutants that board at Crewe were relatively non-repulsive.

I did notice one man, he was in a seat in the opposite row of seats. For the first hour of the Euston-Chester journey he had a Sat Nav device out, which he was staring intently at. Now I was fairly sure that the driver of the train, no matter how unskilled, was unlikely to take a wrong turn and end up in a field in Sussex. This guy clearly thought otherwise. After an hour he put the thing away, I assume because it was a the treacherous Southeast - Midlands section of the journey that most concerned him. He didn't get up to tell the driver that he had stopped monitoring his progress, so either he was some kind of unofficial person or (I think you'll agree that this is more likely), he was just satisfied to let him carry on on his own, much like when your dad is pushing you on your first bike and he lets you go without telling you.

At the end of the journey I imagine the young, fresh-faced train driver approached SatNavMan and said 'So SatNavMan (this is probably a title rather than his actual name)...how did I do?'

SNM: 'I don't know, I stopped monitoring after Warwick son, after Warwick......you were on your own'

A tear in both their eyes.

Dad picked me up from Chester, he'd learned a new joke since my last visit. I'll post some pics on facebook if the weather picks up and I can get up the mountain.