Disgruntled Commuter

Tailgated

I don't know why this irritates me as much as it does, but it does. I was heading out through the gates at Vauxhall this afternoon, rejoicing in the fact that I was heading home while it was still daylight. The next thing I know, as I put my oyster on the reader, is that there's someone behind me - right up close behind me - slipstreaming through on my ticket and out the gates and out the station before anyone can stop him. I looked at him as he hurried past me with his look of studied innocence, and I really wanted to say something or do something, to wipe it off his face.

But why does it bother me so much? It's no skin off my nose - or no more than any other fare-dodger. The ticket guy at Vauxhall doesn't seem to care either way. And were I to try and stop them - blocking the gate, or slowing down or drawing attention to their blatant acts - would I not just be grassing up my fellow commuters to the train companies, collaborating with The Man? But it feels so personal that they use me, my ticket, to get their free ride, when I'm shelling out fifteen quid a week for the privilege.

You, o readership, seem a forthright bunch. What do you do about tailgaters, and how would you try to stop them? Bearing in mind, when framing your answers, that this guy was six foot five and big with it, whereas I'm a mere slip of a girl at five foot six on a good day with a following wind.

1.2.07 17:50


Day Off or Off Day...

... You decide

 I forgot to mention in all the tailgating excitement of yesterday that I was having this Friday off. Still, rather than leave you all bereft, I've been putting together a review of last year's least bad posts for your delectation.

Enjoy.
2.2.07 16:08


The Light at the End of the Tunnel

There was a strange and unfamiliar substance in the air this morning when I went out to cycle to the station. On closer inspection, this turned out to be daylight. It's always nice to have a bit of reassurance that, gloomy as February is, the trends are largely positive and winter won't last for ever. So this almost compensated for the fact that the air during my journey home this evening was largely filled with icy needles of rain. But not quite.
5.2.07 18:17


Three for the Price of One

I've been noticing that my blog entries have been a bit minimal of late. This is mainly due to the pain of typing with fingers that have only just been thawed out and detached from the handlebars of my bike after the ride home, and nothing at all to do with lack of blog material, oh no, not at all. So just to prove it, here's a special bonus entry, typed with the blackened frostbitten stumps of my fingers, of three things I wanted to say to people recently, but haven't had the chance.

To the guy remarking on the weather this morning to his colleague: the air this morning was not 'fresh'. It has clearly been frozen for some time and only recently defrosted.

To the car driver who was attempting to alert pedestrians to his intention to turn left into the bit of the road that they were crossing at the time: next time, why don't you try indicating first, and only hooting at them as a last resort? That way you won't come across as a dangerous unmannerly boor.

To the guard who went through the train the other day and not only asked the guy who was on his mobile in the quiet coach to stop, but stood over him until he did: I wish to bear your children*

*To the other half: just kidding.

6.2.07 18:01


There's No Business Like Snow Business

So, who's looking forward to the impending snow-related-travel-chaos caused by the most widely anticipated blizzard* to ever threaten to deposit 2cm of snow on the South-East of the country? Me for one, if only because it will give me an excuse not to ride my bike for a day or two - the sensation of sitting down on a bike saddle from which I had only just scraped a thick layer of ice has to rank as one of the most unpleasant I've ever experienced. And my fingers could do with a break too - if the cold continues I'm going to have to start writing this blog with a pencil strapped to my forehead.

But never let it be said that our glorious train companies are not prepared this time, at least if SouthWest Trains is anything to go by. For indeed, they've taken heed of the warnings, and they've taken prompt and decisive action to anticipate and alleviate the inevitable disruption: they've Put Up Signs. Warning us there might be chaos. And suggesting we check before we travel. So that's all right then.

Me, I'll be prepared as well. I'll pack up my camera and my gloves and a good book and if necessary I'll pass the time at Vauxhall building myself a snowman. Then again, it could just all be a false alarm - and I for one will actually be quite disappointed.

* American readers - you may stop laughing now
7.2.07 18:43


Drip, Drip, Drip

I think today has conclusively shown that it's not so much the snow that causes the problems, as the thaw. (We found this out the hard way when the other half went home at lunchtime to discover that the snow which had accumulated on our roof had started to melt and, rather than draining away down through the drainpipes as you might hope had chosen to drain away through our bedroom instead. This would normally have been the subject of a rant in itself on the subject of letting agents but I find that, such is the continued incompetence of our agents, I have already written one that would be more or less the same word for word as anything I could write now, and those interested enough can find it here).

But back to the trains. This morning, with the snow coming down thick and fast and Vauxhall disappearing under a thick layer of dirty grey slush, my train left the station bang on time. There were some delays and cancellations, but it seemed like the main casualty of the snow was the information system itself which promptly gave up the ghost and reverted to showing 'Welcome to Vauxhall' on all of the platforms. (There was also a specially recorded announcement from the Customer Communications Centre telling us that there might be delays and cancellations which, it may surprise them to learn, wasn't exactly 'information' in the sense of telling us anything we didn't already know). Not only that but the train was pleasantly uncrowded as everyone else took heed of the doom-mongers and decided to stay home. How we laughed at their light-weightedness, their unneccessary panic in the face of a few centimetres of already melting snow. How wrong we were. For it was coming back this evening, with the snow little more than a memory, that the real problems emerged. For twenty minutes no trains at all passed through Kew Bridge, and when one finally showed up it decided to miss out all the stops between Barnes and Waterloo to make up for lost time.

Sadly, although this was announced multiple times, there was still consternation in my carriage when the train failed to stop at Clapham Junction. The guard, who was passing through the train at the time was worried that the tannoy wasn't working. 'Didn't you hear the announcements?' he asked. Well, yes, we did hear them. We just didn't listen. After all we'd stood through twenty minutes of relentless announcements while waiting for the train (updating us on all the delays but also running through the full gamut of annoying pre-recorded messages about not riding your bike on the platform and buying a ticket before boarding the train). And once on the train the tannoy is going more or less continuously anyway, so nobody had paid it the slightest heed.

Fortunately the ticket inspectors at the Waterloo end of the journey were similarly heedless. Faced with several hundred commuters who'd been stood out in the cold and damp for half an hour and then hijacked and hustled past their stop, they weren't about to start any arguments about who had overshot their journey and whose fault it was if they did.

There's more, so much more, including an update on the mysterious monolith of Kew Bridge, but I have already detained you enough, so it will have to wait until tomorrow...
8.2.07 19:51


Hello and Welcome Again...

... to the blog that gets results*. A few days ago I mentioned that there was nowhere to buy tickets at Kew Bridge station. This is a bit worrying because the annoying new woman announcer has recently taken to declaiming, in the sort of school-marmish patronising tones that train companies like to use to address their customers these days, that 'You must buy a ticket before you get on one of our trains. If you don't have a ticket you may have to pay a penalty fare' (and that last bit is said with such upbeat glee, she makes it sound as though paying a penalty fare is the sort of thing kids grow up dreaming they may one day do, like competing in the olympics or buying a peerage). But that couldn't apply to passengers from Kew: no ticket office, no ticket machine, not even a permit to travel machine - anyone travelling between Kew Bridge and one of the other small stations would have to be really quite unlucky to even be able to pay for their travel, let alone have the chance of paying a penalty fare.

But all that has now changed, such is the power of this blog. The mysterious blue monolith that appeared on the platform of Kew Bridge station a few months ago and has done nothing since but sit there inscrutably, possibly humming to itself, has been transformed. Last night it revealed itself as a shiny new ticket machine, and it has been doing brisk business ever since. This, it seems, is all part of a new era for SouthWest Trains, one in which penalty fares will no doubt play a large part. But for how long? For Kew Bridge is an unmanned station, and there's not much that's breakable or shiny left on either platform that hasn't been smashed up or vandalised at one time or another. How long do you think a whizzy new ticket machine taking cash is going to last? I give it three weeks ...

* Still working on world peace, though
9.2.07 19:43


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