Addition to Blogroll

Sorry, but I really have had to add "The Diary of a Geek in Oxfordshire" to my blogroll.

I find the writing hilarious - it's like getting an updated Private Eye delivered to my in-box every day!

Enjoy.....

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BTW - There are currently Severe Delays on the Central Line (07.55 am Thursday 26th November 2009). No updates will follow but see live update.

Why next to me?

The winner of the 2009 Miss Piggy look-a-like competition has just sat next to me on the train.

She obviously lives somewhere with no flat surfaces, as the table has been brought into use as a make-up counter.

Sorry luv. It's not going to work.

Frustration

Today has been one of those days...

Got up at stupid o'clock (5.10am )to head off for a meeting first thing at Canary Wharf.

Delays on the Jubilee Line en-route, due to a passenger being taken ill.

Meeting cancelled, but organiser forgot to tell me.

Next meeting at 11.00am moved back to 2.00pm.

At 1.00pm I received a call to say that I should not attend the afternoon meeting.

Bottom line, I didn't need to get up at stupid o'clock and had no reason to go to London today.

Grrrr.

Back to normal

After a mega weekend of engineering works, all appear to be back to normal on the London Underground this morning.

Better than that - as of this moment in time (7.11am), the tfl live information is showing that there are no delays at all this morning. Amazing!

Clarification

The National Rail Live Arrival/ Departure boards at Marylebone state that there are currently no Jubilee or Metropolitan Line services operating from the station, due to engineering week.

I have already mentioned that there is indeed much engineering work going on this weekend on the London Underground. This significantly affects most of North West London.

However, for the avoidance of doubt, the fact that the Jubilee and Metropolitan Lines are not stopping at Marylebone is not because of engineering work. Neither of those two lines ever stop at or go through Marylebone. However they do both normally serve nearby Baker Street.

Call me a pedant if you wish!

The Bakerloo Line is working normally, just be careful where you want to go.

Eeeek - and there is more!

There are loads of other engineering works going on this weekend (21 and 22 November 2009) on the London Underground (in addition to the partial closure of the Central Line closure that I mentioned last night).

Do please check all your options carefully, else you may get caught out when traveling around London this weekend.

West End of Central Line to Close for Weekend of 21 & 22 November 2009

This weekend (21 November 2009 & 22 November 2009) there is no Central Line at all west of Marble Arch. That is a huge chunk of the Central Line that will not be working due to engineering work.

If you are traveling out from Central London heading to the West Ruislip branch this weekend, the advice is to travel to Willesden Junction on the Bakerloo Line. You will then be able to pick up one of a couple of rail replacement bus services.

If you are heading for Ealing Broadway, there is a replacement bus that starts at Sheperds Bush Market (Hammersmith & City Line), which also picks up at North Acton (where the West Ruislip branch buses will be able to drop you off to change buses). I think I'd rather travel out on the District Line or catch a First Great Western train from Paddington to Ealing Broadway.

Chiltern Railways also offer a regular but infrequent service to West Ruislip and South Ruslip from London Marylebone. There is also a half hourly service for most of Saturday from Paddington to Greenford. Do check National Rail times before you travel on a big train.

There are loads of alternative train, tube and bus routes - I can't possibly summarise them all, but it could be a good opportunity to check the accuracy of the tfl Journey Planner. I've just run a sample journey through it (work to where I used to live, on Saturday, and it was spot on for that sample).

I am glad that I chose to go to the Westfield Shopping Centre last Sunday and not this coming weekend.

Hurrah!

Well, tonight was a good evening. Saracens beat the South African Rugby Union touring side by 24 - 23. A crowd of 46,281 rugby supporters watched what turned out to be a most enjoyable match at Wembley Stadium.

At half time, the 'home' side were trailing by 18 points to 6. Saracens came back after the break with a new lease of life to achieve what had seemed like a highly improbable result.

Since the start of the season, Saracens have lost just two matches and are still unbeaten in the Guinness Premiership. Hopefully this run will continue when they play Wasps in a local derby at Vicarage Road on Sunday.

Despite a thrilling game of rugby, what has caught most of the headlines today is the good luck / skill of spectator Stuart Tinner.

Spectators were encouraged to enter a text competition to be one of three people to have the chance to kick a ball during half-time, to hit the horizontal cross bar. Stuart kicked the ball, with no shoes on and hit the cross bar. He won £250,000.

I was sat looking directly down the line of the posts. I saw the ball arching through the air and thought "crikey, he's going to do it!". You should have heard the roar from the crowd.

All in all an excellent evening. Made all the better by the fact that there were no queues at all to get onto the Chiltern Railways platforms at Wembley Stadium afterwards, meaning that we were home back in rural Buckinghamshire only an hour and ten minutes after the match finished.

It was a bit better this evening

This morning's Bakerloo Line suspension was always going to have an adverse impact on the Jubilee Line.

Unfortunately, at roughly the time of this morning's post, a Jubilee Line train broke down at London Bridge.

The impact was horrendous.

There were queues at Baker Street to get onto the platforms and seven Southbound Jubilee Line trains went through before I could get on one.

My journey this morning from rural Buckinghamshire to South East London was somewhat wearisome.

The good news is, it has all been like clockwork this evening.

It is however raining. Oh and my glass is half empty.

Bakerloo goes phut. Again.

At present (just before 8.00am on Thursday 12 November 2009), the Bakerloo Line is totally suspended South of Queens Park. Oops. So far, that's two mornings this week that there have been no underground trains from Marylebone.

Apparently, the problem today is a signal failure at Baker Street.

Valour

On Sunday (Remembrance Day) and today(Armistice Day), Chiltern Railways made a special effort to mark the valour of the many people who have served this country in times of war.

They had arranged for the special train 'Valour' to be the centre of various ceremonies held on Platform 3 at London Marylebone on both days.


I was unable to be at either of the services, but was pleased to see that the locomotive was already in position before 9 am this morning.

As in many work places across the UK, we held two minutes of silence at 11 am. This has been a particularly bad year for our armed forces. The deaths are appalling, but the huge numbers of soldiers maimed and mutilated are often overlooked.

Today ought not to be a day for politics, whatever our own personal views of the rights and wrongs of current conflicts (and the way they are resourced). I find it hugely encouraging that the majority of people regard those who serve our country with such bravery with the utmost goodwill and respect.

I hope that the Royal British Legion's Poppy Appeal and charities such as Help for Heroes receive full support for the fantastic work that they do.

If you missed it, you've missed it.

For the last month there has been a rather unusual art installation on display in the Kingsway Tram Tunnel in the heart of London.

Conrad Shawcross has constructed two very large and complicated machines, consisting of hundreds of bobbins of coloured cord have been slowly rotating and, while moving apart, making a 100m long multicoloured rope, or "Chord".

The exhibition finished today. Thanks to Diamond Geezer bringing it to my attention, I was able to book a slot and visited the site late on Friday afternoon. It was a most unusual piece of art in an as unusual location.

Apparently the Chord is to be sold off in collectors pieces - I don't think I'll bother, but there will certainly be pictures to follow of the Tunnel itself. Part of London's heritage put to a different sort of use.

Silence ....

Please support the work of the Royal British Legion.

Thank you.

A nice warm Bath

I went with my parents today, to the lovely city of Bath.

We drove up past Stonehenge to Warminster. Then a packed First Great Western train there, and a South West Trains service (as packed & very late running) on the way back.

Saracens beat Bath 12 points to 11 (away) at The Rec. Not the most flowing game of rugby I have ever seen. However a win is a win, and we are still at the top of the table, unbeaten in the Premiership this season.

It was also a very mild afternoon. Bath is a very nice city...

Laziness has a cost

Like many modern households I have an automatic washing machine. It needs feeding with some form of detergent and perhaps also fabric softener.

When I moved a couple of years ago, the kitchen also had a dishwasher already built in - that too requires feeding with tablets and occasionally other concoctions.

All this feeding takes money. What I tend to do is, every few months, go out to a supermarket and buy all my cleaning consumables in one go. This usually results in my shopping basket of non-food costs me far more than the usual basket of edible consumables. The cost of laziness.

This morning I was however somewhat astounded to see how much more some mental laziness could potentially cost...

I visited Sainsburys in Beaconsfield who charge £2.45 for a 250ml bottle of Finish Rinse stuff. Adjacent to the same bottles were some special offer flashed packs suggesting that two 250ml bottles of the identical liquid be bought for £5.85. Sorry, but I am not paying 95 pence extra for the privilege of two bottles being bound together in even more packaging. Even I am not that stupid. I suspect however that many of the well heeled residents of Beaconsfield (I am neither well heeled or a resident of that town) will unnecessarily take advantage of this rubbish offer!

Many supermarkets clearly mark their shelves with an indication as to how much a product costs per item or per 100ml. If more people took note of those labels they could safe plenty of money. A sign of convenience shopping?

Beaconsfield is a strange place on a Sunday morning as half the world seems to go out for breakfast. At 10.05 am the cafe in the supermarket was nearly full, the Costa Coffee had a massive queue inside and the small independent Italian style cafe was bustling. Maybe it's not laziness, but it appears to me to be a sign of plenty of money!

If you want nature, not shopping, The Chilterns Conservation Board publishes a series of handy walking leaflets that offer walks of various lengths to and from train stations with services offered by Chiltern Railways. Whether you live in the Chilterns, want to escape from London, or are a visitor to these parts, they are to be recommended. Included in the series is a walk between Beaconsfield Station and nearby Seer Green & Jordans Station. A word of warning - most of the time, trains only stop at Seer Green once an hour in each direction so you are advised to start the walk from there.

The clocks have gone back

Across the UK everybody has had an hour extra overnight. That is because at 2.00 am British Summer Time the UK moved its clocks back an hour to 1.00 am Greenwich Mean Time.

I thank it means that the entire population will have either (a) had extra time in bed or (b) got up earlier than they needed to or (c) had to work an extra hour, because the world does not stop spinning.

For me it was (b).

There could be a fourth option in that some could have forgotten (or didn't know) about the change. If that is the case, the individuals concerned will find out soon enough and then presumably suffer a weird feeling of instant jet-lag.

There have been debates, as there always are, about whether the clocks should continue to go forward in the early hours of the last Sunday March, and back again in the early hours of the last Sunday in October. One such debate is the ongoing argument for Scotland to move to its own 'Tundra Time' with the rest of the UK moving to European Time.

Personally, I like getting up for a little while with some daylight - the evenings don't mean much to me at this time of year. My vote (not that we have one) is for keeping things as they are and to keep the existing programme of twice yearly clock changes.

Just a little point of further confusion - 'Daylight Saving Time' does not finish in the the USA and Canada until next weekend.

Hopefully the debate is now over, at least until the clocks go forward again on 29 March 2010.

Make the most of your day - it's light out there! Rural Buckinghamshire beckons to me- by the time I get back home late this afternoon, it will be pitch black, so I am going to make the most of it.

Behaving with decorum

Look.. I know this is the first off-peak train of the day, so you probably don't travel to London every day.

You look well into middle age and are possibly a married couple.

So why the heck are you sitting on opposite sides of the carriage?

Ah. I get it. You are entering the national Dom Joly impersonation competition and don't want to drown out each others' shouting.

Note: Mobile telephones have sensitive microphones. There is really no need to be quite so inconsiderate.

Quick turn-around

My train into Marylebone just now arrived about 30 seconds before it was scheduled to leave for Birmingham.

Don't worry folks, you've got time to get on. The driver needs to get to the front. Please let us off!

You know it's Autumn when...

You get up and go outside, it is your normal time but the sky is still pitch black, except for the moon and the stars.

The only sound is that of a neighbour scraping the first frost of the season off their car windscreen.

Brrrr... It's a bit chilly out there.