Driving to the Cinema

I can go by train to the cinema or I can drive. I could walk (though it's nearly five miles), I could go by bike (if I owned one) or I could go by bus if I was willing to wait a couple of days.

So last night I decided to drive. It had been raining fairly heavily for quite a while but, nevertheless, I was still surprised to see water fountaining up into the air out of some drains along the main road. It was a sign of how much water was running down from the hills. It was certainly an interesting drive back home later, with some stretches of road having considerable amounts of water standing on them.

I was quite pleased I didn't go by train - when I go to the cinema I like to see the credits through to the end. If I had done that last night I would have missed a train and would not then have got home until the last train. Too late, even though it wasn't a school night.

Timing shouldn't have been a problem - in my head I allow 10 minutes to walk from the station to the cinema, 20 minutes for the adverts/ trailers, add on the full film length and then a further 10 minutes back to the station. Unfortunately last night's film had 30 minutes of adverts and trailers - that 10 minutes extra would have been the reason for a missed train.

I thought there was an advertising downturn at present?

By the way, the film was 'Quantum of Solace'. If you have been hiding under a rock, it's the new James Bond film. James Bond has been with me all my life and I couldn't not see one of the new films. Bond = Big Money = Adverts.

This is not a film review blog, so I shall keep my observations short. QoS is dark, action packed and humourless. I understand that it is also the shortest Bond film to date. I enjoyed it, though thinking back, I think I most enjoyed the adrenalin packed aspects of the film as some of the story lines were confusing enough to just wash over me.

I'd be better off keeping On Topic

Yesterday morning I suggested that the M40 may have reopended following an accident.

That information was incorrect - I've just heard on LBC that following two early accidents, the road didn't properly re-open until almost 9 o'clock last night. Sorry if I misled - the good news is that nobody reached my pearls of un-wisdom by searching directly for news on the incident(s).

There is still quite a bit of snow hanging around, but I've only seen it in the dark. Three train companies used yesterday (Chiltern, First Capital Connect and East Midlands Trains), hopefully, just the one today.

Mind you I got suckered into one of those wretched paper Travelcard surveys this week.... Joy.

Sleepy Head

I mentioned a few days ago that, at present, I am starting my days a bit earlier than usual.

Well, my chickens came home to roost last night.

Having got on the Jubilee Line at Canary Wharf, I had been completing a puzzle in my newspaper when... I woke up just as the train was pulling out of Baker Street.

This meant I had to get off at the next station, travel back south again, get to Marylebone (by which time my train had long gone) and then wait.

Those few seconds of extra relaxation meant that my journey home last night was extended to over two hours. Damn.

Crunchy Morning

I think a lot of people are going to have a testing commute today.

A short while ago the M40 was closed in both directions between Junctions 4 & 6 following an accident. I think the motorway itself is now open, with some of the slip roads still closed. Visit the Traffic England website for more.

Meanwhile, the station car park and platforms are covered in a thin layer of snow that has frozen into a solid mass of ice. From what I can see of rural Buckinghamshire this morning (there's a faint glow in the sky), it will be picturesque this morning, but I'll be long gone before it is light enough to take a picture.

Golf Mike Tango

Should you be reading this in the UK, I take this opportunity to remind you that our clocks moved one hour back in the early hours of this morning. We are now back on Greenwich Mean Time until 1.00 am on Sunday 29 March 2009, when the clocks will go forward again.

When I was young different parts of Europe changed their clocks at different times but, according to BERR, an EU Directive now steers the various Member States towards harmonious timing (even though the UK and Ireland are an hour different anyway).

Two things:

1. "BERR"? I dread to think how much money this country could save by doing away with the government department that thinks up new names for government departments and
2. "Member States"? These two words just wind me up - we are a sovereign state, but why can't we just be a Country?

Thank you to London Stuff (currently in Thailand) for feedback on yesterday's picture.

My recollection is that the Greek origins of the word 'photography' may be paraphrased as "Drawing with light".

I've added a further picture below- today's is but a few minutes old. It is currently raining with some considerable persistence and the temperature is 15 degrees warmer than yesterday morning. It is a cruddy photograph that is published just to highlight the importance of the word light in the phrase "Drawing with Light".

BTW, technically yesterday's lunch was free though I did buy a round of drinks. It was enjoyable, though Watford lost 2 - 3. I hope the weather clears up for the rugby this afternoon.

Free Lunch

Have you ever heard of the phrase "There's no such thing as a free lunch"?

Well, time will tell, but I may have found me one today.

There is only one problem in that it involves me going to a footall match.

Now, as I don't do football, I am being a bit of a hypocrite in accepting the invitation, but the person who has invited me knows me well and is a good friend. And I like food.

I'll let you know whether it really is a free lunch.

The next conundrum is how do I get there? I usually drive, but if I am on a freebie in a paid-for box, I quite fancy a drink or two. That means doing battle with several Chiltern Railways trains and the Metropolitan Line. I've even found my empty Oystercard so that I don't have to pay silly cash fares for the last bit of the journey to Watford.

I think I'll drive tomorrow for the rugby and go by train today.

Get up... get out... it's a lovely Autumn day here in rural Buckinghamshire. I've just taken this picture shown at the top of this post from the bedroom, especially for you! Enjoy.

Stupid O'Clock

For the last couple of weeks I've been spending most days at Canary Wharf.

To retain any sense of sanity this means that I tend to travel in to London earlier than I normally would, which entails me setting my alarm for stupid o'clock.

Many years ago, before it got extended, I used to commute along the Jubilee Line from Stanmore to Green Park. It was then a pretty short line and Canary Wharf was but a twinkle in the property developer's eye. The journey was generally pretty good.

Moving forward a couple of decades, the Jubilee Line is twice as long, twice as stuffed and generally unpleasant during peak hours.

I try to be at Baker Street by 7.30 am (which means me being out of the door not long after 6.00 am). At the other end of the day I try to leave work a little early so that I am home around 6.00 pm.

Because I am doing a job and a half for a little while, I then usually spend part of the evening sorting out the accumulated electronic detritus otherwise known as my In-Box.

This all means that by the time it gets to Friday night I am knackered. So, last night I went to bed reasonably early, set my alarm for 8.00 am (no point wasting the day) and managed to get to sleep quite quickly.

What time did I wake up this morning? Grrrrr..... you guessed it..... Stupid O'bloody Clock.

This picture is only a week late...

Another new (or rather a replacement) station opened on 5th October 2008. I do think the new Shepherds Bush station on the Central Line is quite impressive.

Downstairs is fairly bright (on Sunday it smelt of damp plaster) and upstairs is so totally different to the old station, it really is quite incredible. It is amazing what can be done in quick order- retail money obviously talks.

My visit to the station was mid-morning on Sunday. All was quiet and there was a fantastic blue sky.

Just one negative comment - because the sun was shining directly in to the ticket barriers, it was impossible to see which ones were 'way out' and which were 'way in'.

I have a cunning plan to solve, but need to do some more digging before I launch it on you!

The biggest surprise is that while there is a small entrance onto the Shepherds Bush Green aspect, the whole look and feel of the upstairs has been rotated 90 degrees - it is an integral part of the new transport hub. Mind you, there is absolutely no encouragement for visitors to go anywhere but into the new Westfield Shopping Centre, which opens at the end of the month.

Wood Lane - I think I did it?

Goodness me. Purely by accident, I think I took a photograph of the new Wood Lane station on the Hammersmith & City Line, on the day it opened. I know it's a bad picture, but nevertheless I am happy that I accidentally got the picture on opening day.

Today's tfl press release simply confirms that the station is open - not that it actually opened on Sunday.

Another picture of somewhere else coming up soon... I bet you can't wait!

Running Trains to Time

Certain European countries have longstanding reputations for railway systems that always run to time. Switzerland is the obvious one, though Germany also springs to mind in the regard.

Talk to anyone who has traveled on German Trains regularly and they will tell you that they achieve their punctuality by way of the simple mechanism of building in lots of spare time to the timetable. This means that if a train has actually traveled between two major stations at its optimum speed, there will usually be wait of several minutes before the journey continues.

A similar system now operates on many of our lines in the UK - London bound South West Trains trains frequently wait at Basingstoke, off-peak, to enable the timetable to catch up. Similarly during a recent journey from Edinburgh to London on a Sunday, there was a fair bit of waiting at major stations.

Chiltern Railways, so far as I can tell, automatically build in an extra three minutes leeway to all their final destination arrival times. That is on top of the magic leaf-fall timetable currently in operation.

I've just spotted the most blatant attempt so far for trying to make sure that a train reaches its destination without being late:

Most long distance Chiltern Railways services from London Marylebone terminate in Birmingham at Birmingham Snow Hill station. It takes about three minutes to travel in a tunnel under Birmingham city centre from the preceding station, Birmingham Moor Street.

There is, as a type, a train running towards Birmingham. It left London Paddington on time (diverted due to engineering works) and is currently running just over 20 minutes late. Trains that are 10 minutes or more late show in red on the National Rail Live Departures boards.

If you look at the current journey board for the train, you will note that rather than being timetabled to take 3 minutes (or six, or nine) between the last two stations on the journey, a total of fourteen minutes have been built into the timetable. It's magic - all of a sudden a 'Red' journey turns into a 'Blue' journey and the bean counters are kept happy.

What a con!

Back to Basics

Sometimes I think back to the inane ramblings that I used to post here - generally about the intricacies of my public transport travels around London. I still ramble inanely, but less frequently.

The reason for the reduced frequency of such posts is because I now tend to leave London pretty sharpish in the late afternoon and not return until the next weekday.

Anyhow here is a sample of tube journeys I've taken over the last week or so:

Northern Line: Warren Street to Tottenham Court Road (twice). No delays, no problems, probably only marginally quicker than walking. Also TCR to Waterloo, same again.

Metropolitan Line: Great Portland Street to Baker Street (twice-ish). Ditto.

Jubilee Line: Several trips out to Canary Wharf and back. Two from Baker Street and one from Waterloo (ex Northern). No delays, no problems, definitely not quicker than walking.

Central Line: South Ruislip to Northolt and back. Nothing startling there - over the years every bump in the track between those two stations has become imprinted on my mind.

As you can see, other than going out to Canary Wharf, no tube trip was for longer than two stops and everyone of them was walkable. Tube avoidance is obviously still doing OK and I think I've lost an inch or two from around my waist. Too boring to turn into a blog post really

Coming soon... buses along the Marylebone Road.

I can't see a publisher knocking on my door any time soon.

DLR services Monday 29 September

TFL have been pretty quick to put out a press release this morning to say that there are unlikely to be any Docklands Light Railway Services between Bank and Canary Wharf during today's morning rush hour. This is due to over-running engineering works in the Westferry area.

Fortunately my plans to travel from the West End today to Docklands were to go via Waterloo. (a) I prefer to and (b) that's what we are encouraged to do, because of ongoing escalator works at Bank station.

Well done TFL for the prompt advice. Less well done for the works over-running in the first place.

NB: Usual disclaimer - this is not a live site. Click here for current position.

Knife Arch in the Country

Friday evening, Princes Risborough station - What's this? A knife arch and lots of police (well, four) stood around.

Obviously not fitting the right profile, I just wandered into town to do some late night shopping, without having to be analysed, probed, questioned or otherwise delayed.

Once I got to Tesco, another surprise. In the side car park was a huge police lorry belonging to the Thames Valley Police 'Mounted Section'. What? Police horses and a knife arch. What was happening to this backyard of relative rural tranquility?

Well, it transpires that two things had caused are local boys and girls in blue to get a bit twitchy and to bolster the local police cloak of invisibility with a year's worth of resources:

• On the previous Saturday night, according to the Bucks Free Press, there was a mini-riot with a fight erupting at a private party on the north side of the town. Apparently there were worries that some of those involved might return to continue their misdemeanours on Friday. On the night in question I had been enjoying a meal in a local pub with a friend and we had noticed a number of police cars haring up the road from High Wycombe toward Princes Risborough. As we live in such a quiet relatively crime-free backwater, we had just assumed that there had been a road traffic accident somewhere.

• Trouble makers from the Thame Show were expected to come into town and cause a bit of bother. A quick bit of research into this theory would suggest that it can quickly be discounted as the Thame Show is a one day show that finished the day before.

When I returned to the station, the number of police had increased to 9 or 10. It transpired however that, as it was getting a bit late for them (it was nearly ten o'clock), they needed to work out how to remove the aforementioned knife arch and return the train station to its usual state of late night desolation. I can't say for how long the police horses stood in the Tesco car park, munching their hay.

As an interesting aside, a local commented to me yesterday that he hoped that Risborough 'wasn't going to go back to how it was in the 1970s'. Apparently Princes Risborough was a regular hot-spot for Mods & Rockers who would travel on trains to the town, half way between High Wycombe and Aylesbury, to fight. I am unable to confirm this by means of a link to some obscure corner of the internet, as I usually would.

How the world has moved on - Princes Risborough has, I think, changed little over the years whereas the population mix of the two larger neighboring towns has changed dramatically over the last three decades.

As if I hadn't already had enough excitement for one evening, a broken down train on the Risborough to Aylesbury single track line had caused some delays to Chiltern Ralways' services, so I was almost 30 minutes later than expected in getting home.

Anonymous Blogs - Is the writing on the wall?

Apparently the European Union is currently investigating whether to force all bloggers to register their real identities, with a photograph.

Now, I know of many bloggers who would simply stop blogging if they were no longer anonymous. I choose to be anonymous, simply because it suits the style of writing that I seek to achieve.

Personally I think it would be a shame to impose public profiles on people - it would certainly make the Blogosphere a less interesting place.

Thanks to Monday Books for pointing me in the direction of this.

Do please buy some books from them - it might be a bit cheaper to go via Amazon, but Monday Books always post via first class post, don't charge postage and are really nice people to deal with. When I look at the sort of books they publish, it makes me realise how valuable some of our small independent publishers really are.

DIY Sauna

Late Monday afternoon. Wandered down to Marble Arch to catch a train out to Stratford.

La la la... through the ticket barrier. La la la... down the escalator. La la la... along the passage way and down the stairs. La la la onto the platform.

BANG!

It was as though I had walked into a brick wall. It felt really hot. It wasn't particularly hot outside, or anywhere elso on the station, just on the platforms. I acclimatised fairly quickly, but the contrast in air temperatures over the space of a few feet was incredible.

I seem to recall that the Evening Standard ran some articles a few years ago about the differences in ambient air temperatures on different London Underground lines - my recollection is that the Central Line was the warmest because of the type of braking system that the trains use.

Anyhow, if my experience of this week is anything to go by... Need a sauna? Don't spend big bucks on a fitness club or gymn. Don't fly off to Scandinavia to experience the real deal. Just buy an Oystercard and check out the platforms at Marble Arch. Delightful.

I say it as I see it

In some circles, National Express East Coast ("NXEC") has a pretty bad press.

NXEC operates a high speed train service up the east side of the UK from London Kings Cross to Scotland, with an offshoot to Leeds.

Over the weekend I've traveled by train on NXEC from London to Edinburgh and back.

• On Friday we were six minutes late into Edinburgh, while last night we were seven minutes early back into London.
• The trains were full, but the vast majority of seats were reserved. It was after all the busiest weekend of the year in Edinburgh, so no surprise there.
• The trains were clean and tidy and each had 'litter pickers' walking up and down the train clearing away rubbish.
• There were no grumpy staff - everyone seemed professional, polite and well organised.
• Between Newcastle and Edinburgh there is some stunning scenery, though I will say that only a tiny proportion of passengers paid the slightest attention to the views. You also get a true feeling of the scale of Durham Cathedral when pulling in and out of that North-Eastern city.
  

All in all, a positive experience.

Fast Ticket Machines out of use due to a recent spate of thefts

There is a gang (presumably) of thieves targeting the Chiltern Railways ticket machines in rural Buckinghamshire.

The news announcement about the extent of the problem is here.

All rather troublesome really (a) because this part of the country is generally pretty low on crime and (b) it's a huge inconvenience to passengers and the railway company. I hope they catch the buggers, else what's to stop them doing it again when the machines are fixed?

The queue for tickets was out of the door at Princes Risborough this morning - it'll be chaos there next Tuesday morning after the bank holiday weekend.

Busy, Busy, Busy...

I've had good value out of my Chiltern Railways season ticket today.

Trip (1) was an early morning visit to Northolt to get my hair cut. I wonder just how long I am going to keep commuting for that? My dentist is still there as well. A couple of one stop trips on the Central Line (I don't use it that much any more) and I even bumped into my boss on the train at South Ruislip on the way home. Not a total surprise as I did know he was tee-ing off at Ruislip this morning - he did look a bit more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed than I was feeling.

Trips (2) & (3) (a couple of shopping trips) then followed - there still seem to be lots of photographers out and about stalking the Virgin Trains. Oh and lots of people wearing Arsenal shirts on their way to the 12.45 kick-off against West Bromwich Albion. Apparently the trains from Birmingham were packed for that.

I'm off down to Hampshire now for the rest of the weekend, to get rained on (I think). Enjoy yours.

Replacement Trains... Again

Today there have been further engineering works on the West Coast Main Line, meaning that trains from London Euston cannot get past Rugby. Virgin Trains have once again been running an hourly service to and from Coventry by means of a maze like route through West London and then up along the Chiltern Railways routes. Further to my previous post, I've found this blog post which has marked the london end of the diversion route on a map.

Chiltern Railways (which services include trains from Birmingham to London Marylebone) have been running as many seven carriage trains as they can muster on their long distance route and they have been pretty busy.

London Marylebone is one of the smallest London terminus stations and it is feeling a little crowded at times. It also sits on just one underground line (the Bakerloo) with quite lengthy escalators to and from the platforms.

This morning the down escalator was broken down. What with it being peak holiday season and the large number of extra people using the station, there were a lot of people struggling down the very long central stairway with quite heavy bags and cases. I hope they get the escalator fixed soon.

You Get Less for Murder

I knew it was coming, but I'd forgotten all about it.

There I was yesterday, at work minding my own business, when my boss walked up to me and said "Congratulations".

"For what?" (I didn't actually say that, because I knew.)

Twenty Five years working for the same company, that's what. I started off as a spotty 18 year old working up in Yorkshire, two weeks out of school. You can do the maths yourself, but here I am 25 years later working in the heart of the West End and, by and large, still enjoying it.

Over the years, the jobs, the company, technology and customer expectations have all changed dramatically.

The job security and satisfaction has enabled me to do lots, to see lots and to generally be happy.

I have traveled extensively abroad, around the UK and around London. I now don't quite live at the western extremities of the Central Line, but I do see it every day.

The company is actually very generous on these sorts of occasions: As well as the desk ornament thingy (pictured, but with the company branding smudged out), I also received a commemorative framed certificate, a bottle of champagne, a large box of posh chocolates plus a choice of really quite smart gifts from a rather natty catalogue. I was (and am) actually quite chuffed.

The actual anniversary was today - I wonder what I'll be doing in another 10 or 15 years?

BTW, congratulations SS on the 20.

CU later.