My commute took me almost three hours this morning. That, quite frankly, is ridiculous. I could get to southern Europe in the time it took me to get from Bletchingley to Kensington, if you cut out the hanging about at the airport.
Problems this morning were numerous, so much so that a list is called for:-
1. The train was late getting to Oxted
2. There was a signalling equipment failure at Clapham Junction (the busiest station in England), which held up everything going everywhere
3. Someone was very inconsiderately taken ill on a train at Clapham too, compounding the problems
4. There was a fire at Victoria underground, so the tube station was closed
5. About a million extra people were trying to cram on the buses, so the queues were enormous
6. I had a heavy rucksack, so didn’t want to walk all the way
7. There are road works in Knightsbridge (again)
8. There was an accident by the Albert Hall and the police shut the road temporarily.
It was a complete and total catalogue of disasters!
As you will know if you read this regularly, I hate commuting. On a good day it takes in excess of three hours (ie 90 minutes each way) and usually it’s nearer four. But to take almost three hours to go one way, into one of the most well served cities in the world for public transport, is ludicrous as well as being a complete waste of my life and time.
I am just building up the energy to make the journey home. Hopefully they will have sorted out the signals, put out the fire and there won’t be any problems on the road at the homeward end. And to be fair, problems over the past few months have been minimal so this is the first time I have been seriously inconvenienced for ages. The frustration comes, I think, from not being able to do anything about it (and being stuck next to the most irritating girl in the world on the train who talked in a penetrating nasal voice to her friends the whole way up to London).
I am equipped for the journey now – sweets, bottle of water, magazine, ipod and a game on my Blackberry which I am getting quite good at and achieving very high scores (it’s so absorbing I nearly missed my stop the other night).
Girding the loins – off we go!
Sounds like the perfect storm of travel disasters.
ReplyDeleteYou have my sympathies. I think a one way commute of 3 hours here in Canada would trigger off an insurrection. People here think 30 minutes is ridiculously long and if you spend more than an hour getting to work they insist you go for a mental health check.
AS a little footnote, I spent over five hours in all travelling to and from work yesterday. Trains were buggered up on the way home too, and crawled between Clapham and Croydon - I could have walked more quickly. And it's only 20 miles altogether as the crow flies! You;re right steve, my Greek friends think I'm daft too - if they have to stroll more than 10 minutes they thingk they're hard done by.
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