A waste of my life

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!

It's a blustery day!

As Winnie the Pooh would have said, it's a blustery day! When my kids were little that was the WTP episode they loved the most, with Pooh flying off on a balloon and Eyeore chasing him, Tigger bounding after them with enthusiasm.

Not much damage here. A few twiggy branches down and the winter cover blown off the vegetable beds. And one piece of glass blown loose, but not broken, in the greenhouse. We probably ought to count ourselves lucky - it was blowing a gale all night as well. (Of course, now I've typed that, it'll be sods law that a tree will go over or some tiles come off the roof or something).

The Hubby had trouble getting to work this morning as the Dartford Bridge was closed and the traffic was tailing back for miles. In the end he came home and tried to sit it out, it didn't improve and so he went to work by train - let's hope they were running OK. Personally, I'd have rung in, said I was marooned (in Surrey mind you, not exactly a backwater) and worked at home, but then he is a martyr to the cause of local government. God knows why, it's a thankless profession.

The cats don't want to go out. They're standing at the cat flap, obviously desperate for a pee and almost crossing their legs, trying to time it between the gusts of wind. So far, their timing has been rubbish; I saw one of them almost get blown up the garden, tail aloft, in mid stream! Very amusing, but poor creature obviously got very stressed and came dashing back in without finishing off what she was doing. It's my pretty Tortoiseshell long hair, who hates bad weather of any kind. She's probably pee'd up the rubbish in the lobby out the back as revenge for my laughter.

There have been some tragedies; I saw an interview at lunch time on the news with a poor man whose van had been crushed by a falling tree and the guy sitting next to him was killed. The only reason he escaped was because at that very moment, he had bent down to retrieve his cigarette lighter from the floor of the van where he had dropped it and was in the footwell, not sitting upright. He hasn't even got any bruises, but he'll live with the mental scar of seeing his mate die for the rest of his life.

Supposedly it's all going to calm down tonight, but get cold and frosty. That's fine. I just can't help thinking that it's panto soon and we haven't really been hit yet by any bad weather to affect rehearsals or performances. I bet Mother Nature has something up her sleeve! I won't be really happy about that until we get to the last night; rain, winds, frost is all OK, just no snow please.

Another cat has just ventured out! I'm now off to watch her out of the window, and am prepared to chuckle as the wind blows her fur up the wrong way and she tries to find somewhere out of the wind to do whatever she needs to do. They really do resemble people on the beach at Brighton trying to shelter and pretend it's a lovely day to be beside the seaside, struggling to put up their wind break. Now there's a thought - a wind break for cats! Not sure it'd catch on though; those paws are useless for holding a mallet!