Like A Drowned Rat And Feeling Stupid

After a period of hot weather which has left me flagging at times, this morning there was torrential rain in my part of London.There was no clear blue sky to wake up to, just unremitting grey clouds and a substantial amount of rain pouring from them.

The rain was not altogether unexpected, but it wasn't the light shower that had been forecast, something that would not have bothered me too much, and it was fairly obvious that I was going to get wet on my way to the bus stop. And I was right to expect to get wet because just after I had left the house it started to rain even harder and my waterproof jacket was finding it hard to cope with the rain.

By the time that I got to the bus stop I had a very wet jacket, rather wet trousers, and the toes that were peeking out of my sandals were both wet and covered with dirt from the splashing rain. Fortunately my jacket has a hood so I was at least able to keep my hair dry otherwise I would definitely have looked like a drowned rat. I looked at the electronic board at the bus shelter to see how long I was going to have to wait for my bus and found that one was due in just a few minutes and another was about five minutes behind it.

I like to make sure that I have my Oyster card in my hand before I get on the bus so that I am not scrabbling around in my handbag for it while other people are waiting to get on the bus. I'm pretty good at putting it in a place in my handbag where it is easy to find whenever I need it, but this morning it wasn't in its usual slot in my bag. Panic set in. What had I done with it? I had used it yesterday and although I had removed quite a few things from my handbag when I was looking for something in it yesterday evening, I was fairly certain that I hadn't taken it out of my bag.

There was only one thing for it, I was going to have to take things out of my handbag systematically so that I could find the card. Unfortunately this was easier said than done because there was nowhere for me to put the things as I took them out. My bus arrived and I still hadn't found the card but as I knew that there was another imminent I decided to let this one go without me so that I could search a little longer. I did eventually find my card as a bus arrived at the stop.

With card in hand I leapt onto the bus (well, perhaps I didn't leap on) and found myself a seat. These days there are a number of different seating arrangements on our red double-decker buses, and this should have alerted me as I got on, but it wasn't until the bus was moving and the speaker system on the announced its route and destination that I realised I had got on the wrong bus. And I only had one more stop that was shared by both this bus and the one that I should have got on. So, I quickly rang the bell to alert the driver that I wanted to get off and a minute later I was back out in the rain waiting for the right bus.

I really cannot believe that I boarded a bus without checking to see what number it was. I had to wait for about 10 minutes (the bus wasn't quite as imminent as I had thought it was) for my bus to arrive getting wetter by the minute. By the time that I had arrived at my destination the rain had stopped but I was still looking like a drowned rat and feeling a stupid one at that.

Jobsworths

I hate Jobsworths. I expect most of the population of this country hates them too. It's even conceivable that Jobsworths hate other Jobsworths.

You might well be wondering what has brought this on, so I will tell you what happened when I was on the bus travelling to the hospital to see the consultant about my indelicate problem. My appointment was at 9.30 so I left home at 8 o'clock to walk to the bus stop. the bus that I wanted arrived a few minutes after I got to the stop and having boarded it and swiped my Oyster card I sat down in the front seat alongside an elderly lady. The bus set off, went round the roundabout that is just a few yards from the bus stop and within about 400 yards we had joined a very long queue of traffic.

We moved very slowly, taking about 15 minutes to travel half a mile. At this point we were stationary and a man who was on a seat near the back of the bus walked along the bus to speak to the driver. He asked if it was possible for the driver to open the doors to get off as he was feeling sick. The driver replied that it was not possible because we weren't at the bus stop. We had another half mile to travel to get to the next bus stop and at the rate that we were moving it would probably take at least another 10 minutes to get there.

The man stood near the driver obviously in some discomfort and could be seen to hold back from vomiting several times. He implored the driver to let him off, but the driver decided to ignore the poor man who then promptly vomited all over the doorway of the bus, and still the doors were not opened. A lady offered the poor man some wet wipes which he took gratefully and then she turned to the driver and told him that if he had opened the doors when the man had asked then he wouldn't have been sick on the bus. And we still hadn't moved!

At this point the driver did open the door to allow the man to get off, and then we started to creep forward. The next thing was an announcement from the driver that he was taking the bus out of service at the next stop as he needed to go back to the garage to get the bus cleaned up. Most of the passengers got off at this point and decided to walk to the next stop, however, the lady who was sitting next to me and myself stayed on the bus until we finally reached the bus stop. We were lucky because at this particular stop we would have a choice of buses to get us to our destination (we were both going to the hospital for appointments) and a bus arrived about 5 minutes later. I managed to get to my outpatient clinic just before my appointment time, but my consultant was running late and hadn't yet arrived for the clinic so I had a bit of a wait.

Yes, the bus driver definitely qualifies as a Jobsworth.

Travel In London - Not As Easy As You Might Think

I'm sitting here nervously waiting for it to be time to leave to travel to the other side of London for my meeting with 'S' about my lecture and the seminar to follow it.

Everyone always assumes that getting about London is easy, and quick, but I can assure that is not always the case. Much will depend where you are travelling from and to, and my journey today is a good example of this. I live in a part of London that is not served by the Underground. Apparently it will be here in a couple of years, but we don't have a connection at the moment. This means that the cheapest way for me to get across London is to use a combination of bus and tube; both of which enable me to use my Oyster card which means that I pay less than the standard single fare if paying by cash. I can't use my Oyster card on the rail network, and the cost of travelling into the centre of London on a train can be ridiculous.

I decided to check the Transport for London website for the best way to get to my destination. It suggested a method whereby I had a 10 minute walk to a bus stop, caught a bus, changed buses (probably with a wait in the cold), then got off at a particular tube station and completed my journey by tube. That would be one tube fare and two bus fares that I would be charged for each way. I have found a different route (by using my rudimentary knowledge of London (I was away for more than 30 years and things have changed a bit in that time)) and by using my way I still have a 10 minute walk to the bus stop, but in a different direction, and I need only wait for one bus, which will take me to a major transport terminus in the centre of London, and then a shorter journey on the tube. This means that I am saving at least £2 on my travel costs, and I will have less waiting in the cold for buses.

All that is left for me to do before I set out is get myself into some really warm clothing so that I don't freeze to death waiting for a bus, and then set out on my adventure.

An Adventure

I gave up using my car earlier this year because the increasing price of petrol was making it impossible when living on a pension.  So travel anywhere these days is by bus and one of the things that I have discovered is that the buses that I remember from my childhood don't always run on the same routes as they used to.  That hasn't proved to be too much of a problem because I can go on to the Transport for London website on the Internet and enter my start point and where I want to go to and select the method of travel that is preferred (in this case bus) and a few seconds later I will be given a series of options.  So far I have been really lucky and for every journey that I have wanted to make I have only needed one bus to complete the journey.

Today I needed to go to the local DHL depot to collect a package.  I checked the Internet yesterday and the journey could be completed using one bus.  I had a longer walk to the bus stop today than I usually do because the bus I needed comes from somewhere different to the one that I have been using for most of my journeys recently.  That wasn't a problem, it was only a 10 minute walk to the bus stop and the wait wasn't too long when I got there.  Because I was unfamiliar with the route I had taken my mini London atlas with me; it meant that I could follow the route that we were taking, judge when I needed to get off the bus and then follow the map while walking to my final destination, the DHL depot.

It all went very smoothly, I found my destination without any trouble, handed in the card with the details of my package and a few minutes later I was signing for it and setting out on the return journey.  Again everything went smoothly and the whole adventure was completed in about two hours.

The package was worth the effort.  It was the books for my next OU course; Human Biology.  So this afternoon is going to be spent going through all the preparatory reading and possibly starting to read the course material. The course officially starts next Saturday, but I am sure that I can get quite a bit done in the next week although it will undoubtedly be more difficult to follow that the other course that I am doing.

So while I had a little adventure getting the books, the big adventure will be studying the material and learning a new subject.

The Strange Things You See

I am an inveterate watcher when I travel by public transport.  Looking out of a bus window you can see some incredible sights and things that cannot help but amuse.  I travel on buses in London fairly frequently and recently I have made several trips into the centre of London by bus.  It can be interesting to look at the shops as you travel by for they indicate just how multicultural this country has become.  Sometimes, however, it can be the more traditional that catches my eye.

As I was sitting on a bus on Tuesday, while the bus was held up in traffic, I looked out of the window and saw a building that probably in former times was a high class grocers or perhaps a small department store.  Today it belongs to a firm of solicitors.  It is not unusal to see the name of a firm of solicitors painted onto its windows and something like 'Commissioners of Oaths' appended.  On Tuesday I saw something new, and I can't help wondering whether this gets them clients or puts people off retaining them.

What was painted on the window? 

 'Criminal Lawyers'.