Weekend Irritations

Posted by Craig Sunday, 19 July 2009

Saturday trip into London. For various reasons, it was a late afternoon trip (against my better judgement).

Ticket Machine - Broken Again
Got to Cambridge Station to buy a ticket, no surprise:

No change since Thursday night (Engineer obviously on holiday or strike). I do particularly like the ecologically friendly approach National Express take by re-using the 'Out of Order' posting (note the stray paper on the bottom 'tape).

Noisy Train
Got on the train and managed to get a seat. As the train pulled out of Cambridge station, I noticed a 20-something woman with 2 kids (twins) in front of me. The kids were really rowdy and making lots of noise, with the mother thinking it was funny most of the time (save for the few outbursts shouting at them . I was fairly irritated after a few minutes- but the train was packed so difficult to move. Feeling frustrated, I thought to myself why I was being subjected to this, then I looked more closely at my ticket::

And in the corner::

Explains it- bought wrong class of ticket.

Still, it made for an interesting 48 min journey (actually 51 as the train was a little late). Watching the trio and their behaviour I made a few interesting observations:
  • Neon is big this year. Mother had pink/green/pink neon fingernails. Kids had green neon in their (no surprise) shellsuits and trainers.
  • Question: Why would you pierce the ears of a 7 year old boy ? Why glue their hair with hair gel ?
  • Question: By virtue of having twins, did the mother feel some sense of achievement by having 2 kids with the same father ?
London Transport Carnage
Tube the usual carnage of Saturdays- Victoria line down, Jubilee line down, total mess especially since it was the start of school holidays so the Picadilly line being the only option was full of people with luggage. Not helped by the escalator stopping mid-way due to someone getting their luggage stuck.

Sell Banks.. Buy Scaffolding
I've realised that every major junction in central London has roadworks on it, the picture is familiar- blue painted wood boards and scaffolding. It made me realise that scaffolding may be a good investment (or at least would have been). Of course the roadworks create hell for trying to cross the road.

Roadworks are bad enough at junctions, but I've observed that there is a particular group of people that seem to come out on a Saturday afternoon- man pushing pram with two accompanying women. I'm not suggesting London is full of polygamists but I do find it rather strange ! What I find annoying is that when the foot traffic reduces to a single lane, the guy has to turn round and chat to his 'companions' thus reducing his speed to a snails pace- very annoying.

Badly Behaved People
In the Apple Store in Regent Street trying to check something on the Internet. I was a bit frustrated and this idiot (using a PC) turned round and made some comment. I'm sadly not good at dealing with this level of rudeness so I apologised- then had the usual irritation with myself for not saying something derogatory afterwards.

Why is is the computer systems that bookshops use are so bloody inefficient ? You walk into any bookshop in the UK and ask if they have a book in stock giving the title. You are then asked for the author ! Why ?? - I mean I can type a title into Amazon and it works just fine. What I find amusing is that when I get asked for this level of detail, I get out my iPhone and load up Amazon to find the detail- kind of defeats the purpose of bookshops ! Why not just allow the staff in bookshops to surf to Amazon ?


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