An unreasonably long journey

So, I'm standing at Honor Oak Park last night, waiting for the stopping train home. The first train gets cancelled (10.25pm). Ho hum we think, and defer back to the pub for another drink. We get back to the station for 10.55 train and its saying "DELAYED" on the board, so we use the help point to talk to the controller to see what's happening.

He informs us that there's a broken down train around Waterloo East and therefore there are no trains coming south currently, and they don't know when there will be. Getting home is starting to become slightly problematic, especially as I know I have to be up at 5.30 today for an early support shift.

So anyway, our only option seems to be to go back north again, into central London to try to connect to another train service somewhere, as trains are still running north. So off we trot back to London Bridge on the stopping train.

We arrive at London Bridge at about 11.15 - we're now an hour into our journey and all we've managed to do is go 5 miles in the wrong direction. At London Bridge there turns out to be total mayhem. There are no trains anywhere on the Croydon / Brighton line and there are hundreds of people standing around, getting just a slight upset at not being able to get home.

So 30 minutes later and we're still standing there having listened to a ridiculous selection of contradictory announcements which are based around the premise of "a train will be coming soon" - "oh no - apologies that train is now cancelled". Large synchronised groans can be heard from hundred of people after each successive piece of bad news.

Finally 11.50 a single train is found from somewhere and everyone is told to get on it, if they wish to go south to Croydon, from where in theory they can change to other services.

Unfortunately there are 2 fatal flaws in this plan:
1. Many people like myself have already missed their last train home even if they do get to Croydon.
2. There have been no trains south for about 90 minutes now, and there are now several hundred people equating to about 6 or 7 trains worth of people trying to squeeze onto a pissy little suburban commuter train.

At this point in time, I lose the will the carry on, go to the cash machine and find myself a black cab who will take me all the way home. I sit in the back and watch London fly by, at last heading in the right direction.

I get home at 1am, knowing that I have to be up in just over 4 hours, and head off to bed to grab what sleep I can.

At 4.45am the cat sits on my head and wakes me up.....

Categories: londonlife

Crystal Palace haven't beaten the Miami Dolphins since 67 BC

So its FA Cup weekend, and something is really really bugging me. I think the first time that I noticed this was when the Premier League (I still refuse to call it the Premiership) highlights went to ITV. Suddenly there were all these statistics before every match about; "Birmingham haven't beaten so and so team since 1965". Well frankly so the fuck what - since it would normally turn out that in fact Birmingham hadn't played so and so team since 1966 anyway, because they'd been in different divisions! In my mind this is just plain shoddy cheap journalism looking to report something interesting where nothing is in fact there.

So anyway, I was playing pool with Steve yesterday, playing mighty well I might add...and they've got Sky on in the background, and well maybe Sky having been dealing in quotations suchs as the above for many many years now - but ehy're just trotting out this crpa again and again, about teams which haven't never bloody played more than one game in 50 years anyway - and frankly - well I'm unimpressed.

Categories: crapmedia