A busy, busy week!

This has been such a busy week! And leaving all train bitching aside, because that’s getting very boring now, it’s been good.

I was at a construction marketing debate on Tuesday, which was very good, with lots of interesting people there. I arrived early and, no doubt because it was raining (which is my excuse for such an appalling picture), the pelicans in St James' Park were very happily stretching and noise-making.

I thought of Dad with the meeting being held in the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Inside it’s all wood-panelling and wide carpeted stairs with marble busts of people that probably mean something to mechanical engineers.

Thursday I had a meeting with a client at the Landmark Hotel (now doesn’t that sound a bit dodgy?!), which was so very posh that it doesn’t seem to have a pedestrian entrance. Well, I did find one, but it’s not always open, and it was firmly locked when I arrived. Instead it has a fenced-off drive-through so that guests can have their chauffeurs drop them off instead. Plebs like me have to mix it up with the limos, walking up the drive-through.

The hotel is right next to Marylebone station, so very convenient for those of us without chauffeurs. The reception is classic marble, but the rather nice part is the atrium. It looks like it was a courtyard with the hotel on all four sides, but they’ve covered it with glass and it has eateries, cafes and a surprising number of palm trees.

We had a social networking seminar at work with Curious Catherine, which was not only educational, but also highly entertaining as Catherine is very sharp on wit, especially her take on various aspects of the online community.

Did you know that there is a new series of Hawaii Five-O? I found that out earlier in the week and having sampled it, I can confirm that it’s not very good, so please don’t anybody think I might like the box-set. Not that I think anyone would, I’m just saying.

Speaking of, I have found that he trouble with digitising my entire DVD collection is boredom. One has to sit for hours on end waiting for things to happen – mostly discs to eject, and programs to finish – especially when using multiple machines. I did try watching DVDs, but every time I had to do something, by the time I got back to whatever I was watching it had moved on, and when I tried the pausing method, I paused so often I forgot what the plot was.

So, recalling that I have credit for games – especially after the seventh Harry Potter game turned out to be so naff I returned it (if you like shoot-em-up games it might be good, but I don't), I decided to pick up a couple of games. I stumbled across Pirates! for the PSP, which is keeping me so entertained on the train that I’m not noticing brakes failing and some drivers inability to turn up nearly so much.

I think I may also be entertaining the carriage as well, as I tend to get quite carried away with it, and have been known to verbally encourage ships I’m being piratical to, to stop running away and such things.

But back to keeping myself entertained while digitising things – I acquired Endless Ocean for the Wii, which is just the most divine game ever. I’m sure gamers hate it, as it doesn’t progress very fast. It involved being a scuba diver in a fictitious ocean, and you get to talk to all sorts of fish and things, and take other divers on guided tours, and explore caves, deep trenches and wrecks. It was clearly designed by a diver and a marine biologist, and the graphics are superb.

On the down side, RSI is a distinct possibility.

I was going to take a break from DVDs and games as fire training at Brands Hatch was supposed to be this weekend, but it has been postponed until March, so perhaps not.

I guess when you want to deliberately set fire to a reasonable enough sized vehicle that lots of very nervous trainees can play with their fire extinguishers, getting all the correct permissions and people present is a bit of a logistical nightmare.

I am looking forward to it, even though that’s not the side of marshalling I’m interested in (which would be waving pretty coloured flags a lot), apart from the alleged laxative effect of accidentally inhaling the contents of the powder fire extinguishers. Not that you’re supposed to inhale these things, but you know, wind direction is important, folks!

End of the line

Or... last rant about the trains, and I'll get on to more interesting things. At least until the next time I get stuck on one for three hours longer than scheduled.

I talked to a Southeastern man the other day who told me that there hasn't been a full service since before the fist lot of December snow.

Almost exactly a year ago, I kept a diary of my journeys for a while and found that, outside of the snow period, the vast majority of trains were on time with the odd five- or ten-minute delay here or there and very occasionally a broken down train caused a spot of chaos, all of which made me think that poor service was simply perceived, and subject to the right of the British public to whinge. 

A year on, and the service is definitely markedly worse.  Monday evening my train was on time leaving and on time arriving. However, previous services were cancelled, resulting in massive overcrowding.

Anyone who has gone to Kings Cross Underground station will be familiar with this – the kind of overcrowding where people who have squeezed in are relying on the doors closing to push them the rest of the way in. This is nasty and uncomfortable, but kind of acceptable when you only have to spend ten minutes with your nose in someone's armpit, and someone's brolly humping your leg, and there is the knowledge that trains are running back-to-back three minutes apart, so you can step back and take the next one, and you'll just have to deal with being a few minutes late.

But we're talking about a mainline train here, just two of them an hour and whose first stop is 25 minutes outside of Victoria. Waiting for the next train can mean missing dinner, or your daughter's school play, or your dental appointment, or Coronation Street or... Not important for those looking at the 'big picture' but everything to the people actually paying for use of the service.

 

I was going to end rant there. But last night we were back to the service issue. This time our trains brakes kept locking up, meaning that we were going nowhere for long periods. When we got to Maidstone East, we were chucked off to be picked up by the following train. I suppose it was managed well in that we were only 35 minutes late when it could have been worse. And the Dunkirk spirit, as always, bonded the passengers.

But somehow that doesn't make up for much.

A colourful week

Dying was the order of the day last week. Brown has really brought up my brown jeans nicely. It also managed to turn a delicate cream jumper into a delicate peach colour, which wasn't intended, but works well. Olive green didn't want to touch a few items, but I do now have a wonderful olive vest tee which was yellow, and a beige handbag that is now an excellent pea green. Terracotta on the other hand very much like dying anything that came within ten feet of it, and several pink items are now a bright terracotta, and a mauve long-sleeved tee is an interestingly warm brownish colour. Mostly successful I think!

On Wednesday points failure on the way home resulted in a twenty minute delay or thereabouts.    We caught up with the train in front at Bromley South, and our driver really did try hard to overtake the other one. We both started off from our platforms at the same time. Have you ever watched train racing? I'm sure it's a popular sport somewhere...

We were actually pulling ahead and and I do have to confess to a moment of concern when the other train started getting closer to us, as both were clearly headed for the same set of rails and neither was slowing down. Until suddenly our guy had to brake and let the other in front. Poohsticks.

Thursday night's train was interesting – standing room only except for one vacant seat next to drunken business man with crate of large Budweiser export, listening to an i-pod. No one would sit next to him – because he was belching and muttering. The seat was on the inside of him, so to sit next to him meant making actual contact/vocal request and no one would do it. So I smiled sweetly and asked if I could and he was a perfectly civilised gentleman, if swaying a little much. Woman standing behind me started bitching about how that seat should have been hers as she was there first (she was), and that some people (me) were clearly trollops with no self respect. Another lady very acidly replied some trollopes with no self-respect had a *seat*. Ho hum!

Chris picked me up in his shiny new Seat Leon on Saturday to go and visit Dilton Marsh. It was a fun weekend, despite the boiler playing up, with much hysteria over Balderdash.

In my quest to digitise everything, I discovered that I need to re-copy all my CDs. I'd ripped all of those a couple of years ago so that they could be loaded onto my MP3 player. But when my PC had its screen replaced, they cleaned it down -I'd said they could, thinking that I could get my music from the MP3 player. No such luck – Sony is far too bureaucratic to allow drag and drop. So I'm having to copy them all again. Fortunately it won't take very long.

Cupcakes!

Yesterday I had lunch at One Aldwych, which was lovely and posh. Finding it was problematic which, given that it's quite a big hotel, isn't something that one would have thought to be an issue. I did my usual research on Google Maps, and got directions, but the Google Map isn't exactly right. And the hotel map on it's own website isn't exactly right either – both are close, but on the other side of the road, so I looked on Street View to see what that side of the road looked like.

I wandered up the Strand failing to see what I was looking for. Walked past St Mary's (big centuries old church that went awry in the planning stages as they put it in the middle of the road), thinking that I'm sure it wasn't this far. Kept walking anyway until I got to the next junction and found 97 Aldwych.

Followed Aldwych back to number one and found destination very easily. Turns out that the (wrong) building I'd been looking for was lurking behind construction boards. One Aldwych on the other hand, is a very discreet doorway that you wouldn't know was there unless you were looking for it.

Sometime between me arriving and lunch arriving, another attendee managed to throw orange juice all over me, so lunch was spent feeling uncomfortably sticky even after a visit to the bathroom. Guilty party was very apologetic, and it was definitely an accident. Threatened to send him my dry-cleaning bill.

Lunch itself was gorgeous. Departed to return home by train. On train opened goody bag to see what was in it. Among serious stuff there was a box of cupcakes. I couldn't eat them all myself, they wouldn't keep, and they probably wouldn't survive the trip into the office next day. There were only a half dozen pensioners in my carriage, so I offered them out. All the people who weren't on gluten-free diets were very happy.

Work otherwise has been a total pain - we have new group manager who decided that sales hadn't done enough work. Now, our pagination depends on how much sales have done. So we'd planned the issue based on sales, but then, with one and a half working days until final edit, he decided that we needed to have eight more pages - grrrr! And then Monday, final edit day, after boss and I had been working through the weekend to make up the adjustment, he decided sales couldn't sell the eight so we wouldn't have them after all. At least he apologised to us! Still pressweek is done!

Oh, and the mail-room had a bureaucratic moment - they came around and checked everyone's trays. Mine passed inspection, but other didn't. They were checking for illicit red trays - only post trays are allowed to be red, apparently. One of my desk neighbours had red trays and now that they've been confiscated the desk look very dull. Moo.

 My current project is ripping all my DVDs to digital format. A very long process given all the DVDs that I own - I took me all weekend to do all the movies from A to K. Then there are the box sets, and I'm not even thinking about the vast quantities of TV Shows.
 
Have had a to-do with the TV Licensing people at the moment. My sky box finally died after 10 years of good service, and I was going to get another one when it occurred to me that in the last ten months I have watched television a grand total of once. So I've decided not to hook back up to 'the system' - but the TV Licensing people really don't like it - they have a 'guilty until proven innocent' attitude. Although that's changed now and they were scarily polite yesterday - looks like I win. Will now see how doing without 'live TV' fares.

New Year, new resolutions

For the new year, I've tidied up my online stuff and consolidated it - this has been my project this week. Which has been mostly tedious rather than exciting.

Have scanned all my photos in now, so can recycle albums *cleans halo*.

On Weds I traded in some old games in return for the new Wii Harry Potter game and the PSP Night at the Museum, both of which should keep me amused for a while.

Night at the Museum kept me amused for as long as it took to realise it was the movie and not a game. At least I can trade it in for something else.

Have relocated Ficus from kitchen to lounge - I think she's much happier for it. She isn't getting leaves burnt by nasty radiator anymore, so I assume she's happier.

Back to work, and the trains are as reliable as ever - not.

Train this morning left about 15mins late due to signalling problems in the Ramsgate area. However, the saga between me arriving at the station 10mins before my train was due, and when it left, went something like this:

HS from Ramsgate was due late and at any second into Platform 5.
From Ramsgate (or maybe Hastings) mainline train came in late on P1.
Platform change, HS was coming imminently into P6 (mine!) - huge crowd on P5 leapt over to P6.
From Ramsgate mainline train came in late on P2.
Platform change, HS was coming into P5 at ay nanosecond – enormous crowd on P6 leapt back over to P5.
On time from Charing Cross train held at lights outside Ashford as no platform.
Victoria train came in to P6 from siding.
Board announced Vic train cancelled.
Announcer announced board is wrong and Vic train is running to time.
Time passes.
Board announced train at P6 is going to Canterbury.
Vic passengers mutually agreed sit-in until train gets to Vic even if it has to go via Canterbury, Hastings and Timbuktu.
New passengers got on board.
Time passes.
From Ramsgate train at P2 moved off.
From CX train arrived P2.
Passenger in long dark coat and trilby got off CX train and ambled over to P6.
Passenger in long dark coat and trilby magically transformed into Victoria train driver we were apparently waiting for.
Guard informed Canterbury passengers that they were on the wrong train as we were going to Vic.
Half of the passengers decant in a mad rush.
Vic train moves off in a Vic direction.
HS still fails to arrive.
Vic train arrives Charing 10 mins later.
Remaining Canterbury passengers debark in a panic.

Got into work 10mins late to find that big boss was also late due to Southeastern trains apparent inability to keep  to a timetable, although he's on a completely different line.