transport

my train company changed the timings of all its trains this week. they did it so they could ‘have more seat and better punctionality’.
so far, nearly every train i’ve been on had been late and has been full to bursting with people standing.
but my new 6.08am train seems quite good, even if it does mean i have to get up an hour earlier.
so how can such a company ever make it up to their customers ? answer: by giving them a mince pie.
i had a suspicion they were poisoned so they could kill off a few commuters and free up some seats.

this is a sign on a train i sometimes get. it worries me.
shouldn’t it be the driver’s responsibility to make sure he parks the train up properly so people don’t drop to the ground when they get out of the door ?

i was waiting to cross a road yesterday and 6 sideless offices went by. no-one was working late so they were quite empty except for their electrity sockets on the walls.

i used to have a bike a bit like this. i called it moon bike.
it had huge planks of wood attached in the shape of flames to it to make it look great. but it was heavy and liable to lift up when accelerating (or even sitting down).
i took it to the Reading Festival once and parked it under the bungie jumps.
i then met jane (my wife) and she had a car so i gave the bike back to the chap who did the customising for me. we were both happy with that arrangement.
i loved moon bike. i wonder where he is now …

i’m in brussels for the next couple of days and i had an absolutely disaster of a journey. All went well until we got to Lille when they decided to terminate the train due to someone being splatted on the tracks ahead of us.
In the UK they would have called this a ‘fatality’. But, since we were in france, they called it a ‘suidide’.
anyway, they chucked us out and told us to go to a different train station, but didn’t tell us where it was. so hundreds of people were walking all over Lille looking very lost with big suitcases.
things went downhill from there, but i won’t bore you on how i had to sit on a train floor for an hour and a half on a squashy train.
but at least i got to see some new and interesting train stations en route.

they use old tube trains as their main trains on the isle of wight

it’s always very difficult for posh people to know where to park their cars.
in theory, even today, the very wealthy are legally entitled to park their cars wherever they like. but of course this aggrevates the working classes who end up with nowhere to park their horse and carts.
Sometimes people have become so annoyed they have literally spoken to each other about it.
Obviously something had to be done. which is why some parking spaces have been reserved for specific types of vehicle. like this BMW.
Unfortunately the sign seems to have been written by someone of a lesser education, with the result that the M is missing.

london underground has the most amazing seat covers. here’s one from their transport museum (it was on an original district line carriage). is the idea to hypnotise travellers ?

it’s gyro-tastic

look at this yellow cherry picker. i just love the way it extends out of itself. a bit like those bird things

the lift on the right has gone missing.

sunkened boat in the thames.

matt, the webserver landlord sent me this picture of a “Bewildering Array of things to do on a Chiltern Clubman train”.
he’s got a better grasp of capital letters than i have !

this was a car apparently stuck in tarmac. of course it was just a full size replica car used as an advert thing. but i was impressed (as was the car)

jaunty angle. good advice.

here’s some more advice. don’t risk disaster:

a famous gap. but where ?

answer here

camouflage on ships is a bit bizarre. they should just paint the top bit blue to match the sky and the bottom bit blue to match the water.
but this one does blends in with the buildings in the town centre.