my trains were rubbish today and i got to work nearly an hour late. i’m not a bitter blogger, so won’t go on at length. but perhaps it was an intergalactic event which triggered all the points failures. i left home at 6.40am when it was all going on …
here is another congestion charge avoidance scheme. disguise your car as a garden.
i popped out to get some chocolate a few minutes ago and got captured by students. these ones were canvasing the opinion on the great british public on the controversial issue of the congestion charge.
i am an expert of alternative transport methods and congestion charge avoidance, but i didn’t get a chance to explain because, all too quickly the interview was over.
here are the crew
and here they all together. they were very excited to find out they might be on this website. and so they should be !
good luck to them in their future media careers.
i’ve mentioned the trolley man before. good to see he’s still got the fridge (or an identical replacement). we’re working the same patch. he has more dedication to this finding lark.
i spotted this today. it’s a cupboard on castors. another congestion charge avoiding transport device perhaps. i didn’t check to see if there was anyone inside it. it had falled over next to a charity shop in such a way that the doors wouldn’t have been able to open.
if i was driving a cupboard i would have put the castors on the back of it and driven it like a canal boat. that would be much more stable and could house more (paying?) passengers.
trains were delayed this evening at paddington. when this happens you can never be sure which platform your train will come in to.
i took a punt (a risk, not a boat) and went to platform 13 which is where the 17:52 usually goes from. on the way I saw this wripped up piece of paper on the floor.
it was telling me to ‘turn’. this would have taken me to platform 12 of course (as anyone familliar with paddington station will be able to tell you).
i ignored the warning and continued, taking my life in to my own hands.
i waited at platform 13 for a while and …
found this rather nice site just now about travelling on london underground.
http://www.london-underground.blogspot.com/
here are three congestion charge busting devices. i spotted the chair with the buggy in the background first then noticed this other buggy a few metres down the road.
Both the buggies look a bit worse for wear – perhaps they have been lying dormant in people’s cupboards and now the new term has started these mistreated machines are falling apart ?
as you know, i’ve been looking for ways that people have been beating the congestion charge. in a lot of cases the method has involved castors on objects (or indeed just the castor itself).
here we see a pile of wheely-chairs next to BT tower in the usual dumping place.
but why ?
have they been confiscated ?
are they insurance write-offs ?
is it a badly run council chair-park ?
some mysteries are too deep to even bother fathoming.
this reminded me of my once fantastic moon-bike. one day i’ll find the pictures and show you. remind me if i forget
i’m always interested in things parked in car parking spaces. this tennis ball has pulled up rather far from the kerb and is not officially in a parking space.
‘tennis ball’ is a neat was of avoiding the congestion charge as I think it’s in the exempt category.
there are two ways of travelling by tennis ball:
1) stand on top and run backwards, thus propelling yourself and the ball forward
2) lie flat with the tennis ball under you. pull yourself along with your hands with all your weight resting on the tennis ball. when the ball has reached the end of your body then either replace it yourself higher up your body or get a travelling companion to help.
method 2) is slightly more complicated, and because it leads to a slower method of travel, is probably best avoided on public roads.
my advice is stick to the pavement (stand on some chewing gum)
the first chair i saw this evening was a swivel chair. it contained an empty can of beer and an old cigarette packet. i suspect this was once the seat of a smoking alcoholic who liked to face in different directions whilst sitting.
the second chair i saw was made of wicker and contained old egg shells. i suspect this chair was once the seat of a bird
have you ever tried to park a pigeon ? here are two double parked in a nice parking space. they were reserving it i suspect
two failed congestion charging busting devices this morning:
jack knifed trolley. nicely parked up in an alloted parking space. hope they paid the meter
and here on some wooden trolley bits which was obviously such a failure it had been dumped in the bin
i saw this tonight near harley street. another congestion charge busting device parked up in the street:
basically, it’s the smallest type of vehicle there is ie a wheel. here it is presented in castor form. it’s a little small, so i have enlarged it here:
more congestion charge avoidance schemes. this time a tea-trolley. one wheel has been removed to reduce drag and add additional excitement.
this trolley had been abandoned on the street. i suspect this was because there are no dedicated trolley parks around here (other than in-house supermarket provided ones)
as you know, traffic wise, London is gridlocked and totally hopeless.
Wrong. Thanks to Ken’s fantastic Congestion Charge, people are turning to other methods of transport.
Here are a few more examples shown together in this terrif photo. How many can you spot ?
Answer: Horses in convoy, motorbike, push bike, walking and lastly, bin lorry.
Who knows there may also be some underground lines running under this street
they were filming something this morning by Langham Place, London.
Don’t know what they were filming
Maybe it was a speed camera or a congestion charge trap ?
