Apparently the flame
was trooped here Monday. I went north for that very reason but
someone yesterday was saying how wonderful it was to be in such large
crowds all with the same desire.
Apparently they were
“all down both sides of the Carshalton Road, waiting”.
Das einige Volk.
And atop all the
usual broadcasts on the transport system there are blatherings from
Boris Johnson: “This is the Mayor; this is the Big One.”
Well, if he wants to
be called The Big One then he has to do it himself I suppose. He
urges us to plan our journey. How? Why?
I am almost in
admiration of Southern Rail in that the blithering idiots have made
no visible attempt to avoid their usual crap. Signal failures, broken
trains, crap announcements, some of which you couldn't hear for
Boris. They have what sounds like a child making announcements now.
He stumbles from word to word like a fly trying to get off a fly
paper and little apparent awareness of syntax. As what he is reading
takes on semblances of meaning for him, he seems to express surprise
“and on Saturday that service will not run?!”
The way they make announcements even English First Language can't understand much of it.
And on the radio I
hear of trains not stopping at the Central Sacred Destination. How
CAN one plan in such circumstances?
My favourite
announcement yesterday was delivered confidently and with disjunctive
panache: “Attention passengers waiting for the train --” and
nothing more, ever.
Finding myself
unconstrained for a few hours and with a decent camera in
my bag, I nearly went into central London to take a series of
photographs I want; but I thought better of it because of the likely
chaos. By then I was on my way and so, inadvertently, saw quite a bit
of South London. The buffoons have been busy. Wherever there is
an island platform one side of which does not normally serve
passengers, they have built strong metal fences worthy of a national
frontier.
Why?
It reminds me of an
observation made many years ago: that this country would be fine if
the Normans were not still in control. And so we have dungheads who
are for instance Managers of Customer Satisfaction with Outsourced
Sandwiches purely as a reward for brown-nosing with William the
bastardly Director of Train Chaos and volunteering some serfs to lie
down as emergency rail sleepers. In post, they build their motte and
bailey offices out of proforma waste, terrorise the booking hall staffs of small stations
and then turn their attention to defending themselves against
insurrection from the populace.
And we get massive
fences running down the middle of platforms which achieve nothing but
do reduce flexibility. The signals fail. The trains break down. But
we get fences to keep us penned like livestock.
And yet as I say I
quite admire them. The Lords are blustering about low turnouts on
strike votes though not one of them has been voted there. But
Southern don't give a damn. They just don't bother. They don't even
attempt to justify themselves. And they find themselves admirable. They've found that try as they may they
cannot work out how to run a decent service. They've simplified the
system – it's quite a burden to get to London Bridge from here.
They've given up announcements. They've stopped politeness. They've
ripped up the sidings; so it's just several As to several Bs; and the
morons still can't do it.
But it doesn't worry
them. Mentally they're still out on the neolithic hillsides at the
mercy of forces they do not understand – signal failure, train
failure, inclement weather. Some of them clearly think that blowing a
whistle makes the locomotive start. Nothing to be done.
They are people of
faith and they may not be criticised.
Meanwhile Baron Big
One, having lauded himself for the new Cross Rail development has
gone very quiet over the move to end the loop to Sutton of the
Brighton-Luton line to pay for it.
The full trains into
Blackfriars will be emptied on to other trains already themselves
over full.
I gave up last night.
A large chunk of Southern seemed to have ceased to be. Questions to
the believers about the movements of the spirits of the trains
brought such an intense hiss of “I don't know” that I feared
being charged with blasphemy.
I looked for a bus. I
thought I saw mine; but it had no sign on it. As I tried to board, it
drove off with the door still open – supposedly impossible, alarm
howling – with no words from the pig's arse driver and parked.
Welcome to UK
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