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About six months ago, London Transport stopped saying the tubes were running to time, and instead said they were running a ‘good service’. These two words cover a wide gamut of running conditions from perfect to… well, tonight’s debacle.

Over an hour to travel five stops. And even then it was only because I gave up on the Central Line and did a bit of Crystal Mazeing and ran the gauntlet of the Northern, Victoria and Metropolitan Lines in an effort to get to Liverpool Street.

That, complete with crowded, sweaty carriages, was considered ‘good service’. No doubt that’s how they’d describe the delays on the overground trains, too. In all it took almost three hours to travel the 30 miles from my desk to my front door. I could have cycled it in that time.

Except it was pissing down with rain, so I suppose the delays weren’t such a bad compensation.

I also bumped into Steve’s Challenge and the Midnight Weatherman, similarly furious from the delays. It had taken them about the same amount of time to get from the far west, so we sat on a train full of half-term children and bitched. In the end a fat Essex mother gathered together her offspring and herded them off the train.

Coincidence? Hmmm…

Last night was much more fun: dinner with Kathryn, Emilie and Mark, and Mark telling us all about his bizarre Sunday night in St Petersburg. The whole city - apparently - goes gay on a Sunday. Kind of like a weekly pride march. He and his friends decided that they ought to combine this with a trip to the local midget bar for maximum strangeness.

After hours of searching, they found it - eventually - only to be disappointed: there are no gay midgets in St Petersburg. At all. So instead they were having a tall peoples’ themed night.

Hmmm… OK. Maybe more amusing if you were actually there.

At least I got next week’s travel sorted out. Out on the roads, mopping up places we should really have seen, but never really paid much attention to.

So, Monday it’s Stratford upon Avon. Tuesday, Warwick and then Nottingham. Wednesday, York. Thursday, Manchester. Friday, Birmingham. Saturday, head back home.

I’m not even going to guess how many miles that is.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 28th, 2004 at 11:59 pm and is filed under London. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.