On the Buses

For 48 hours at the end of last week, the greedy bastards of the RMT union decided to pull another strike, affecting the Piccadilly Line - serving a huge swathe of London from Heathrow via the West End to our neighbourhood in North London. Usually, this kind of petulance causes huge disruption to everyone else trying to get to (their far lower-paid than anyone working on the Tube, for sure) work, as the buses (particularly in this Northerly stretch) become dangerously overcrowded. I have had to walk to work on previous occasions, which was not too horrendous from our previous locale, but now we are two miles further North would have been problematic.

However, the far-sighted management at Transport for London had the genius idea of hiring/bringing back into service a whole fleet of classic Routemasters and similarly vintage vehicles to take the strain. So, over a three-day stretch, we were treated to the most fabulously nostalgic commute. It took me right back to my youth - I almost sparked up a cigarette (as was traditional) on the top deck!

Continuing the nostalgia, here's an appropriate song for the occasion, courtesy of today's birthday boy, the sadly-missed Marc Bolan and T. Rex:

T. Rex - 20th Century Boy

Friends say it's fine
Friends say it's good
Everybody says it's just like rock and roll

Well, it certainly felt like being back the the 1960s.

Trying to forget

Another week, another Tube strike. It's miserable weather out there, too, just to add to the mood.

Knowing what the transport chaos was like last time this happened, I expect I'll end up heading to work on foot. To "gee me along", here's a baffling interpretation of an appropriate song.

Why are there three pianists? Why are they wearing flower pots on their head? Questions, questions...

Just walking in the rain
Getting soaking wet
Torturing my heart
By trying to forget

[2019 UPDATE: This particular song is gone from the interwebs - so you'll just have to make do with another cheesy rain-related number from Mr Welk's show instead:]

Lawrence Welk Tap Dancers & Singers - Singin’ in the Rain

Around the world in eighty brews

It's an adventure!

Think of me, sweeties. Today, in the middle of (yet another) Tube strike - it seems a £40k starting salary is not enough for them; boo hoo - I am wending my way from our abode in North London to a meeting in Kingston-upon-Thames, which is about as far south as one can go before London ends and the "Home Counties" begin. The Overground rail and the buses are "unaffected by industrial action". Apparently.

We shall see. I have my trusty pith helmet and native guides at the ready...

...and no doubt will need a Cup of Brown Joy by the end of it, like that "arch Victorian" adventurer, Professor Elemental!

Professor Elemental - Cup of Brown Joy

Professor Elemental website

Oh, the irony

Eurostar is set to make its inaugural journey today from Paris to London travelling at 186mph on a new high-speed line.

When it gets to Kings Cross St Pancras, however, any passengers or crew will find it bloody difficult to get anywhere as London is currently in the stranglehold of the odious Bob Crow and his RMT friends who have called a 72 hour strike on the tubes!

Yet another example of the sheer schizophrenia of British industry - on the one hand, we are proud inventors and builders of some of the greatest innovations the world has ever seen, from the Industrial Revolution to the World Wide Web, and on the other hand we continue to be crippled by the archaic bully-boy tactics of unions and money-grubbing laziness of employers who prefer to battle each other and make life generally miserable for us, the innocent citizens.

It is no wonder that amongst some of our European "partners" this country continues to be a laughing stock.