Sunday 7 June 2009

Up up and away

The Docklands Light Railway is an easy way of getting to London City Airport, according to the airport's website and and Transport for London's website. Easy peasy, no hint of engineering works anywhere. So I get off the tube at Bank (the Circle line having already let me down) to find the relevant bit of the DLR apparently closed, for engineering, and an incomprehensible bit of paper advertising a replacement bus service. Well, we all know what those replacements buses are like, you're better off walking. So I took a cab. Except I didn't; at 8 am on a Saturday the City of London is deserted, those bankers don't get out of bed for less than a million, and not at all on weekends. After 20 minutes of waiting and wandering I get one to stop: "Sorry mate [mate? what happened to guv? was I just demoted?] I can't get you there, all the roads are closed, I've just come from the East and I've seen it." Fuck fuck and double-fuck, I've got a plane to catch and a connexion to make in Schiphol.

How can they close off an airport and not tell anyone? Has some arse, offended by some slight to religion or ancestors, set off a bomb again? So back into the tube and ask someone in a relevant uniform if I really can't get there. "Oh, take the tube to Plaistow, there are buses running from there". Now this is so clearly insane (Plaistow??) that not even I believe it, so I get off 2 stops later, go to a DLR station and see an actual train driver, the first person to say something coherent and true: "I can take you to Canary Wharf, and there are buses from there." It's my only chance at this point, so I go for it. And at Canary Wharf bugger the buses, there is a cab driver who gets me to the airport in time. Whoof.

OK, rant over, only not quite. Look, I understand that engineering has to happen, but why is every piece of information about it either concealed or invented? If I were some wretched Japanese visitor faced with this depravity I'd never want to return. Whose fault is it? Isn't that pointless buffoon BloJo in charge of TfL, so it's him, isn't it? How can I, in my turn, reduce him to weeping frustration? Can I hire a skilled rentboy to spend the weekend bringing him nearly, but not quite, off? No, that would be too much like Eton. Suggestions please.


15 comments:

Kevin Musgrove said...

This is my daily life on public transport.

Remember all that shite about "integrated public transport" from Old Two Jags and Tiny Liar?

Mrs Pouncer said...

Well, you can say what you like about "Titch" Hitler, but at least the trains ran on time. The present Mayor of London rang me the morning after my last child was born, pretending to be an obstetrician of great renown. "How's your lochia?", he rasped, and I was taken in, I am ashamed to admit. Therefore, he is due a pay-back prank, and I will be happy to administer it on your instruction, Inkermann.

Lulu LaBonne said...

You should consider chartering your own zeppelin from now on - I hear one can have terrific parties on board.

If you're worried about the fire risk - do you live somewhere hilly - could you go by glider?

xerxes said...

Kevin, you're saying I need rentboys for the whole parliamentary Labour party as well? Not the kind of party Lulu has in mind, I suppose, but the boys and the zeppelin will, well, they won't cause cashflow problems because Precision Handling doesn't have problems like that you understand, and we only take public transport to set an example, but they'll run to a few quid.

Mrs P, nobody denies BloJo's a clever aunt, but he's an aunt for all that and needs dealing with on that basis.

Gadjo Dilo said...

"I've just come from the East and I've seen it" - did he have wild staring eyes and a malarial look about him? I used to work in Plaistow. For the health service.

xerxes said...

Gadj, come to think of it, he did. Sort of gaunt-looking he was.

You mean Plaistow really exists?

Gadjo Dilo said...

Yes, Plaistow exists, but only in a 1950s throwback kinda way, with people who look like Reg Varney sitting around in pubs all afternoon complaining about how lazy everybody else is.

Mrs Pouncer said...

Gadj, what is this? You are pre-empting me in the cruelest way! I have just referenced On the Buses in my comment to you on mine. People will think we are in cahoots, or worse.

Morning, Inky. How's the day shaping?

BEAST said...

Lets jump the blighter Inky and boot black his genitals.
Which interestingly is listed as number three on the most irritating behaviour on a stag night with (especially the brides ) bracketed as an afterthought

xerxes said...

Funnily enough my father met Reg Varney once, said he was appalling.

As is the day, whatever day it is. Land of the Rising Sun my eye, the rain is steady and heavy.

Thanks Beast, you are the only one with concrete suggestions for dealing with the BloJo menace. But I'm sceptical about the bootblack, classic though it is; will it induce the frustrated rage that he needs?

Kevin Musgrove said...

Crivens, Inky, I would suggest no such thing. Though I suspect a zeppelin full of rent boys would probably pay its way eventually.

Now I've had that thought it tends to explain some of the clientele in most railway termimi...

Anonymous said...

have you tried putting pins in the penis of a wax effigy?

Gadjo Dilo said...

Great minds, Mrs Pouncer, great minds...

Mrs Pouncer said...

I am sorry that your father found Reg Varney a bore. I met him on several occasions, as my dear old papa was duty doctor on all the On the Buses films, and found him to be charming. He once gave me a new hairslide and a box of Terry's Neapolitans. He smoked Churchman's Olympic Tipped, a brand now lost in the mists of time. His autobiography (A Little Clown) is quite charming. Another good book is The Man Who Was Private Widdle (biog of Charles Hawtrey) by someone-or-other Lewis (I think; or Evans. Google it. My solicitor, Mr Fairleigh-Erleigh, has my copy on loan).

You see? Book recommendations; holiday reading. Verily, I am the Mariella Frostrup of this bloguerie.

xerxes said...

Would the company of rentboys in Virgin (o the irony) Trains' first class compartments be acceptable?

Nurse, are you saying that BloJo's penis is a wax effigy? Well well well, you heard it on this blog first. Make sure that everyone gets to hear it, that might do the trick.

Marijuana Brastrap also does relationship advice.