Snow

It finally snowed today. And as usual, gritters were not out in time.

The roads turned into slushy, slippery dangerous skidways, but there were no accidents fortunately.

I had to head into Chinatown to pickup my contact lenses from the opticians. While waiting for the bus, two cars got stuck trying to climb the hill (it’s a notorious hill that has caused problems in the past during snowy, icy conditions, even the police got stuck the last time it snowed heavily)

Since the cars were now blocking the road going up, I decided to go and take a different route to Chinatown, and went via the Northern Line instead of the Piccadilly Line like I was originally planning.

The pavements were slushy and there was not even any sign of gritting. The station pavements were gritted, but presumably by the station staff, and not the council.

Even while coming home and trying to climb the hill to my house, my shoes were not gripping well, and had to take small steps to make sure I wouldn’t fall.

Dangerously incompetent, that’s what my local council are.

“Amended” Timetable

So “amended” means having a two hour gap in between these two trains…

And this morning, coming into London, for the first time, I found a Piccadilly Line train starting from Oakwood, which is very rare.

Post-Christmas Day holidays

Well, it’s the day after Boxing Day. The day where the majority of people who haven’t taken the interim days off on holiday, go back to work.

There was definitely a run-down feeling on the train ride into work and the trains were running a reduced (probably a Sunday service), so I ended up running for the earlier train since my normal one wasn’t there today.

TFL’s French WiFi

So, Transport for London appears to be routing WiFi traffic out to *France* on some underground stations.
 
I was passing through Marble Arch the other day and Swarm was picking me up as about 8K from L’Arc de Triomphe in France
 
and Bond Street showed me as in the neighbourhood of Sevres (11K from L’Arc de Triomphe)
 
Since I was underground, the only method of geolocation was the WiFi endpoint, meaning the traffic was going through to France. But *why* ?

London’s Ghost Stations: Mapped | Londonist

abandonedstations

A really interesting map of all of London’s abandoned and partly-abandoned stations. Some of which I knew about (Mill Hill East for example), others, like Highbury + Islington, which I use daily to get to work, I didn’t know had a different surface building at one point.

Source: London’s Ghost Stations: Mapped | Londonist

Taking the Same Train Each Day…

When you take the same train each day, you notice things….

  • The person with the crazy hair
  • The person who reeks of BO or has a flatulence problem…
  • The person who always never has time to do her make-up and spends the journey doing her face
  • The person who always wears winter gear even in summer. Or summer gear in winter
  • The person always sleeping with their feet on the opposite-facing seats
  • The person who always brings a FULL-SIZED BIKE onto the train
  • The person who brings a smelly McDonalds/Burger King meal onto the train.
  • The person who has an open can of Red Bull (can’t they f**king change the smell on that thing?)
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