On the train this morning, three people in a row failed to lock the toilet door, and two of them then got caught with their pants down (in both the English and American senses of the word).

( Read more... )

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, you can now use Oyster cards on National Rail; this is a good idea, but they could have implemented it better. Since then, I've had several problems with it, where I've had to pay the £4.30 maximum fare (in addition to any price capping). They say: "Please remember to always touch in and out during every journey." ( Read more... )

I've just been to the station to renew my season ticket. My cunning plan was to avoid the queues tomorrow morning, but lots of other people had the same idea, so I wound up in a big queue today instead. Ah well, at least I wasn't rushing for a train today, so it worked out ok overall.

The big change for 2010 is that you can now use Oyster pay as ( Read more... )

Today got off to a bit of a bad start, when I was woken up at 5am by one of my upstairs neighbours shouting "Why the f--- did you wake me up?" (I'm guessing that he was oblivious to the irony.) However, it improved after that. I'm taking a long weekend, so I'm not back in the office until next Tuesday, and today I went down to Brighton.

( Boots, bookings, and beaches )

As other Londoners will know, London Underground are on strike again. This doesn't directly affect me, since I use the Overground trains, but there has been a knock-on effect, even at off-peak (ish) times ( Read more... )

Well, that didn't go quite according to plan. Following up on my earlier post, I tried to head into work, but I only got as far as Clapham Junction before I had to turn around and come back home. Normally that round trip would take me about an hour, but today it took 2½ hours. I phoned into the office and checked that no urgent problems have arisen ( Read more... )

Here's one for the Oxford academics in our midst: a rather expensive train journey ( Read more... )