Is Your Journey Really Necessary?

On December 15 I decided to stay up late and work on this blog at home. My back's giving me a lot of trouble again, especially now that the cold weather has arrived in earnest. I'd left the house only three times in a week – and two of those were with Stella, just because we were both climbing the fucking walls with boredom! Rather than try and get comfortable in bed (which I've discovered to be a waste of effort!) I sat in my middle room, opened a bottle of wine (with some difficulty) and listened to a random assortment of music while I tried to type out the first draft. However, before that I treated myself to a couple of films. The first was The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash (1978), starring Neil Innes and Eric Idle. I bought it on DVD about five years ago and watch it every few months when I need cheering up. It's a very clever pastiche of The Beatles' career, with some wonderful songs and videos performed in The Fab Four's distinctive style. Although it'

I found this on an old 3½" disk at home a couple of days ago. I'm reproducing it here as a preamble to the next entry  Nice Work If You Can Get There – and as an indication of just how little the situation has changed in nearly twelve years. PM BBC News Centre London January 7, 2001 Dear Sir/Madam, For the past five days the news has been dominated by in-depth reports into the state of Britain's rail network. We have heard sad tales of commuters struggling into London on ageing rolling stock running on a decaying infrastructure, faced with increasing delays and yet another round of fare increases. We are told that the industry needs billions of pounds worth of investment. We have heard reports that the network is 'six engineering resignations' from total meltdown. We have even been told that Transport has overtaken Health and Education at the top of the Government's list of priorities. It's funny how the issue of transport only makes the headlines when Lon