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...

As I mentioned in A Capital Day Out , I'm taking a trip to Manchester next month. Ideally, I'd have booked the return ticket in one easy transaction – but putting my hands on £73.00 is beyond me at the moment. Even though my travel costs will be reimbursed afterwards, I'm trying to find the most economical way to do the journey within the scheduling constraints. It's the outward leg that's the stumbling block. I need to be in Salford by 4.45 p.m., so I've had to make sure that I'll get to Manchester with time to spare in case of disruptions. With this in mind, my first port of call was the Arriva Trains Wales website. I've seen numerous advertisements for their bargain fares over the past few months, in the stations, in the pocket timetable, on the trains themselves, and on their website. According to these, the cheapest single fare is £13.00. That sounded like a good option to me, so I had a closer look at the website. Isn't it odd how, even with my...

Shanara the Dippy Bint texted me last week out of the blue and asked me when I was planning my next trip to Cardiff. I told her that I wasn't planning a trip at all – £7.00 for a return ticket represents a fair chunk out of my Giro. To make matters worse, thirty quid of this fortnight's money has come and gone already on another rail ticket, this time to Manchester. (All will be revealed in a month's time, don't worry!) But she insisted that we had to meet up soon. For one thing, she's expecting her second baby at the end of November. For another thing, I saw enough of Cardiff during the run-up to Xmas when I was working there, and I certainly don't think I can face a day there for 'fun.' So we eventually agreed to meet for lunch yesterday. It was an interesting day out, to say the least. I'd planned to catch the 10.21 train, but first of all I had to call into the Library and book my ticket to Manchester. Luckily, I'd stayed overnight in Rhian...