James Bell // Personal Blog

Having not made much effort to update my internet fanclub of 0 (zero) with my life's events, i'll begin rekindling my love(hate) for blogs(rants) with a lovely message:

Fuck You public transport.

So this week i've had to work my final night shifts for January, which incidentally was a Friday, Saturday and Sunday consecutively, causing me to have zero weekend (or atleast, spare time in-line with the rest of the world's weekends). This normally i'm not so fussed about, but the month so far had been rather busy anyway, and i'm yet to have the spare time on shift you'd expect from nightshifts, and rather than having some lazy time to get life admin and nightshift scripting done, ive actually been working none stop - although obviously made time for a few seasons of breaking bad here and there.

Follow up:

So anyway, back to the nightshifts - this is normally fine, and especially this weekend it would of been extra-fine because the only thing i missed out on was being cold in my bedroom, as my housemates were split between north africa and the glorious UK south coast. The only thing i had on my mind to do was attempt to complete some play time on my new found computer game, battlefield bad company 2.

This, ofcourse was the BETA early release - of which i have secured a CD key to play the game a month before it's release date. So off i trott, install the game, insert CD key - key in use. great. ring Play.com, "sorry, email blah@blah.foboff.play.com". So, no playtime on that game, hoping on saturday i might get another go with a new key i goto bed in anticipation, wake up at gone 5pm and have zero time to do anything but prepare to go back to work again. Work at 5pm? no. I start at 8pm, but due to Transport for London's lovely maintenance works, all transport across the city requires a PhD in Anger Management, and a 3 hour commute. Closing essentially every possible route east and west between my house, and the office, will make James mad.

So 2 days gone, nothing achieved. (apart from reading more of my book due to more time spend standing around on trains and the platforms.) Right - screw this im going to my girlfriends he says. So Monday daytime is relatively nice, i get to see my girl and chill out.. all until around 9pm when the homeward journey begins, and the shit hits the fan, As i have to travel to Nottingham... using public transport. Not only was the train journey to my house slow and delay ridden, as was the journey from my house to kings cross station, consequently missing my train northbound, and as apparently there is a lack of customer demand for late night trains - the normally half hourly service has, for one night only, been cut - to one train, at the end of the evening, at 11.30PM.

At this point i'm already annoyed by public transport - but just to make things a little more interesting, my phone cuts out and battery dies, and i shortly realise that if i attempt to get an 11.30 train, my 1am arrival in Newark could cause some end of journey problems with regards to availability of taxis in a small town in the early hours of a Tuesday morning. Here begins the tale of attempting to find a public seat, with nearby power socket, to charge my dead laptop, and indirectly charge my phone. So there i am sat in the Kings Cross public lounge, with me, my phone and laptop combination and two distinctly shifty looking Muslim men (no, im not racist, i can spot a Muslim man and point it out without being politically incorrect), speaking, well - shouting.. loudly at each other in Arabic in a large empty room.

So here's me with my head half under a table, plugged into my hard drives 3 inch mini-usb cable, attached to the side of my laptop, plugged in under a public bench, trying to ring A. my parents, to inform them of my delay, B. my girlfriend, to let her know i might have to come back and start the whole journey again. C. 118118 (which takes 10 minutes to pickup at 10pm apparently), to find some local taxi numbers, whilst sat next to some loudly arabic speaking men. By the time i pursuade Mrs 118118 to text me some taxis numbers my phone implodes under the strain of 3 phonecalls and informs me im no longer allowed to use it, by turning itself off, and refusing to power on. GREAT.

So anyway, finally i'm on a train after an hour and a half wait in the station, to once again find all the small things that bug me about train journeys are still apparent. For example, Free wifi, courtesy of East Coast trains - who apparently outsourced the internet service to a swedish ISP, so everytime you view a site that pre-determines your location, you have to tell it no, infact i do NOT live in sweden and want to read these pages in ENGLISH. Oh, and ive just realised my laptop battery seems to have finally given in, and will not power my laptop without the AC adaptor.

Oh, and apparently it's perfectly fine to start engineering works on an in-use train line without notifying the drivers of any trains on said line. So once again tonight i am WAITING, for a further 10 minutes for the guys in orange fluorescent jumpsuits to get off the motherfucking train line so my 40 carriage monster of a train (with about 9 passengers) can carry on its journey. I think that rant made sense, its late and i'm tired.

So, do I miss my motorway going luxury saloon car with turbo charger and leather seats? yes. fucking yes. give me my car back