Changing Places

I was working from home yesterday and foolishly answered the phone when it rang.

No one has that number and, even if they did, wouldn't use it to contact me in the middle of the day.

I was surprised when it was a human and not a machine, then less surprised when the lady began with "I'm from XXX and I'm calling you about a recent car accident".
I don't know why these companies keep on going. Surely, after all these years, every member of the British population is sick of being cold called by speculative accident chasers hoping you can be taken in and believe that your insurance company called them, or similar.

So I cut her off, as always, and pointed out that my phone is registered with the TPS, which I hoped would result in her hanging up, as everyone else before her always has.
But no.

"I'm not trying to sell you anything", she says.
"Really?" say I, incredulous that she thinks she can get away with that, because I think she is trying to sell her company's services to get me compensation money for my supposed accident. I clarify and she is adamant. She isn't trying to sell me anything, and anyway, someone had contacted her company, calling from my number and asked for a call back.

At this point I saw the opportunity for some fun for me.

"Sorry?" say I. ".You are telling me that some stranger came into my house and called your company from the phone inside my home? That's really concerning. Can you get more details about when they contacted you? I may have to contact the police if I had an intruder!!."

That flummoxed her. We continued like this for a while, with me demanding she get me details about the time and date of the call from my home; her saying she had no further information than an automated text; me saying that someone in the company must be able to give her the information and they surely should because it was a very concerning security issue for me.

In the end she hung up, promising to call back once she had got the information; refusing to give me the name of her company, refusing to give me a number to call her back on in case she didn't call me.

I'm wondering whether that 15 minutes of preventing her hassling someone else and, potentially, worrying some other person about the safety of their own home was enough, or if I should contact my telephone provider and see if they can get me any details about who the company were so that I can call the police and report them for such shocking lies.

Cyclists have right of way when they are cycling on your left.

You should never overtake them and cut in left.
If you plan to turn left across a cycle lane then you should be indicating well in advance so that if you're in traffic and the cyclist can go faster than you then they can see your intention and aren't surprised by you suddenly turning into them without warning.
Yes, cyclists can be annoying. Yes, waiting for them to go by on the left can be annoying. Yes, there are cyclists who have cut you up and made your drive harder and yes, lots of them regularly ignore red lights.
However, there are also lots who obey traffic laws and they don't deserve to die or get seriously injured because you can't wait 30 seconds to be sure that other road users aren't endangered by your driving.
If it is cold and wet and raining, the cyclist is cold and wet. You are in a dry, warm car.
If there is a hill, the cyclist is working physically hard to get up it and has to start again if you force them to stop. You have to touch a pedal with your foot.
If the cyclist isn't able to stop in time when you cut them up, you may be facing criminal charges, severity dependent on how badly you hurt them.

Please take care.

So, despite my year long injury from cycling; and a tumble from the bike a few weeks back that gave me an impressive bruise on my inner thigh, about 10 x 3 inches big, I still way prefer cycling to work.

The tube: last week pushing 33 degrees C on the line I'd catch if I was commuting.
The tube: frequently delayed
The tube: overfull of people playing music over loud and not having the decency to shower before going out in the morning

Tomorrow I have shoulder surgery. Tomorrow I have to be at the hospital at 6:30am. Tomorrow, the tube has decided to be completely closed. Every station (so I can't even go to my closest mainline station and get on a National Rail service) and every line.

What should take half an hour will take well over an hour, require a bus journey out of London to get to a train station where there are staff who don't feel like taking a day off to protest their life conditions and impact those of millions of innocent others.

The tube: closed when needed

For the next two months I'm not allowed to cycle to work. I'm seriously considering whether 7.5 miles is too far to walk.

Whenever I find myself somewhere where I don't know the language that everyone else is speaking I feel a bit insecure and a bit impolite or unintelligent.

So be the last two days.

I've been in France, where a surprising number of people speak about as much English as I do French. That is, not a lot. When I know the context I can just about make out the gist of conversations going on around me and I do at least know functional vocab: Merci, Au revoir, Bonjour, Je ne peux pas parler en francais ... Still, from 1995 when I started learning Hungarian the first words to mind when I try to recall French are Hungarian. Even when I know the French.

So I can't speak French at all.

I become this useless English person expecting everyone to understand if I just speak slower and louder. More slowly and more loudly - watch my English revert as I try to communicate with fewer words.

A friend came over this afternoon to help me rig up a butterfly net to keep pigeons out of my space. He said it would take a couple of hours and it took more than six - but now I have a beautiful 2m x 4m net, nicely tensioned and with no gaps that pesky pigeons can get through. If they try to enter my property then they will bounce.

I didn't get up properly till mid afternoon, then ran 7.5 miles in the rain, had a long bath and am now cooking dinner and watching last night's debate. A decadent lovely day.

Yesterday morning a typically careless pedestrian walked out into the road forcing me to brake sharply into an emergency stop. The pressure against the road embedded a bit of glass in the front tyre, meaning I had to stop and wait 40 minutes for the first cycle repair shop to open so that I could buy a new outer tube.

Then this morning, my Oyster card only barely worked on the way out of London and the guy at the ticket gate who helped me make it work advised that I get it replaced as soon as possible.
Then, cycling the last leg of my commute, the pedals stopped properly turning the back wheel. I called round some cycle shops and they all had excuses why they couldn't help me out tonight.

So I decided that what I'd do was limp my bike across the mile or two to my doctor's appointment, pick up a replacement Oyster at London Bridge then limp the bike across to the cycle shop near my gym and office and get a train home.

Before my doctor's appointment - I had 15 minutes - there were 20 people in a queue for one ticket seller. I walked up to the national rail office but there the only option was to pay £12 for a day travelcard, which was pointless given that I'd already got a travelcard on the Oyster.

After the doctor's appointment there was a "we are temporarily closed" sign at the ticket office. No luck there.

So, figuring I was travelling across the city I thought I'd stop en route.

Cannon Street = friendly staff but nothing they could do.
Bank = ticket offices inaccessible with a bike
Barbican = no one there at all, I waited and a non-English speaking guy came and told me he'd look for the supervisor. 15 minutes later, no sign of non-English guy but the supervisor came back and told me he couldn't help.

Cue girl tears.

"I've been to four places already, please at least let me go home."

They let me on for free.

I can use my friend Oyster to get into London in the morning and then I have to see about getting my bike fixed. Also need to get my main Oyster working again sometime before Monday. Should be easy at the weekend but I'm not counting on it.

Someone under a train, cancelling the one I wanted to catch. Delay 20 minutes.

(Although I was lucky, most of my colleagues, not planning to cycle from a slightly further away station had to go to that station and walk or weren't able to get in for well over an hour.)

I've been doing a lot of daily commuting this year so far. For the past two weeks, my standard commute has been a minimum of 2 hours, so even 5 minutes of delay is a frustrating nuisance.

But this is how it's been:

• Last Wednesday: Signal failure on the District Line causing Severe Delays. An extra 45 minutes.
• Last Thursday: Irreparable faulty train caused mine to be cancelled, and knock on effects on later trains to mean an extra hour. Then there were too many people for the bus so I had to wait for the next one. An extra fifteen minutes.
• Last Friday: Taxi came five minutes late so I missed the train by one minute. An extra thirty minutes waiting for the next train.
• Saturday: Fool that I am I decided to use public transport at the weekend. Crane activity in the local area causing severe delays to buses. First one didn't stop because there was no space. Had to walk up to main road. Plus thirty minutes.
• Sunday: Engineering works on line, trains going more slowly than normal timetables. Plus ten minutes.
• Today: Signal failure at mainline station. Trains unable to leave platform. Plus twenty minutes

What is wrong with trains in this country? Why can't there be even one day when public transport runs to schedule?

And it's winter, so it's cold waiting.

There is no snow, but the sun rose prettily over an icy lake.