Saturday, April 05, 2025
Some of the places I've been since my broadband disappeared a week ago
BestMate's sofa: 45 minutes of proper broadband and I managed to catch up on all sorts of things, including adding the photos and links to Unblogged March which was previously bereft.
Bank: I'm always amazed how often the all-encompassing adverts up the Waterloo & City line travelator get changed. At the moment the company desperately trying to get noticed is called beazley (lower case), who do underwriting or something, and I guess if just one corporate bigwig notices and switches their company's services it's all worth it.
Bromley-by-Bow: I mentioned last month that the tube station's glass frontage has been seriously damaged for over two years and never been repaired. Now someone's climbed up and graffitied it with red, black and white paint and it looks hugely worse. Get a grip.
Burnt Oak: A plaque commemorating "a century of service" has been unveiled in the station ticket hall, five months after the actual centenary. I was unimpressed enough not to bother taking a photo (Ian has one).
East Dulwich: I was also here.
Feltham: Something that's never happened to me before - the 235 bus was so full that the driver checked its weight on her dashboard and announced there was only leeway for one more person on board. Three Eastern European workmen kindly allowed me to take the last space.
Grove Park: I spotted a van putting Superloop roundels on shelters along new route SL4. Half are at stops where you can't catch a special bus because the express section is all behind you. Absolute waste of money.
Harrow-on-the-Hill: That's the educational outpost up Grove Hill, not the station. It's really quiet up here when Harrow School's not in session. It turns out they broke up for Easter last Saturday at 11am, a week before most schools, because the more you pay for an education the fewer weeks you get.
Heathrow T4: I hadn't ridden a purple train to Heathrow before, mainly because of the cost, but can confirm that the usual £12.80 fare really is zero with a 60+ card.
Honeypot Lane: I was also here.
Kenley: As promised I went back and added the post I would have written on Sunday had my broadband not vanished. It's about bus route changes, to save some of you from looking.
Keston Mark: The traffic lights at this busy crossroads weren't working because they'd been smashed. Peculiarly two of the four poles were bent over at right angles so it couldn't possibly have been a single accident, more likely a deliberate act of vandalism by some self-entitled vigilante who hates cameras.
London Loop section 22: I took BestMate to Upminster Bridge and re-walked part of the London Loop (one of the shortest sections, I'd thought, but on closer inspection merely lower quartile). The weather was glorious if windy, and the recent drought meant the "can be muddy here" sections were reassuringly solid underfoot. We met two very nonplussed goats, disturbed a woodpecker, wondered what the crop in the field was, identified the planes stacking over Redbridge, spotted several butterflies, attempted to identify the source of some dung, crossed the Ingrebourne, admired much magnolia, noted with sadness the replacement lampposts, wondered what neighbourly feud had inspired a massive hedge, debated what would become of the tumbledown farm outbuildings, compared the constituent heights of 24-year-old woodland, passed a wooden grasshopper, Instagrammed a pylon, wondered how frogs spawn in a dried-up pond, dissed a statue of King Harold and admired the Parcels entrance to Harold Wood station. It's not the thrillingest bit of Loop but it was much better than I remembered.
Marylebone: The staff in the information kiosk wear swooshy capes with 'Bicester Village' on the back, which to the target audience probably looks endearingly Harry-Potter-ish but I suspect the average Brit just giggles.
Oval: I was walking around some bikes outside the station when I suddenly tripped, hard, onto the pavement and fuxbolx that hurt! I had to pick my glasses out of the road. Several kind people asked if I was OK and I said I was, then limped to a nearby wall and sat there for five minutes while I undazed. The bruises were impressive. The blood has not yet washed out. I require neither your sympathy nor your medical opinion, thanks, nor am I counting it as my first Senior Moment. But it was a visceral reminder that one day my body won't be capable of standing after a fall like that, so just be careful OK?
Putney Bridge/Mortlake: I did this journey by train and bus, I wasn't rowing.
South Norwood: I was also here.
Sudbury Hill Harrow: The cheapskates at Chiltern Railway have removed all their timetable posters "as part of a commitment towards a more sustainable railway". Instead they've printed a poster directing passengers to their "digital timetable page", henceforth and forever, which is fine if you've got a functioning online connection but a fat lot of good if you turn up phoneless and want to know when the trains go. They do say "ticket office staff can print timetables on your behalf from most of our station booking offices" but what use is that at an unstaffed station like Sudbury Hill Harrow? This is one of London's very least used stations and now you can't even see when its infrequent service runs. The lack of a printed timetable poster isn't saving the planet, merely a minimal saving for shareholders and a self-inflicted inconvenience for passengers.
Sundridge Park: I was also here. I'll be back.
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