Thursday 10th November 2011, 7.15am (UK time) (day 77)
After having got up at 4.30 (Norwegian time – 3.30am UK) to undertake this journey, I wish I could adopt this position on a plane. But I think those days are past.
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Category Archives: Transport
Waiting for the late train, Hebden Bridge station
Wednesday 2nd November 2011, 9.00am (day 69)
What irritates me most about the public transport in this country is not the unpunctuality (which tends to be concentrated on certain lines at certain times of the day, and after a while you just learn to avoid them – if you can, of course). No, the thing that gets me the most is the stupid ‘no growth in numbers’ contracts which the train operating companies have signed.As a result, public transport is an utterly backwards industry in which there is actually no business incentive to increase custom. (Undergraduate education is becoming another one.)
There is one, and only one, reason why such a state of affairs is tolerated: it’s because every journey by public transport represents a little redistribution of tax income. The government like collecting tax, so encourage us to use cars, which are enormous sources of tax revenue. They don’t like paying tax back out. so don’t want us to use public transport, which is ‘subsidised’ (I call it ‘invested in’). As a result Britain has the highest public transport costs of almost any country in the world.
But despite everything, it’s still a damn sight better than using a car.
The train home
Monday 17th October 2011, 5.50pm (day 53)
6.52am train in this morning, arrives Manchester 7.40ish. 5.17pm train home, arrives Hebden Bridge – supposedly – about 6pm, except today it was 7 minutes late for no particular reason. Thank God I don’t have to do this every day. Some people do, but it would kill me. (Note the photographer reflected in the window above the head of the napping guy.)
Helsinki railway station
Tuesday 27th September 2011, 1.00pm (day 33)
Good morning meeting in Helsinki then off to Tampere on the train for tomorrow’s conference. Wish I could submit more than one photo of Helsinki’s superb 1930s-semi-Stalinist style railway station, but this one will have to do.
Evening light, Manchester Airport
Monday 26th September 2011, 6.00pm (day 32)
To mark the start of its second month, this blog is going international for 3 days – to Finland, as it happens. I wanted to get a shot inside the airport to try to encapsulate the day but they are such intrinsically boring and bland places, and you keep thinking that if you snap away, some security guard is going to come and confiscate your phone. Fortunately while we were on the taxiway waiting for take-off, the evening light shone just so, and something came of the wait.
Being 42 