Could the great railway pioneers of Britain — people of vision and enterprise, greats like Brunel, say, or Stephenson — have conceived of the ‘rail replacement bus’, do you think? Particularly at 7.50am when it’s not even light yet? At least it was an opportunity for a study in yellow and blue.
I had a work meeting today, that included lunch, face-to-face with two other people. The rail service is having its annual summer ‘upgrading’ spasm and so my journey to and from this meeting was a complex — but not, it should be said, unpunctual — tangle of three different trains, two buses and a taxi.
All in all then, a sense of normality returns (perhaps leaving out the bit about punctuality).
Second day in a row to somehow be connected to fast food. But hey, that was my weekend, whether at Bamber Bridge (as yesterday) or in the nation’s capital (as today)…
I’m sure we all love 3.15am alarm calls, especially after the conference closing party the evening before — when the phone went off, I had very little idea where I was or what I was doing. At least the sun was up — it’s flare encouraging a move to monochrome for this shot featuring fellow attendees Susannah and Coetzee presumably wondering what they were doing up as well, at a time equivalent to 11.15pm at home, thus meaning it was before midnight on the previous day when I started my journey home — to where I arrived 21 hours later. At least the early start let me keep up with the news from the Election.
Farewell to Siberia then — I saw a very small part of it though mainly it was just sitting in a room. Pleasant weather though. But let’s not talk about the mosquitoes.
Ah, the airport bus, a quintessentially 21st century mode of transport: in that it’s a rather pointless extra waste of energy because, let’s face it, we could all just walk to the terminal building. Gardemoen airport, Oslo, makes its second appearance on the blog, but this was not my final destination: I had another couple of hours’ journey north after this. More on that tomorrow.
Sometimes the light is right as I am walking to the office in the morning. Sometimes, like today, it’s better in the evening. So it goes. Why a ‘ghost’ bus? Well, there are no passengers on it; and the route indicator says something weird, like ‘Logistics’ which definitely isn’t a district of Manchester.
Due to the 24-hour industrial action on the Tube, the bus stops on Euston Road this morning were like scenes from Dante’s Inferno. The bus advert just adds tragicomedy.
The weather has switched from decency to foulness pretty quickly. Having once more gone into Manchester, this time with Joe to sort him and me out a new phone each, our train journey home was terminated at Todmorden due to flooding on the line somewhere between Hebden Bridge and Sowerby Bridge, so we were on the bus for the last leg of the journey. Dull this picture is, but it epitomises how it’s all suddenly got dark, cold and damp. Welcome to November for real….
Anyone unfamiliar with Manchester might imagine for a moment this pic is Photoshopped, but no, you really can see upward of 11 buses in a row on Oxford Road at certain points in time (not to mention the two or three more that were just to my left as I took this). On the one level this kind of phenomenon amuses me, but on the other hand I can’t help thinking of the other communities out there (like Sabden, Shap) that might benefit from having a spare bus or two now and again.
More transportation, this time the bus back to the hotel after the conference dinner. There seems to be something amusing both Alexandra in the foreground and the gentleman behind, who happens to be Marc Prensky; those of you active in the education field may have heard of this guy (digital natives etc.).
Being 42 