» Public Transport Trauma

not *my* worst experience, but I think I had a hand in it...
Seat reservations on trains - the dumbest idea since, well, privatisation.

Picture the scene, the minus-one-carriage commuter special between London Paddington and the South West. And it's rammed. Every seat taken, corridors full, vestibules full. We're only a few people short of thinking about using the roof.

At the front of our carriage, I sense a disturbance in the scrum. It's a middle-aged woman, fighting her way through the crowd. "scuse-me, sorry, scuse-me, sorry".

She slowly moves down the corridor, and gets to my seat.

"That's my seat" she says.

"How so?"

"I've a seat reservation"

(thinks - seat reservation, great, so you paid less for your ticket than me, and you got a seat reservation for free with it. Riiight. That's convinced me to stand for the rest of the journey.)

So I say. "No, sorry, the train is rammed, there's no seats anywhere. I made a point of getting to the station early so I could sit down."

"mutter-mutter-grumble-grumble-dreadful"

And she pushes on through the train.

"Ah, good." thinks I, problem solved.

I settle back and try to do some work.

Halfway to Reading, she's back. With the guard. Bewildered head shaking from around the carriage.

Poor guard is obviously embarrassed. But he's only trying to do his job so I close down my laptop and start to stand up.

"Can I just check your ticket?" he says to the by-now triumphantly beaming woman.

He frowns.

"Ah. This isn't your seat. This reservation refers to the next train. In fact this ticket isn't valid on a peak time train. So you need to pay £65 or get off at the next station, and let this gentleman sit back down."

Her face falls as she shells out the extra for a valid ticked. I retake my cherished seat. And then I suddenly have an evil thought.

"would you mind my seat while I go and get a coffee?"

(apologies for length, but it was missing a carriage...)
(Fri 30th May 2008, 10:51, More)

» Rubbish Towns

Pontypridd...
... ponty-sodding-pridd. One long uncovered sewer draped with pound shops and dodgy phone shops, with a pustule of gruesome pubs at either end. And right in the middle... the Taff Vale centre. A shopping centre which appears, at first glance, to sell only chipboard (for the purposes of replacing windows). A piss- and vomit-stained 60s concrete job, with a condemed towerblock on top. And three shops still trading.

So far, so Hartlepool, you may think. But the residents of Pontypridd live there... usually the kind of folk who moved out of the south Wales valleys for a bit of cosmopolitan buzz.

Once I mentioned to a Ponty lass that I was going to a meeting in London later that week. "London," she said "I'd hate to go there. It must be like Pontypridd on a saturday afternoon... every...single...day!"

Ponty even boasts a university, which sensibly does not mention it is based in Pontypridd and is moving to Cardiff as fast as it possibly can.
(Fri 30th Oct 2009, 11:41, More)