The London run was a 70 mile drive one-way, so a 140-mile round-trip, plus the 10ish miles on the Tube each way. Amusingly, it took an hour to do the drive, and an hour to do the time on the Tube.

Since then I’ve taken on a new contract, this time working in Luton. The driving time is a bit less – about 2 hours in the morning, 90 minutes in the evening – for a few more miles, about 80 each way all told.

Everybody else insists I must be slightly mad to do the driving I do, but I really don’t mind it. It’s a longer distance sure, but it regularly used to take the same time to travel by bus from home to Oldham when I worked there. It used to take even longer when I was commuting by train between London and Bath, or London and Manchester. (And yeah, those runs were seriously insane)

In general I’m less stressed when it comes to commuting by car than when I’m reliant on public transport – people piss me off too much for me to want to travel with them now when I can avoid them.

I probably still am stupid for driving/commuting as much as I do, but it suits me, so I’m happy with it.

We’re now living in a little village, and none of the roads that access the village have been gritted/salted. All three roads really only go to the village and that’s it. It’s a cut-through route to other villages, but none of them are apparently important enough to justify gritting even one of the roads. Thanks, local authority.

So travelling in and out of the village is a bit more interesting than usual. Normally you’ve got to deal with mud on the roads, but now it’s snow and ice.

I’ll admit, snowy/icy roads are about the only road conditions that make me a bit nervous. I had my first (and still only) accident on snowy roads, and I’m just not a great fan of driving in those conditions. I still do drive in those conditions, it’s just probably my least favourite situation.

So I’m a) hoping it all fades away pretty soon, and b) thankful that 99% of my current stupid daily commute is on major roads that aren’t going to be a concern on that score.

Personally, I don’t understand the need for HS2 between London and Birmingham. There’s already several ways to do that journey.

To my mind, what’s *really* needed is a cross-country route, rather than another up/down-country route.  For example, at the moment I’m travelling between Bury St Edmunds and Bedford on a daily basis. It takes about 65-75 minutes door-to-door, which is OK.  However, if I were going by train, I would have to go Bury St Edmunds -> Cambridge -> London -> Bedford – around five hours of travelling time. And that’s ridiculous.

We simply don’t (to my understanding) need another ‘length of the country’ high-speed route. We do need one that goes across the country – from Cambridge across to Oxford and on to Bath/Bristol. That would have allowed for far more useful routes and better links, and would probably be better used.

As Blue Witch suggested in her comment on the previous post, 2011 wasn’t really a great deal of fun for D4D™ – plus I’ve been busy with other odds and sods.

Being ‘Corbetted’ (as I understand it’s now known) wasn’t any fun at all. Basically, this involves being threatened with legal action because you’ve made comments regarding your personal opinion about someone’s stupidity in light of a very stupid error – and that person then doesn’t have the sense to either contact me (whether by phone, email, or comment on the posts in question) but instead waits two fucking years before complaining through solicitors. We’ll just ignore the fact that Article 11 of the EU’s Human Rights Charter specifically says …

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression.  This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.  The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected.

After all, Gore Grimes conveniently ignored it, so I might as well do the same.

So that might explain some of why things went a bit quite here.

The other major change for me was that I stopped wanting to write about some of the more personal stuff that’s been going on. Writing that kind of thing bit me hard at the end of 2010, and the effects of that rumbled through into 2011.

D4D™ used to be a place where I could write, and dump my brain when I needed to. In 2011, it stopped feeling like I could do so.   It affected my desire to write at all, to be honest – well, that and the stupid levels of commuting, but that’s no decent excuse either.

I don’t know what will happen to D4D™ this year. It may be that it’s coming to a natural end. After all, it’ll be ten years in August – maybe that’s a good closing point. I don’t know yet.

I don’t know that I want D4D™ to end. I don’t know that I want to keep it going.  So it’s all a bit up in the air, and I guess only time will tell.

This time next year London will also be hosting the 2012 Olympics – which should make things pretty interesting.  The other day, advice came from the transport minister that Londoners – the people who live and work in London – should ‘try and avoid peak times for travelling in London’

Transport minister Norman Baker urged Londoners to avoid peak times or change their routes to avoid pinch points during the 17 days of the Games, saying: “It’s time to oil the creaking bike, dig out the walking boots, work out how to use the video conferencing equipment, and fire up the laptop,”

Genius.

So the people that use – and pay extortionate amounts to use – the transport services should find alternative methods, while visitors for the olympics are here. In other words “The transport infrastructure can’t handle the extra traffic“. Well there’s a shock. People have been saying it for at least the last ten years, to my knowledge.

So what’s the point of bidding for a huge event like the Olympics, if you already know the infrastructure is knackered and can’t deal with the extra people?

In general, I have to say I’ve been pretty impressed with it.

On the downside, I’m now on my third one – the displays don’t appear to be strong enough to withstand being carried in a backpack without an additional case. The first one cracked after a couple of weeks, the second one cracked within 24 hours, and the third one has been fine – allbeit because I’ve now got a purple leather case for the damn thing.

Throughout the problems, and the need to replace two devices, I was really impressed with Amazon’s customer services. In both cases, I went to the website, registered the issue, and clicked “Call me now”. Immediately, the phone rang, I was put through to an adviser, and the issue got sorted. The replacement was couriered out (and arrived next day) and I then had 28 days each time to send the broken device back – again, postage paid and done by courier. It was the most painless returns scheme I’ve seen in a very long time – and impressively done.

As for the Kindle itself, it’s a nice bit of kit. The eInk display is a bit slow and weird to update, but you get used to it very quickly. Actually, the entire thing is a bit slow – if you’re used to blipping through options etc., you have to learn to slow down a bit. I think it’s all down to the limitations of the display, but it’s livable-with.

Reading on it is – I find – very simple. No eye-strain (there’s no backlight, so it’s black text on a grey screen) and no problems. The text is clear, regardless of font size, and all told it’s pretty good.  Purchasing books is totally painless – click to order the book, and within 30 seconds it’s on the device. Very nice indeed.

It’s not the same as reading a ‘proper’ book- but it’s also a lot less intrusive, and easier in crowded situations. A lot of the books I’m reading at the moment are “trade paperback” size – which seems to mean ‘about the same size as a hardback’ – and on the Tube or whatever, they’d be a pain to read while people thump past all the time. With the Kindle, it’s a lot easier.

All told, I doubt Kindle will replace my books totally. However, when it comes to reading while commuting, it may just make the difference.

Parking in Woodford though is – to say the least – weird.

The car-park on Chateris Road is owned and run by Redbridge Council, and it’s pay-and-display. I use RingGo to sort out the parking, and that makes things even easier – use the iPhone App to pay using my linked credit-card, and job done. £4.80 per day to park – that’s it.

Because the weird thing about the management of this car park is that the ticket machines don’t actually work at all ’til 9am. They won’t accept money, they won’t do anything. You can’t even pay online or by phone until 9am. I tell people this at least three times a week when they’re trying to get a ticket.

It’s the weirdest and most customer-hostile method of operating that I’ve ever seen. Although, on a more cynical note, I wonder if the reasoning is that if people think the machine’s broken, and don’t pay for a ticket, maybe it makes more financial sense (to the council) when they end up with parking tickets for £30 or £60, instead of paying the proper £4.80.