At the moment I’m commuting to London on a daily basis, which is a bit of a killer. It’s an hour (ish) on the M11 down to Woodford, then catch the tube from Woodford to central London. All told, pretty much two to two-and-a-quarter hours, door-to-door.
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.
At the moment I’m commuting between Bury St Edmunds and Cambridge by train. It works out for the best for me – the times work out OK, I’m really catching up on reading, and it’s cheaper than driving.
Currently, a weekly ticket costs me £45 , and parking at Bury Station is £12 for the week (or £3.50 per day…), so my weekly costs are £57.
Having looked around, the next station along, Thurston, is much the same distance from home, and the parking is free. So I thought I’d have a look at the cost of the ticket.
A weekly ticket from Thurston to Cambridge is – wait for it – £77. Yes, £32 more expensive for one station more. It’s not even that much of a distance…
View Larger Map
The actual route is the dead-straight run between the two, not the highlighted route.
Even more bizarrely, a weekly ticket from Thurston to Bury is – um – £14. Still more expensive than parking at Bury station, but less than half the price of the extended weekly ticket from Thurston->Cambridge.
I’m sure there’s some logic there somewhere. But damn if I can find it.
Via the Koriblr tumblr feed…
It's just a job - attributed to Muhammad Ali
Definitely something to remember when the workplace gets skanky
Via the linguistic/literacy genius known as Sevitz (or Svetzi) comes this gem…
Oh. My. God.
I’ve worked with some spectacular options for Yes/No, but this one is way up there.
Well, 2011 has started with a diagnosis for me of bronchitis. Great.
I’d picked up the cough at work before Christmas, where my manager had been coughing heavily. The three hours where he sat next to me coughing uncontrollably has obviously had a knock-on effect.
So my first week of 2011 now involves an inhaler, and a metric shit-ton of amoxicillin. Happy Days.
How to wind up someone in the office…
On receiving the nicely printed invites to the company Christmas Dinner, ask
So, it’s a do at the company’s Christmas Diner ?
The look of horror is pure comedy.
Along the way this week, I’ve picked up a foul cold and cough, which has laid me seriously low. So low in fact that it’s made me miss a concert last night – and one I really wanted to see, too – and contemplate taking a day sick off work. (I didn’t in the end, but it was a close-run thing)
Pathetically, I went to bed at 8pm last night – although I did then read for an hour- which is unheard of.
I hate feeling like this, being so utterly effing useless and drained.
