Public vs Private
Posted: Fri 23 July, 2010 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Driving, Norfolk, People, Thoughts, Travel 1 Comment »In my post about the mileage I’ve covered this month, Gordon pointed out
I use this invention called ‘the train’. Saves adding miles and miles to your car (cost).
And that’s a perfectly valid point. If I could, I’d use public transport – and particularly trains – a lot more. But there are some reasons why this month I couldn’t/didn’t/wouldn’t.
Among those reasons are :
- Hound
- Cost
- Convenience
- Time
- Practicality
Let’s look at just one of the journeys I did – taking Hound down to Berkshire – Wokingham, to be more precise – and compare driving to trains.
- Hound : There’s no way Hound could go on public transport without being muzzled. In the temperatures that were around when we did the journey, that’s just not going to happen – she’d be unable to pant properly or anything. She’d also be a complete pain in the arse – not just to me, but to everyone around – for the entire journey. And taking Hound through the London Underground while changing stations? You’re having a fucking laugh. In the car, she just slept in her basket, cool in the car’s air-con atmosphere.
- Cost : The cheapest I could do the journey, for a return ticket is (at the time of writing) £48.40. That’s not including getting to the station nearest home, or the cost of getting from station to kennels at the other end. (And back again) The 300 mile round trip in the car cost me about £30 – £35 (I can’t remember exactly) all in, door-to-door.
- Convenience : Again, door-to-door vs. all the fucking about of train travel, getting to station, travelling, three changes, getting from station to kennels, and back again. All while carrying dog stuff, my stuff, and the dog basket. Yeah.
- Time : Just for the train journey is four and a half hours. One way. Driving? Three hours one way. Door-to-door.
- Practicality : I’ll let you figure out which one’s best on this score. And we haven’t even touched on delays, travelling with other people, the ability to have peace and quiet while travelling, so on and so forth.
The trip to Manchester(ish) is an even better example, even if Hound’s not a factor…
- Hound : N/A
- Cost : Train (return ticket) £80.80 – best I can find. Car : £40 fuel.
- Convenience : Train ? Office to Bury St Edmunds Station. Three changes. Manchester to Oldham. Oldham to [Village]. Car? Door to Door.
- Time : Train (again, train only, one-way, not including sodding about) five hours. Car? 3 hours.
- Practicality : Car wins. Again. And I don’t need to fix everything around when the trains run.
I would use public transport more. But when you look at the factors in this way, you can see why I don’t…
Home
Posted: Sun 18 July, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Travel Leave a comment »I’m back home. I know, I didn’t actually say anything about not being home, but that’s because last week was chaotic, and I rather missed the opportunity to write any foreward-dated posts. Ooops.
Anyway, I spent the weekend with friends up in Manchester, and had a really good time. A three hour run from Bury St Edmunds up to Manchester, and three-and-a-half hours from Manchester back to home.
A really good weekend, just without access to t’internet (couldn’t remember the D4D password to use on the iPhone) which was also no bad thing.
Missing Options
Posted: Sat 17 July, 2010 Filed under: Business, Catering, Customer Services, Thoughts, Travel 3 Comments »On Saturday, the Js and I went out to the Olive Branch in Marsden, which they’d been to before and highly recommended.
The place is/was lovely, and the food was really good. Well worth the visit if you’re in the area.
There was one aspect that was really disappointing, though – and that was the vegetarian options. Both of the Js are veggie, and they’d said that the Olive Branch usually had a good selection. On this occasion though, the option was pasta. Fair enough, it’s “Ribbons of pasta, sauteed with mushrooms, garlic & sundried tomato, goats cheese & pine nuts“, but all the same, it’s pasta.
I think it’s still tremendously disappointing to go out to a restaurant and only see one or two fairly desultory veggie options. It just shows a complete lack of imagination and/or interest in the veggie market – and there’s a lot of vegetarians out there.
Even more importantly, if Herself had come along as well, she’d not have been able to eat anything, as she’s a) veggie and b) wheat-intolerant. Now sure, the Olive Branch says that you can let them know about food allergies/issues when ordering, but by then it’s a bit sodding late in some cases.
Doing good vegetarian options doesn’t take much – even a vegetarian stir-fry with some nice spices and a sauce is easily doable – and there are plenty of options out there. I just don’t know why the options aren’t more imaginative. Sure, not everyone is going to run a business like Greens in Didsbury, Manchester which is entirely vegetarian, but any decent chef could get some inspiration from the ideas there, or in any other veggie cookbook.
Mileage – Done
Posted: Tue 13 July, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Travel Leave a comment »All went fine last night. I got down to St Pancras in tons of time, and parked up to wait for Herself’s arrival.
Two downsides, as it turned out :
- You can’t leave your car unattended. Big signs tell you that unattended cars will be removed/destroyed. That’s going to put a bollock on your day for sure
- Turns out there’s two specific car parking areas, two big blue signs saying “St Pancras International” and two concourses (concoursii?) Guess which one I picked. Yep, the wrong one. Cue a conversation…
“Where are you?”
“Outside the station, in the parking zone, under the big blue sign”
“So am I”
“No you’re not”
Still, once all that got sorted everything was fine. And once Herself had appeared, I could nip in to St Pancras and find their toilets before another 2+ hour drive…
The driving was fine too – not too many idiots on the roads at that time, except for me – and we got home by 1am (having dropped off others as well – otherwise we’d have been home at midnight)
Mind you, today I’ve got the IQ of a stunned lemur, and could just curl up and go back to sleep right now.
Week Span
Posted: Sat 10 July, 2010 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Travel Leave a comment »This time last week I was driving down to Berkshire to collect Hound
This time next week I’m going to be seeing friends up in Manchester
This week, I’ve already been up since half six because of Hound. She’s been awake at 5.30 every day since Herself went off to EuroDisney. At this rate, Hound’s days may be numbered…
Driving (Again)
Posted: Wed 7 July, 2010 Filed under: Business, Customer Services, Driving, Travel, Weirdness 1 Comment »Last night was the day I took Herself and Others down to London. I’d already worked all day (as usual) so it was always going to be a late one.
As it turned out, I got everyone down to central London (Kings Cross / St Pancras) in two hours flat, dropping them off at 9:50.
By that time I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch, but wasn’t massively hungry, so just headed back up, thinking that if I got hungry I could stop at the services near Stanstead airport. (Birchanger Green, not that it means much) It was 10:45 by the time I got there, and by that point I was hungry enough that I could’ve eaten a scabby donkey between two pieces of bread. (Which is, of course, why I was even considering something from Motorway Services)
Only it turns out that Birchanger Green pretty much shuts at 10:30.
- Burger King – closed, cleaned up, and one lowly person wiping the surfaces.
- KFC – closed, deserted
- Waitrose – closed, deserted, barriers in front of the doors
- “Eat In” – open, a poxy range of crap (and overpriced) sandwiches, with a queue of people that outnumbered the sandwiches available.
- Shop – closed, barriered off.
And that was it. Nothing else. I assume it stays open for people in dire need of a piss, and that’s about it.
Bear in mind, Birchanger Green is the only services on the entire M11. And it shuts at half-ten.
Call me naïve, but I always thought services were supposed to be open super-long hours – if not 24-hours. That impression appears to have been wrong.
But I wonder how much business Birchanger Green loses by closing at half-ten ? The car-park was at least a third full when I got there. You’d think that being open ’til half eleven or midnight would make sense – particularly when they’re the only one in god knows how many miles.
Very strange.