HS2
Posted: Wed 11 January, 2012 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Politics, Travel, Work-related | 3 Comments »Yesterday, the UK Government approved the HS2 high-speed train route from London to Birmingham, and potentially then on to Leeds and Manchester.
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.
2012 – The next twelve months
Posted: Thu 5 January, 2012 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Getting Old(er), Resolutions, Stupidity, Thoughts, Time, Weight Loss, Work-related | 4 Comments »This year I’m not going to lay down a big old list of plans. They rarely work out, or I’m just too ambitious – or other things take over.
Take last year’s list, for example :
- Write more
- Take more photos
- Do more websites
- Get more business
Pay stuff offGet off the antidepressants
Not much, really. Yet most of it didn’t quite happen. Work and life got in the way, and things just didn’t quite happen.
Mind you, I did get off the antidepressants, and I did take photos when I got the chance, so that’s not too bad. I also completed a fair few websites, and some other projects – just not for myself.
I think I’ll be keeping the same basic list for this year though. It’s written with the best of intentions – but the knowledge that things change, including my motivation. But I think the 2012 list will be (in no particular order) :
- Write more
- Photograph more
- Owe less
- Weigh less
And that’ll do, I think.
2012, and 2011
Posted: Wed 4 January, 2012 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™, Domestic, Thoughts, Travel, Work-related | Leave a comment »So here we are, in 2012. I’ve been insanely slack this winter (and for a fair amount of 2011, to be fair) and I still don’t know what the plan will be for D4D™ in 2012. We’ll see.
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.
Radio Silence
Posted: Thu 22 December, 2011 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Driving, Work-related | 4 Comments »Over the last few months, things here at D4D™ have been pretty quiet. Mainly that’s been down to being madly busy, but also it’s fallen off my radar a bit.
So it’s been a tad “Radio Silence” here – even the upcoming Festering Season hasn’t made much of an impact this year. Commuting has taken a big chunk of my ‘non-work’ time, particularly where I’ve been working in London. Overall, my commuting miles since May ’til the end of this week comes to just over 19,000 miles,and that’s just for commuting. Yes, nineteen thousand miles. I must be barmy.
All told, it’s been an eventful year, what with one thing and another. Work changes (as above) took up a big part of those events, and kept me busy.
Writing in general took a back-seat, and D4D™ in particular. I wonder if it’s coming to the end of its life, to be honest – because I haven’t really missed writing here at all.
2012 is now just round the corner, and it’ll either be a time to re-start, or a time to give up. And to be honest, I don’t yet know which option will win.
Pushing the Odds
Posted: Mon 26 September, 2011 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Commuting, Driving, Work-related | 4 Comments »Since starting the current contract at the end of May, I have now covered 12,000 miles just in commuting. In short, I know the relevant route enough I could almost sleep-drive the entire thing. Indeed, I have dreamed the commute on a couple of occasions – and believe me, that is no fun at all, because you wake up and have to do the entire damn thing again.
By the end of this contract (at the end of October) I’ll have covered 15,000 miles, just on the commute. And that’s just the driving section – although admittedly the driving part is by far the largest.
12,000 miles is – apparently – the annual mileage for the average driver in the UK, which goes some way to explaining the idiocy of my current commute.
Anyway, one thing that is coming more and more to mind is that I’m probably really pushing my luck when it comes to not having any form of accident involving another vehicle. (Which neatly avoids the time I spagged the car into a fence) I’ve seen the after-effects of plenty, and come damn close to seeing a few happen in front of me, but as yet – touch wood – nothing’s actually happened.
I hope that I can maintain that status through the next month…
Tender Tendon
Posted: Wed 7 September, 2011 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Health, Work-related | 5 Comments »For the last month or so, I’ve been having issues with the tendon to my left thumb. I don’t know what the hell I did to it, but it’s been extra-painful.
The GP said it’s apparently tendonitis (or tendinitis, for some reason) and prescribed some weapons-grade anti-inflammatories that have done cock-all.
So I’m due back at the GPs in a couple of weeks, once the anti-inflammatories are finished, and we’ll see what gets said this time.
In the meantime, it has periods of being “OK-ish”, but then there are others where anything at all hurts. And I can’t fucking wait ’til those periods are over and done with.
Junction
Posted: Thu 1 September, 2011 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Driving, London, Work-related | Leave a comment »During my regular commute at the moment, I drive down the M11 into London. This involves one of my most-loathed junctions ever – the M11/M25 junction.
If you hit it at the wrong time, it can be snarled up beyond belief, for miles on either side. It’s a hateful piece of road.
You can begin to see why from the Google Maps image of it…
It’s just a nasty piece of work. If you’re sticking to the M11 coming from London, you have not one but two lanes trying to get onto it from the M25, and everyone tries to get out into the outside lane. It’s totally common to see people wedging their cars into gaps only slightly larger than the cars themselves, and it leads to tailbacks and frustration.
Then once you’re (finally) past the two lanes, all the idiots decide that they’ll stay out in the outside lane, and add their stupidity to the mix too.
All in all, it’s a piece of road that I loathe with a passion.