Up, dressed, breakfasted and at it by eight ey em. Gosh. There was a time, in the far reaches of my memory, where I would have to leave the house to go to the office. Eight thirty if I wanted to get in before nine but could have been any time of the day if I was heading somewhere for a meeting. Swindon, for example, where we had offices.
If I have to be somewhere for a meeting nowadays I as often as not go down the day before. Usually London. I remember sitting having breakfast in the window of a hotel in Westminster somewhere. Victoria it was. Outside was jam packed with commuters pouring out of the underground station heading for their desks. Wrote a poem about it at the time. Tagged it on to the end of this post. The queue to get into the station was longer than at the taxi rank.
I’ll be in the shed early today though with hindsight I made the schoolboy error of turning off the heat before I left yesterday afternoon. Hopefully there will be some residual warmth to keep me going until the radiator kicks in.
Ordinarily I should buy a lottery ticket today. This is because I just picked up the teapot to pour and banged my elbow on the back of my chair. This caused a spurt of tea to shoot out of the spout and land perfectly in my cup without spilling a drop. How cool is that? Clearly today is going to be a lucky day. I wonder what else might happen? 🙂 No rabbit’s feet or other lucky charms neccessary.
Here’s the poem. It’s called Journeymen and is from 12th Dec 2008.
I sit in the window enjoying breakfast at my leisure,
Taking in the traffic on the pavement outside.
It is cold out there and
The anonymous scurriers are
Wrapped up against the biting December wind.
They have been up early to get there
Though I am now just sitting down to start the day.
Full English, tea and toast and then
I leave the warmth of the hotel and venture forth
Looking for my destination,
Unsure of my options.
Heading for Victoria Station I swim against the flow of office fodder,
Miserable looking people subjected daily to discomforts of the commute,
Crushed into compartments,
Standing within sweat smell of strangers
Trapped on the treadmill of the city.
Trapped.
I take the taxi option.
It is the only one available
As the voluntary queue for compression
On the Underground looks longer than the taxi rank.
A good meeting and later I do take the tube
For a lunchtime get together.
Plenty of time to people-watch.
A mother speaks Spanish to two young girls
Who reply in both Spanish and English
As they see fit, lucky girls.
Otherwise few speak.
A busker enters the compartment
Complete with bedroll and survival gear.
Tattooed, with shorts and worn leather gaiters
He entertains poorly with a penny whistle.
The carriage ignores him with a practised survival instinct.
But I give him a pound as I leave at the next stop
Poor pickings, and all he got.
Homeward bound
On the train a phone sings out “swing low sweet chariot”
And a voice answers “hello?”
Others doze or are sucked into their laptops,
There is little talk as the chosen ones
Head home after a long day at their machines.
…
A few stats from this morning’s walk.
Pedestrian crossing 1min 25secs
Queensway 4mins 25secs
Curle Ave 6mins 30secs
Round trip total 14mins
Bit slower on way back due to left hip starting to play up but overall better than previous and I think these timings are a significant improvement on what has gone before.
On the way back I saw a bloke taking in his grey bin and a Chinese woman on an electric bike with two large containers of veg oil and a shopping bag in her basket. She may have had more oil on the other side but I couldn’t see. Another Openreach notice of their intention to add a new pole near to Curle Ave was also spotted.
It began to rain quite heavily. When I got back I couldn’t press stop on the timer when I got until I’d dried the phone screen so the end time is approximate.
Before heading out my pole testing pal Steve swung by. We were going to have a look at the pole I thought would be being replaced. However it was chucking it down so we didn’t and Steve said that looking at it as he drove by there wasn’t a red D sign indicating it was a bit dodge and needed replacing. Instead it was the normal yellow which is meant to be gold apaz.
The new pole is likely to be in addition to the existing one. They put metal ones in if it is near a spiked fence which is the case with us but also if the line needs to cross a road as in those situations the pole needs to be at least 5m high which the wooden ones ain’t. I’m sure there are other reasons as well. Our pole is metal as indeed it is near a spiked fence. These metal poles have to be accessed using a cherry picker. They don’t want engineers climbing the pole and slipping to their deaths on the spiked fence.
The new pole near to next door is unlikely to be used for lines to cross the road as we are opposite a school which is served by underground ducting. Steve had no idea why therefore the pole was being installed but tbh he didn’t care as he is now retired. I don’t really care either. There we go.