The Anti-Destination League Strikes Again

We're now two weeks into the new year-and it feels just like the old year. I feel like I am living something out of the film Groundhog Day: every day seems the same as the day before. It's a very strange feeling.

I've done the hospital/doctor/scan/mega-testing and prodding nearly every day for the past seven years, and I looked at my diary and realized that-by the end of January (this month. Not several years down the line) I should (allegedly) be just about done with all the medical palaver. Honestly, I could give my job description as "professional patient". But-as one consultant pointed out-I am still alive, and pretty well for my age. He could have left off the "for my age", though. I found that a little depressing.

But life in the yuck is same again-as Stephen King wrote, SSDD (same shit, different day). Transport for London (TFL) began by fighting its members over-get this, where else in the world would this ever happen?)-who operates the doors on the trains. Say what?? They're all striking over something so minor. It's a button. You press the button and it opens the train door. You press another button and the doors close. What is the big deal? Do the unions think it's funny to disrupt everyone's journeys by striking over who pushes the damned button?

And now some idiot has decided to build high-speed trains-driverless, yet- when they can't even operate normal trains without bitching over who pushes the damned button. And I call these people the Anti-Destination League. Anything to make people's journeys a nightmare-moreso than they are already.

All it takes is one hundredth of a millimetre of snow on the tracks and the trains stop working. A leaf on the line and the trains are delayed. The prices of tickets keep going up-they're astronomical now-but the service is absolute crap. No wonder people are so pissed off that they seem to crash into other people deliberately. It's the only chance they get to take out their frustrations without killing someone. Of course, people are doing that, too.

Not far from where I live there is an Underground stop called Archway. A lot of buses stop at Archway, and it's always very, very busy. So the Anti-Destination League, in its brilliance, decided to change all the bus routes around Archway Station. Rather than leaving it all as it is-or was-with traffic running as smoothly as it could do given the amount of cars and buses on the roads. Some imbecile (someone who needs to be identified so he can be gelded) decided to change a one-way street to one way in the other direction, and create filter lanes going up, around, sideways past Archway. So now there is a constant bottleneck-you can see your bus in the distance, but it takes twenty minutes (minimum) for it to reach you.

I went up to someone who was clearly a supervisor, standing next to the suits who (presumably) were big shots in Transport for London (hard to tell these days, though. Everyone is a boss. All chiefs, no indians-until it comes to accepting any responsibility for anything.). I asked whether this huge, cosmic blunder-this mess of road building-was permanent. One guy looked at me and said, "of course this is permanent, love (already I didn't like him. He called me love-he deserved a spit in the eye, but he was a lot bigger than I am). This is Britain, you know. Made in England".

I saw the opening-and I took it. "Yes, darling", I said, as sarcastically as possible, "and so was the Titanic". And I walked away.

And next week we get to have a cabbage in the White House. I swear, I'm ready to move to Iceland. I do hope they have Starbucks in Iceland. And Kettle Chips. Otherwise, I will need to do a re-think.