This week I'll be mostly keeping calm and carrying on at Clapham Junction

"Gonna barf on you"
Smith/Stephenson/Atkinson/Langham

You will remember that I've previously mentioned The Unfortunate Incident of Feeling Quite Definitely Not Very Well at all in Quite a Big Way on the 7.05 Jersey to Southampton. You will remember that the received opinion was that your blood pressure can be affected by a plane depressurising, and that if your blood pressure is stupidly low on a good day, then good luck staying conscious on a Monday morning on the Flybe into work.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself Feeling Quite Definitely Not Very Well at all in Quite a Big Way on the 6.06 Salisbury to Waterloo on Monday morning. Now, to my knowledge, trains don't get pressurised. I mean, they don't exactly travel at much of an altitude. So maybe it's just something to do with Monday mornings in general. Hmmm, there's a theory that needs further investigation.

This week I'll be mostly not sure what to write

How do you spell horribilis?

For one reason or another, we've been holding our breath since the end of September. If the Queen had had a year like that, she would've called it an annus horribilis.

For one reason or another, I've not really been in the mood for writing.

(Yes, yes, I know, yet another blog about writing blogs. Yawn.)

So now that I've decided to think about the possibility of getting around to putting pen to paper, I have a dilemma.

Do I ...
(a) continue with the recent vein of depressing drivel that I've been churning out recently about various forms of public transport, and financial woes, and the like?
Or
(b) return to some of the more light-hearted topics of a few years ago, like finding scary stuff in the fridge, and riding cows bare-back, and severed legs in carrier bags?

This week I'll be mostly on the ferry

Welcome aboard the Hythe Ferry.

At ten minutes past six every morning, there's a clatter from the train as it trundles up around 600 yards of track to the end of the pier.  Five minutes later it clatters back, and on it goes, every twenty minutes until late in the evening.  It's a relatively interesting way to wake up; it's up there with sheep, church bells, Jersey cows and peacocks (Oakridge, The Rectory, The Croft and Bywood respectively); it's way more pleasant than the post train or crows (Old Stables and Oakridge).

This week I'll be mostly on the train

"Leaving on the midnight train,
Leaving, never gonna come back again"
- Rossi/Young

It's been around 10 years since I last did a regular amount of commuting on the train.  Back in the early 90s I was getting the Brimsdown to Harlow for a couple of years.  It was a nice little half hour journey, and I didn't appreciate how good I had it.  By the mid 90s I was doing Broadstairs to Tonbridge, one and a half hours on a good day, two changes, one at Margate and one at Ashford.  It was a nightmare, but not quite as bad as driving.  By 2001 I was getting the 4:30 Margate to Victoria, which took two and a half hours to get into London, two and three quarters to get out.  When 9/11 happened and we all emptied out of London expecting to find planes flying into Canary Wharf or whatever, I had a carriage to myself.  The train at platform 5 was due out already and people were quite literally fighting to get on.  Me and handful of other people just went and sat on the later train on platform 7.  When our train left on time with a dozen passengers on it, the platform 5 was still bursting at the seams and the guards still couldn't get all the doors closed.  Since then, I've driven or flown to every place I've worked at.  But we digress.

This week I'll be mostly on the bus

"Form a line to the front
Form a line to the back"
- Gouldman

(This is not about leaving.)

There's a class of people in Chandler's Ford.  Middle class.  They know how to queue for a bus.  They're British.  They stand quietly and wait patiently.  They're elderly.

This week I'll be mostly unconscious on a plane

Erm, where am I?

Back in 2006 I was on the Flybe Exeter to Jersey.  We were about 10 minutes from landing when I started feeling decidedly unwell.  I mean, quite definitely not very well at all in quite a big way.  I frantically worked out where the sick bag was.  Next thing I knew, we'd landed, the plane was empty, and a flight attendant was saying in mono "excuse me sir, are you ok?"  As her voice came back into stereo, I mumbled something, got up and staggered off the plane.  I felt like death warmed up.  I must've looked bad too, because I got stopped by airport security on the way out.

Well that was a bit odd.

This week I'll be mostly on a boat

"It's very very nice here"
Bown 2002

Right now I should be sitting at home, with my feet up in front of the fire, reading Autosport.  Instead, I'm on a boat half way across the English Channel.

Why?

Well, yesterday evening I should have been sitting on a plane, with my seat-belt on and my seat-back upright, reading Andrew Benson, Freakonomics, and Bel's Randomness on the Kindle.  Instead, I was on a train from Southampton to Chandlers Ford.

Why?

In a word - fog.

The fog has rolled in across the Channel Islands for a few days, and there is mayhem.  All the flights have been cancelled.  There have been no newspapers (or Autosport) since the mail plane can't land.  You've got hundreds of people at dozens of airports all thinking the same thing - catch the boat.  While BA, Flybe and Blue Islands might be making a loss, the cabbies at Poole harbour and doing a roaring trade between station and ferry terminal.