Tuesday, August 12, 2008

The Traffic Gods Hate Me...

Last night the trains to Tonbridge were up the spout. Today the Blackwall tunnel is shut. So we drove along the A13 to the Dartford Bridge where there's an hour long queue. Does someone not want me to get home at the moment?

On days like this I would quite happily swap my life in the Westminster village for a job on the local Tesco checkout in Tunbridge Wells.

End of rant.

UPDATE 21.26: Having left the office in Westminster at 7pm, I've just got home. Luckily I don't have a cat...

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

David Cameron's going to change all this, isn't he!

Big rail investments, new road building programs and also extended congestion charging, we'll all be moving around with carefree ease under the next government.

Richard Brown said...

I was in Norwich today and took the train. On the way back, the sheer scale of the clockwise tailback on the M25 caught my attention. Looked like complete standstill :-(

Sorry to hear you were caught in it!

Anonymous said...

On a completely different topic I note that the main BBC news and regional news this evening reported..''An unexpected rise in inflation''

Unexpected? Do they think we are fools?

Martin

Anonymous said...

No you wouldn't. Iaian, because then you'd have to contend with customers like me:

"What exactly do you think you're doing to my chocolate deserts? Don't them roll down the conveyor like that...are you smirking at me? Manager! Manager!

Anonymous said...

Move to London!

Anonymous said...

Sympathy Iain, but during the recent Haltemprice & Howden By-election I received a phone call asking that we stopped refering to the Westminster Village...... the reason, a village only has one idiot! This was the first in a long list of memorable calls!

Anonymous said...

Iain,

That rant made me smile.

I can understand the frustration but no you wouldn't. TW doesn't have a Waitrose (your natural environment) and both the Tescos are not really very good are they?

The very thought of you on the checkout at Pembury!

Unsworth said...

Rotherhithe shut too? Then it's over the bridges and out through South London. Fortunately we have a bijou pied-a-terre in Battersea for just such eventualities - and the occasional discreet liaison......

Worth every penny.

John M Ward said...

Well, I've worked on the local (to here) Asda's checkouts, and it's not that bad an occupation, as it turns out.

I've never had a car, so don't suffer these problems of which so many speak or write. It seems to me to be a rat race, and I want no part of it.

Doesn't seem to have done me any harm during the past 59 years...

John M Ward said...

I hope an incoming government could change this, as Andrew Efiong suggests. To so do, they would need to embrace new technology ideas, and actively pursue (for example) the development of teleports to replace the frankly medieval concept of running around on wheels via tracks. That is so last millennium...

Anonymous said...

I genuinely feel sorry for you, I really do. There is a small plus, and that is you don't travel alone, so you can natter and rant and have a captive audience and the captive audience must listen and say "yes" in all the right places and pretend they havn't heard that particular rant before.

Anonymous said...

The Blackwall tunnel was shut? I went through there this evening at 7 something because of the huge delays at Dartford tunnel.

Blackwall looked open to me!

Anonymous said...

Get a job in the local mill at the top of the street and buy some clogs.

Iain Dale said...

Hmmm. That makes it even worse. There were such huge queues we assumed it must be closed, so headed for the Dartford Bridge. Whaddamistakadamakea!

Anonymous said...

Ha ha. Have you considered applying to be PPC for Chuck Kennedy's constituency? Beautiful driving roads.

Oh and before you take that Tesco's job get someone to explain their "steering wheel / traffic light" system to you. If you can scratch your armpits and say "Ook" you're probably the person they're looking for.

Bob said...

Do they have no Trains in Kent?

Anonymous said...

Martin said...
"On a completely different topic I note that the main BBC news and regional news this evening reported..''An unexpected rise in inflation''
Unexpected? Do they think we are fools?"

You should have kept listening. They went on to explain that it was the SIZE of the increase that was unexpected.