When it comes to transportation, the week that has just passed was less then enjoyable. It all started on Monday. Since I don't have a car, and I live so close to the train station, the ideal form of transport is the train. Or so I thought... Normally, the journey is easy - I have a five minute walk to the train station, hop onboard and have a four minute journey to my destination. From there, it is a ten minute walk to work. All-in-all quite pleasant, as long as it aint raining. This week however, things went a bit different...

It all began on monday. I walked to the train station, and I do admit I was a bit on the late side. I ran most of the way, arriving at the station in a rather exhausted fashion. To my dismay, the big display in front of the platform showed [cancelled]. Great - that means a 30 minute wait for the bloody next train. Unpleasant but ok, it can happen so I wasn't in a too bad mood yet.

Wednesday. Again I am slightly on the late side, so another run to the station. After a few bumps into innocent bystanders and an almost fatal fall from the, in my opinion, dangerous stairs on the station - I arrive at the platform two minutes early. Nice job I thought - and walked confidently towards the waiting train.  In front of the train stands one of these guys that had a streak of bad luck in life and thus ended up as a train conductor. I have no other explanation of why people would choose such a job. Anyway, since he had the worst job in the world, he obviously wanted to make my life miserable as well - as the doors of the train were closed. Inside the train, behind the door stood another person with a blue hat. Both of them had their arms crossed and stood looking at me with their heads slightly tiled, narrowing their eyes.

"The doors are closed" said the one on the outside. "I can see that..." was my reply. "So.. what about opening them?"

"No, I am going to signal the train to leave", was his only answer. To be perfectly honest, I was a bit stunned by that reply and could only say "Erm.. Oke???" with a puzzled tone. Indeed though - he signaled the train to leave and off it went. With me still pusing the button to open the door...

Let's leave it at the fact that I was not happy at all and used some profanity that I regret now, even though he deserved all of it.

Friday - surely the best day of any week. We have something called 'casual friday' which means we don't have to wear suits and ties, but can wear our jeans and whatever else we want. Within reason of course. Very pleasant and on top of it, it is almost weekend. I would have been perfectly happy were it not for the British train system once again. When arriving at the platform, nicely in time, the board once again displayed [cancelled].

That does it really, as soon as we moved to our new house I am taking the bus. Expect a rant about that within a few months, if the rest of the public transport system is anything to go by, I wont enjoy that either.