S*T*U*F*F* Reloaded

At least ten times a day, the thought crosses my mind that modern life in “developed” countries is just insane. The things we worry about, the craziness of the things we have to do making us stressed out and completely crazy in response. Like air travel and all that goes with it - Foy Vance gave a great post about that a couple of days ago, and I’ve just been through it, though to be fair, today was more my own fault… we’ve all done it - the “rounding down” of estimated times for travel, that suddenly leave you completely up to your ears in goat plop.

You know how it it goes. OK - home to London Bridge, that’s 15 mins, then up to Paddington, what, about 25? Then the Heathrow Express is only 15 mins, so no problem - leave the house at 9:30 and I’ll be checking in by, oh, 10:30.

No. That, alas, was “wine thought”. There was no train at 9:30. It was 9:40, and it was delayed. Getting from platform 14 to the Jubilee line at London Bridge does NOT take zero seconds, and neither does getting from the Bakerloo line on to the Heathrow Express, which also ran at weird times. And as for eventually getting to Heathrow, someone really should tell you that it takes the same amount of time as the train to actually walk to Terminal 2. Either that or you need to be an Olympic athlete combined with an HGV license to sprint through the endless walkways without completely trolleying some poor granny on her way back to Frankfurt as your suitcase follows your pixelated dash to the check-in desk.

More in a bit. I have to board.