Buggeration

I have nothing against unions. In fact, I’m all in favour of them. I was a proud member of the NUJ for years. But sometimes, it’s true, they can be a pain.

An email from Wales this morning with a link to when the rail workers are planning strike action in August and, as far as I personally am concerned it couldn’t be worse.

Plan was to go to Wales on August 15^th for two days with an option to stay a couple of days longer. Well, the rail workers have buggered that up. No trains on the 18^th or 20^th. There will be train service on the 19^th, so I could get to Euston, but that’s the day the city is going to be paralysed by a tube strike. Absolutely no bloody idea how to get from Euston to where I’m staying by bus. I’m sure there is a way, but it would be a bloody nightmare. 

Well, do I remember trying to get to work when there was a tube strike. Traffic moving at a crawl with millions of extra cars on the road, overcrowded buses that drive straight past the bus stop where one had been waiting and waiting and waiting. 

I remember one in particular in the 1980s. I’d been standing at a bus stop in Finchley Road, waiting for half an hour for the first of three buses I needed to get to work near Waterloo. A bloke pulled over at the stop, rolled down his window, said he was going as far as Piccadilly, if anyone wanted a lift. While everyone else at the stop demurred, I hopped into the front seat. He did the same thing at the next bus stop and two women got in the back. That’s when he told me he’d stopped at every bus stop for a few miles and I was the first one who’d accepted his offer. Well, why wouldn’t I? The traffic was moving about two miles an hour, so it wasn’t as if I couldn’t just get out of the car if he turned out to be an axe murderer. Clearly having a woman in the front passenger seat had encouraged the two women in the back. I ended up walking from Piccadilly to Waterloo. Instead of arriving at work at 10am, I arrived at 12:15pm. That evening I just went to the pub after work, stayed there until the traffic had died down and got a cab home.

Of course, the government could negotiate a settlement with the RMT before then, but the odds of that happening a pretty fucking slim.

So, no extended stay in Wales.

Bastards.