Last day today of 10½ months of the sheer hell that has been a 3hr+ daily commute to work.
No, I'm not moving jobs sadly, as I will still have to travel to Feral Ashford in Kent (Yes, I do live in central London, yet work in deepest, darkest Kent. Don't ask me why).
From Monday though, the new High Speed 1 starts a a full domestic service between St Pancras & Feral Ashford down the Eurostar tracks.
This means no longer a turgid, arse-numbing, soul-destroying 90min train journey that trundles through the quaintly-named Kent countryside. No more High Brooms, no more Pluckley, no more Westenhanger. No more fucking noisy bastard schoolkids getting on at Sevenoaks, leaving shredded Metros and banana-skins strewn in their hormonal, ready-brek fuelled wake when they alight at Headcorn.
No more eccentric, slightly disturbing old fella who wheels the snacks trolley up and down the carriages in the afternoon. A man who refers to his trolley as "my little metal friend" and enters each carriage, every day, with a blustering "Hi honeys, I'm home!" (It sounds cute, but after hearing it 5 times a week for 10 months, it loses most of it's* charm and just becomes grating).
No, none of this for Fantastic Mr Ox any longer. I will instead from Monday have but a 40min journey on a Hitachi pyow-pyow bullet train touching speeds of 500mph (or around that figure). I will be stopping only twice on the way, rather than 10 stops. I will surely be surrounded purely by be-suited international businessmen, rather than snotty, skid-mark panted kids.
The 20min walk to St Pancras will mean it's still 2hrs of communting a day, but that's pretty standard for most who live and work in London so I can't complain too much at that.
I can't describe how much of a change it's going to be to my quality of life, getting an extra 45min in bed in the morning and being home by 6.15 rather than 7pm of an eve.
[Charing Cross at 6.55am this morning. Never again.]
I'll still have to spend most of the day in Feral Ashford of course. Brrrr.
*Yes, I know.
IT'S charm?
ReplyDeleteListening to "Hi honeys, I'm home!" 5 times a week for 10 months was entirely your fault. I would have proceeded like this: Bribe the man with 5 pounds and give him a list with 5 different sentences to use (for each day of the week another one). May be he would have wanted ten pounds. I, for one, would have offered him 20, possibly much more if he would have promissed to sing, alternativeli, one day "O sole mio!", the other day "Funiculì, Funiculà" while wheelng the snacks trolley up and down.
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