Off the rails on the rails

My £15.80 bought me an awful lot of track and platform time yesterday. If you look at travelling by train from that angle, it's great value for money. The journey into work was awful, delays, overcrowding, lack of information and a very fat lady. I went for drinks after work in Wimbledon, the fifteen minute journey took an hour on a train crammed full of Chelsea fans (bless 'em). The evening finished off with a dreadful two and a half-hour journey home. I even got to ride on a brand spanking new train with all the mod cons: nice seats, electronic doors, great toilets, a man in front with a red flag and a top speed of four miles per hour. I finally got to bed at around 1:00am. I should have spent around two and a quarter hours in total on trains, it was more like five and half. Even third world countries like France have better railways than we do. Not very good is it?

More is the new less or less is the new more

A return ticket from Haslemere to Esher, a round trip of 60 miles, costs £15.80. A return trip from Haslemere to Southampton, a round trip of 100 miles costs £13.70. So, it actually costs £2.10 less to travel 40 miles more, that's 5.25 pence cheaper per extra mile. By my reckoning, a train journey of around 260 miles should be free; any further and they should be paying me. I'm sure that the pedant club (Andy, Simon or Witho) will correct my maths, but you get my drift.

Get knotted

All seems well with the new job so far apart from the fact that gentlemen are expected to wear a collar and tie. I haven't worn a tie for any length of time for ages. I spent the entire day today messing with my collar and making emu like gestures with my neck. I've never seen the connection between the wearing of a tie, an uncomfortable, restrictive, pointless, irritating and outdated item of clothing, and the ability to write computer programs or to do any kind of job. It doesn't keep me warm, it doesn't protect me from any danger, it's made of silk so I can't wipe my nose on it and I'm almost certain that it doesn't make me attractive to the opposite sex who incidentally don't have to wear them. Apart from using it to hold up my trousers should my belt break, what is the point of a neck tie?

Indoor work, no heavy lifting

New job report. Locals seem friendly enough, a couple of familiar faces, social chit chat going on around the office, a decent desk, a post 1970 PC, young ladies in the inmmediate vicinity, working email and phone, a promise of interwebnet access soon (subject to sensible usage blah blah blah) and an "Internet Café" on site until it arrives. No complaints so far...

Jargon busting

FYI, I'm being bombarded with TLAs, FLAs and SLAs. WTF does it all mean BTW?
NFI, FIIK!

TTFN

Right lads, tea break over, back on yer 'eads

Back to work tomorrow. It feels like the end of the summer holidays.