Posts in category "UK"

Dear Fat Controller

Occasionally, I use South West Trains to commute from my home in sunny Norbiton into the City of London. However before you say anything, don't worry, I am not a merchant banker despite what my friends say.

Today, in an attempt to secure a seat, I delayed my departure slightly and caught the legendary 08:36 service from Norbiton. Unfortunately, I narrowly missed a highly prized seat when a rather forceful gentleman, who boarded after me, miraculously managed to reach the last vacant seat 0.74 seconds before me. Bastard.

According to the official South West Trains timetable, which is proudly pinned up in my downstairs lavatory, this service that leaves at 08:36 should take 30 minutes, precisely, arriving at its final destination at 09:06.

Today's journey left on time and arrived at Waterloo at 09:14 - a mere 8 minutes late. This isn't 5% late. This isn't 10% late. This isn't 20% late. This delay of 8 minutes on a 30 minute journey represents a delay of 26.66667%.

Still, I guess I should be grateful that the cost of my weekly TravelCard (Zones 1-5) has only increased by a paltry 6.81% from £44 to £47 from January 1. If the Financial Controller from South West Trains saw these metrics, he may well (incorrectly) conclude that if the trains run 26% late, then the cost of the ticket should rise by the corresponding percentage.

During our extended, tedious, never ending journey where we frequently came to a grinding halt outside a station or lingered for four thought provoking minutes adjacent to that cemetery near Clapham Junction, I am pleased to report that we were afforded the courtesy of the occasional helpful announcement from the guard: 'Ladies and gentlemen. We apologise for the short delay but we are being held at a red signal. We hope to be underway again shortly'.

The thing is - this delay isn't a one-off. This isn't a delay caused by the inclement weather we experienced before Christmas. This sort of delay is now routine.

In fact, these delays are so routine that people don't even moan any more. People just shrug their shoulders, scurry along the platform onto the tube network and accept this poor service as the norm.

Thankfully, I don't have an annual season ticket and I am not condemned to using South West Trains every single working day. I am an occasional commuter but whenever I do use the service, it invariably arrives late. Once it was just 12 seconds late - if only the driver hadn't lingered at Wimbledon reading the football reports in 'The Mirror'.

Now, I guess it would be an interesting exercise to keep detailed metrics for all my journeys in order to support this bold claim with statistical evidence that could then form the basis of a compensation claim.

However, I refuse to do this for two reasons; firstly I simply can't be arsed and secondly that way lies danger and obsessive compulsive train-spotter disorder (OCTSD). Before you know it, I would be stood, wearing an anorak, on a wet and windy, desolate platform 11 at Clapham Junction late at night holding a video camera, desperately trying to capture the rare '337919' engine that powers the Gatwick Express.

Obviously, I don't want to waste your time and money by forcing you to issue a stock response to a yet another stock complaint from 'Mr. Angry Commuter from Redhill' so here's my constructive suggestion in order to significantly improve the service between Norbiton and Waterloo.

Simply increase the planned duration of all journeys between Norbiton and Waterloo to 45 minutes. Currently some journeys are scheduled to take 28 minutes while others are supposed to take 30 minutes. This inconsistency needs to be addressed.

Altering the timetable in this way will help ensure that all journeys arrive not just on schedule but ahead of schedule as in early.

This seemingly minor change will have multiple benefits; commuters will disembark, happy and smiling, consulting their watches and exclaiming '8 minutes early. Again. How fantastic. What a marvellous service. I really must email South West Trains congratulating them on this sustained improvement in the service'.

Following this modest increase in the estimated journey times, customer complaints will rapidly fall to zero. This means you can sack all the people in the customer service centre with a corresponding beneficial effect to the very important 'bottom line'.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, South West Trains will meet all their performance targets and you will be eligible for your massive financial bonus and a well deserved promotion to 'Morbidly Obese Controller'.

Hopefully, you will consider this suggestion and implement it initially on a pilot basis on the Shepperton line, If, as I am convinced it will be, this change proves to be a success, this novel and innovative change to make the railway timetable actually reflect reality can be rolled out across the entire network in 2012. Just in time for the Olympics.

Yours sincerely

Norman Brightside

In my job as a roving IT consultant, I have given a number of technical presentations about Siebel. During that time, I have learned that I am much more comfortable presenting material and content that I have created myself. I have also presented slide-decks used by technical pre-sales. This has occasionally led to detailed questions arising about a very innocuous looking bullet point which I was unable to effectively answer; not a comfortable situation.

Occasionally, I have delivered technical workshops about a very specific area of the Siebel product set that was tailored to a customer requirement for a module that is not covered by a formal course offered by Oracle Education. I have thoroughly enjoyed this type of work as I find it stimulating and very rewarding. I also felt the customer also found these workshops useful and valuable.

Last week, I gave a 2 day workshop about EIM (Oracle's ETL tool to bulk load data into a Siebel OLTP database) and I actually created some practical lab exercises to give the attendees some hands-on experience of failing to load data using EIM. I'm being serious here - I firmly believe it is very important to be exposed to the different classes of errors and idiotic mistakes when trying to achieve a seemingly straightforward task of populating a single customer record.

I visited the client's offices the day before to check the logistics and the Siebel environment provided for the workshop. I also took the sensible precaution of completing the various exercises myself. To my horror, I discovered at 3pm on the day prior to the workshop that EIM wasn't actually functional in the customer test environment. Thankfully, I discovered this was due to a missing Service Pack for the Microsoft SQL Server database which resolved the problem and saved me from a very embarrassing situation.

Whenever I've attended training courses, I've always felt slightly uncomfortable whenever the instructor went walkabout and hovered over my shoulder as I struggled with the syntax of ‘ALTER TABLE'. Consequently, when I set the attendees loose on the first exercise, I tried to take a back seat and only help if someone requested assistance.

I am not a teacher - in fact, I am a lousy teacher as I have precious little patience - and I am not a trained instructor. However, I was quite curious to see how different people attacked the problem. One chap was feverishly reading the manuals, typing at speed, running the tests, examining log files, iterating in an effort to win the race. One of his colleagues had a rather more considered approach and I noticed he chose to take time to assist his neighbour who wasn't as far forward. Another attendee was very methodical and thorough; he essentially created a full source-target mapping in Excel before he did anything else and was completely unfazed by the progress of others around him. Another gentleman reminded me of myself - he was bludgeoning forward at breakneck speed, making mistakes (syntax errors), immediately fixing them and iterating rapidly.

I approached one gentleman quietly beavering away in the corner who had actually completed the original exercise but hadn't shouted ‘Eureka' or called me over to praise his efforts. Instead, he was now creating a data set of 10,000 customer records to see what throughput he could get compared with the performance of the existing custom COM based data loading tool.

All in all, a very enlightening exercise. Psychologists would probably classify each type of individual with a special name (‘Starter-Finisher').

Back in May, I went along to my sons school to hear James Cracknell speak. Cracknell is an old boy of KGS and went on to become a double Olympic gold medalist. Since his retirement from rowing, Cracknell has embarked on a series of endurance challenges. Cracknell supplements his income by writing for the Daily Telegraph and also gives after dinner speeches about his adventures as well as motivational talks at corporate events.

On a balmy May evening, I entered the school building and was pleasantly surprised to see free champagne being dispensed to guests on arrival. I stepped forward to the temporary bar to claim my complimentary glass of bubbly. ‘Are you a Governor, Sir ?' ‘Err, no.' ‘Well - are you with the VIP party, Sir ?' - the gentleman gestured to my right where I saw the Headmistress chatting with Cracknell. ‘Err, well, err, no.' And with that, the smartly dressed waiter, nodded disdainfully towards the Sixth Form Common room where I was able to claim my free class of orange squash in a plastic tumbler.

If Norman Junior III had been with me, this exchange would have been excruciatingly embarrassing for him but sadly he couldn't be bothered coming along.

Before the main event, I paid a quick visit to the toilet and I noticed James Cracknell, still politely chatting with the VIP's, wearing an immaculate charcoal grey suit, with a spotless white collared shirt and no tie. To my horror, my eyes were drawn to his feet. He was wearing trainers. One of my pet hates - idiotic commuters wearing suits and trainers. Oh well, he's won two Olympic Gold medals so I guess he can wear whatever he likes.

Cracknell was a very personable, engaging, natural speaker and treated us to a quick run through his career including his Olympic triumphs, an insight into the level of commitment required to succeed at the highest level of competitive sport and his trip to the South Pole. Sensibly, Cracknell supplemented his talk with lots of photos. Interestingly, he seemed to focus on his occasional failure (fourth in the rowing World Championships in 2003) as much as his many successes.

James Cracknell is a very articulate, modest and amusing man. He described failure at the World Championships as ‘doing what we normally do. Train like hell for two years, getting up at 5am to get onto the water on those dark, freezing winter mornings, qualify, get to the final, push yourself to the limit, cross the finish line then stand on a podium standing next to your best mate [Matthew Pinsent] who is crying like a baby. Again'.

When Cracknell was selected to join the coxless four for the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, he was the newcomer into an established boat with Olympic Gold Medalists, Steve Redgrave (4 Gold Medals) and Matthew Pinsent (3 Gold medals) Understandably, he was a little intimidated by these two and German coach, Juergen Grobler, attempted to reassure him

‘Listen, James. You are strong. You are an excellent athlete with great stamina and rowing technique. However, in this boat, you are sitting behind Matthew. He is a better rower than you, stronger than you with more stamina. All you have to do is follow him. Just do what he does. Follow his stroke. Follow his every move. When he eases off, you ease off. When he pushes the rate up to 43, you push the rate up to 43. Matthew is hung like a horse.'

A few months later, Cracknell was recounting this story about Juergen's motivational chat to Redgrave who smiled and said “I think Juergen probably said ‘He has lungs like a horse'.”

Cracknell then described his first endurance event when he rowed across the Atlantic with Ben Fogle. Towards the end of the race, the satellite radio wasn't working properly so the pair could only get daily updates on their position and the state of the race.

One call told them they were now positioned second with 36 hours to go. Fogel's reaction was ‘Second - brilliant. What an achievement. Fantastic !' whereas Cracknell's immediate reaction was ‘Right - let's stop these 3 hours on (rowing), 45 minutes off (rest) shifts and switch to 4 hours one, 30 minutes off and see if we can win this bloody thing'.

Cracknell then solved the mystery of the immaculate grey suit and trainers. He had recently returned from the Marathon Des Sables endurance event where he had finished 12th in a race, the highest ever placing for a Briton. During the 151 mile race across the Sahara desert -, his feet were badly blistered - Cracknell showed an awful photograph of his red raw feet after a day in the desert which he described as ‘slight chafing' - which explained the trainers and his slight limp as he took to the stage.

Cracknell answered a question about how he motivated himself and he referred to a note scribbled on a blackboard in a History classroom he had seen earlier that evening on a tour of his old school. Some wag had written 'All things must pass' which summed up his attitude pretty well.

[ After I saw Cracknell, I was shocked to hear he had been knocked off his cycle by a speeding truck when attempting another challenge to cross the States in 18 days, rowing, cycling and running. Cracknell was seriously ill with head injuries but thankfully is now making a good recovery. ]

I was recently in a pub when a lady looked expectantly at me and said ‘Fancy a whip for this ? I looked a little taken aback and hesitated until she helpfully clarified ‘A kitty. For the drinks. Shall we have a whip round and Ill then buy some drinks. In a very polite British way, I proffered a ten pound note and said ‘Oh that will be great. Thanks for sorting that out. A pint of London Pride for me, please'.

Whereas what I really wanted to say was. ‘We are two couples having a quick Saturday night drink after watching some amateur dramatics featuring some friends. It's five past ten so we'll probably have two drinks. Why on earth should we contribute to a kitty ? You buy us a drink and I promise that we will reciprocate.'

There are many different problems with these whiprounds and kitties:

• Someone has to manage the money.
• Someone, normally the fastest drinker, always ends up thirsty as, like a training course, the pace is governed by the speed of the slowest person present. If girls are involved, you can actually die of thirst and lose your kitty contribution.
• People always think things are cheaper than they actually are so are sceptical when the demand comes round to top up the kitty.
• As the night progresses, people become less inhibited and contribute massive amounts ‘Here's £50. That should sort it for a while.'
• At the end, the kitty has to be sub-divided and the proceeds returned to all contributors. This is a variant on the ‘splitting the bill' syndrome at a restaurant - only more complicated and time consuming. Forget the last train home. You've missed it. You're getting an expensive taxi. Still, at least the drinks were equitably divided.
• I once had the misfortune to be appointed ‘Kitty Treasurer'. This was a complete nightmare because people expect you to continually go to the bar. Time after time because ‘you've got the whip'. I never spoke to anyone but the bar staff all night.

So please don't invite me into your ‘kitty' or contribute to your stupid ‘whip'. This is the correct and proper way to ensure a night of trouble free, enjoyable drinking:

• Get in a round with mates who drink at vaguely your rate. With blokes this doesn't matter as slowcoaches simply accrue 5 full, untouched pints while the rounds continue to be brought over to the table regardless.
• Ensure the rounds are ‘equalised' by the end of the night. This means that everyone in the round buys the same number of pints. I can't emphasis the importance of this enough.
• Choose the size of the round appropriately. If you're in a group of 4, you need to prepare to sup 4,8, 12 or even 16 pints.
• Large groups can lead to livers the size and colour of George Best's. Consider splitting large groups into 3's or 4's.
• Don't skew the financial calculations by having a crafty ‘Southern Comfort' on the penultimate round because ‘I'm a little full of beer'. Just drink pints. You're a man. That's why you're in a pub not a wine bar.

~~Bullshit. More Government lies designed to…~~

This server has now been commandeered by MI6.

This entry will self-destruct in 30 seconds.

This morning, a gentleman was reading a copy of The Times on my South West Trains service bound for London Waterloo. Nothing too surprising about that.

However, this man continued to intently consume the day's important news stories as he left the train and made his way down to the Underground network.

This chap wasn't reading a newspaper though. He was an early adopter so he was reading the electronic version of The Times on an Apple iPad. Clearly, the content is so captivating, the display is so sharp and the font is so crystal clear that he simply has to continue reading the news as he descends the staircase at platform 4, tightly packed in a mass of humanity, down to the Waterloo and City line.

I'm not a rabid Apple hater. I think Apple are an innovative design company who have helped spark some much needed competition; particularly into the mobile ‘device' market.

What irritates me though is the fact that this chap wasn't using the iPad like people use a newspaper. People don't generally read a newspaper as they descend a set of stairs. People generally don't hold a device costing over £400 (although I suspect this chap splashed out on the 3G/WiFi/64GB version which costs a staggering £750) out in front of them and nonchalantly pretend to to fascinated at the content while navigating a set of steps and simultaneously being jostled by rushing commuters from all directions.

This gentleman was doing this for one reason and one reason only - fervently hoping and praying that someone, just anyone, would look at him and his fancy tablet, maybe even ask him about it, exclaim ‘Wow ! Alan - look, that guy's got an iPad !' or just surreptitiously try to look over his shoulder to catch a glance of last night's football results.

Part of me was urging him to lose his footing, tumble forward down six steps, falling flat on on his face, dropping his fancy, overpriced, electronic gadget, shattering the screen in three places.

But unfortunately he didn't. Despite me barging into him. Twice.

What a complete iPoser.

I believe it was Tommy Docherty who christened the phrase ‘the innocence of youth when he described the joyful, attacking football of the newly promoted Manchester United team during the 1975–1976 season.

One of my favourite bloggers, Jonathan Beckett, also reminded me of ‘the innocence of youth' recently when he recounted how he dare not tell one of his three daughters that the family was getting three new kittens imminently lest she responded by ‘jumping up and down uncontrollably'.

When he was younger, my nephew was so overcome by nervous energy and excitement at birthdays and Christmas, his body literally overheated. Occasionally, his mother had to send him to his bedroom to lie down quietly with a damp flannel covering his face. This made present selection relatively easy though; we just bought him a flannelette selection and a ice-pack.

This morning, I witnessed the glorious innocence of youth at first hand when I saw two pretty young schoolgirls get on the train [where's this going ? - Ed] and then each girl shared one cord of a pair of earphones to listen to music on, what I believe young people call, a portable MP3 player. The two girls immediately started smiling and one started dancing on the spot.

I couldn't help smiling myself as I looked across at the happy, carefree faces of these two giggling girls.

Then we got to Wimbledon station where a group of silent, miserable, soulless commuters boarded the train, pushing and shoving to claim their rightful place, desperate to get on the 08:34, desperate to get to the office for another day of mind numbing monotony.

The train was really quite full now but still more determined men and women continued to force their way on, almost crushing the air and joy out of these two slightly built girls who were gradually swamped and seemed to disappear from view as the vast array of grown adults surrounded them in a pincer movement.

The girls reacted by moving closer to each other and then one happened to look up at a gentleman's arm which extended over their heads to clasp onto the pole. They looked at each other and promptly burst into another fit of helpless giggles.

‘When you land at Heathrow you think at times you have landed in a Third World country - Cardinal Walter Kasper.

I guess the Papal entourage must have landed at Terminal 3 and endured the inevitable 20 minute wait for a bus to be brought up to the aircraft. If only the Italian check-in staff had put those red ‘Priority' tags on their suitcases.

Still, it's a bit rich coming from a man who wears a pointy hat and attaches the same importance to the ordination of women as to the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests.

‘Wheres the crane then ?

We had just embarked on our summer vacation to sunny Marbella (near Spain) and were sitting on the shuttle bus taking us and our suitcases from long stay parking to the North terminal at Gatwick airport.

‘Sorry what did you say ?'

‘The crane that gets the cars - where is it ?'

As I pondered what on earth my intelligent teenage son was on about, I sensed other passengers on the bus pricking up their ears in interest. The bus was now deathly quiet, in a very British way, as the small audience attentively and patiently waited for the next exciting exchange in this bizarre conversation.

‘Sorry, son but what on earth are you talking about ?'

‘Well - we came to one of these massive car parks at this airport a few years ago when we went to Florida…'

‘Yes - I remember. It's because it's cheaper than getting a taxi and more convenient than catching the train.'

‘Yes. Well back then I looked at the massive car park area packed with loads of parked cars. Row after row of parked cars, all tightly crammed in, and I asked you 'How do they get the cars out when people return from their holiday ?'

I listened intently together with the other thirteen people on the ‘Summer Special' shuttle bus and sensed the driver was also now captivated.

‘And you (nods in my direction) told me that a massive crane swung round to the correct row, dropped down to the exact position, lifted up the car, rotated back round and slowly lowered the car precisely into position on the exit lane.'

I made a spluttering noise as I tried to stifle my laughter. ‘Sorry. I said what ? No, no - I never said that.'

Norma Jeane now piped up ‘Oh yeah - I remember now. You did say that.'

People looked away. I could see them thinking ‘Oh - look at that tall, handsome teenage boy. He looks perfectly normal but he actually attends Special School and now his selfless parents are taking him away for a lovely holiday.'

‘So - where's the crane then ?'

‘Norman Junior - listen. I might have said that as a joke when you were 6 years old but the cars are parked in lanes according to the date and times when people are scheduled to arrive back at the airport. For example, all the cars for tomorrow will be parked in lane 27 with cars belonging to people getting back in the early morning parked at the front. Then the men just drive the cars round ready for people as they arrive.'

‘Oh - so there's no crane then ?'

‘No - sorry son but there's no crane.' I could no longer contain myself and burst out laughing.

My son looked disconsolate and fell silent.

‘Son - you haven't told any of your mates at school this little story, have you ?'

‘Nah. All that worries me now is how many other little stories you've told me over the years.'

On Tuesday morning, as I stood on a hot, sweaty, overcrowded South West Train destined for London Waterloo, I happened to notice a pretty, young lady reading a magazine telling her what to wear, how to style her hair and how to look.

As I finally emerged from Bank station, the thoughts of skinny, overpaid, drug taking women as some sort of bizarre role model continued to rattle around my head. Inspired I decided to put my thoughts down on paper - or rather brickwork.

Exclusive, signed, numbered prints are now available for just £8,995. If you look very carefully, elements of the tie have been shaded using some of Peter Doherty's blood.