I note with some chagrin that it is over a week since I last updated this corner of the blogosphere (and we pause for a moment to sip some of this Rioja and ponder whether any kind of sphere can have a corner). A combination of Canadian flu and a heavy workload have left little time and energy over the last week, though things would appear to be settling down again.
To London today for a client meeting. Several questions arose:
1. Why can London pubs not serve beer in a proper fashion? Warm, flat and overpriced is not the way to go, chaps. (I should say this is not mere Midlander prejudice; I took care to acquire a substantial body of evidence.)
2. Just how difficult is it - in a major capital city - to keep public 'conveniences' stocked with paper and to equip them with hand dryers that will, you know, work?
3. What part of the 'quiet zone - please do not use mobiles' stickers on Carriage A of East Midlands Trains services to London is so tricky for some people to understand? 'Tis a sad indictment on our education system, I fear.
4. Talking of mobiles, can we not have a new law (and I never ask for new laws lightly) against 'walking on a public thoroughfare while looking intently at one's mobile and therefore being a complete menace to one's fellow pedestrians'? A level 5 fine (£5,000) or six months would be appropriate, I feel. I do however have hopes that eventually sufficient of them will just walk into traffic while texting and Darwinian selection will weed out the tendency to be such a numpty.
5. Talking of traffic, why would anyone with half a brain drive in London? I swear the cars I saw stuck in gridlock outside St Pancras at 10.20 were still there at 18.30.
6. Would anybody mind if I killed the very next person that tripped me up with one of those stupid little suitcases that half the world seem to tow around behind them in London? You know, the ones they have to stop and tinker with immediately after getting off a Tube train or right at the top of the escalator, so that you can't help bump into them? No, I thought not. Thanks so much. I'm proposing to hurl them under the next northbound Victoria Line service, but if you have other suggestions I'd be glad to have them.
This is a grumpy old Observer signing off. It's been a long day.
Re. stupid little suitcases (that seem to be proliferating in Nottingham as well as further south). What in God's name do people have in them? They can't all be airline staff (the only people who used to have them) and they can't all be going away for the weekend... can they?
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