This was 6 Feb: call it #2

   No bus travel for me this past week I fear. Most of the journeys I make for my work could not be accomplished using public transport – well they could of course, but not efficiently when you consider the time everything would take. Neither would they work too well in terms of the kit I take with me – tool box, spirit level and step-ladder. I don’t always use all of these at every appointment but when I do need them it’s useful that they are right there - in the boot of the car.

   Public transport works for me when a journey is familiar and predictable: a simple ‘A’ to ‘B’, there and back, manageable when you know the route in advance and – if time matters - are equipped with a reasonable knowledge of how long the journey might take. My work-day journeys can arise at short notice and with little time to spare. Worse, my point ‘A’ – where I am at the start – is not necessarily linked by a direct bus route to my point ‘B’. It’s like the age-old Irish joke about the visitor who asks for directions to somewhere and receives the reply,

   “Ah, now, if I were going there, I wouldn’t be starting from here…”

   I remember a few years ago when Mayor Ken (Livingstone – he of bless’ed memory) introduced congestion charging for all cars, vans and lorries entering Central London. He seemed to believe that lots of frivolous journeys were being made and consequently the streets were getting clogged with unnecessary numbers of vehicles. That may have been true of private cars, Ken, but I can’t imagine there are too many people in the construction trades who were taking their vans and lorries into the middle of London purely for the fun of it. I mean, battling through the traffic and searching for somewhere to park – and all for no good reason. When the charge came in we did consider trying not to use our vans for one day and having a go at getting everyone and everything to site via public transport.

   Imagine the scene, if you will. It’s, say, 7am on a weekday morning and at every bus stop there are gathering plumbers, electricians, brick-layers, roofers, scaffolders, carpenters – all the sundry building trades in fact. And these travellers are queuing in addition to all the usual passengers, the hundreds of thousands of school kids and all the millions going to work in shops and offices and factories. But it’s not just the builders themselves; each tradesperson is carrying his tools and the supplies needed for the day’s work. The doors, the window-frames, the sheets of glass, the RSJs, the floor-boards and joists, the piles of bricks and bags of cement or plaster – not to mention the sheets of plaster board measuring 2400 x 1200mm (that’s eight feet by four in old money). Put it all on the buses, why don’t we?

   Like I said, I’d use the buses for work if I could. And not just buses; tube trains, over-ground trains and trams all work for me. Trams? But preferably not the trams we have in South London. As far as I can tell, these run from Croydon to Wimbledon via Mitcham. If there’s three places I wouldn’t want to go to it’s these. Having them connected by a clean, fast and efficient tram service moves me not at all. I need a tram route to go from Streatham to Highbury, via Battersea and Fulham with connecting branch lines linking us to Richmond, Twickenham, Chiswick and Ealing. Oh, and then going east, links to Dulwich and Greenwich would be nice.

   Did I say ‘clean, fast and efficient’? Never mind all that, more important is the sheer joy of the ride. If you know the Number 28 tram route in Lisbon you’ll know what I mean. If you don’t, look out for ‘All at Sea in Lisbon’ now being added to my pieces of TRAVEL WRITING on www.bydavidarmstrong.co.uk Well, if I don’t publicise it, no one else is going to, are they?

Next : Cardigans must be worn.