Average

After a full weekend, including a trip to Crystal Palace to see 'Peter Pan On Ice' with my wife and son, it was time to relax on this morning's commute. A Shuffle of 'folk and guitarists' produced Sandy Denny, John Martyn, Nick Drake, Tim Buckley, Suzanne Vega, Tom McRae, Boo Hewerdine amongst others, which suited my mood perfectly on this sunny morning.

My thoughts turned to my travelling companions: If you're new to London and buy a house near, say, East Finchley, expecting a pleasant ride into the City or wherever on the basis of the Tube map, it must be so bloody annoying to NEVER get a seat on the train. You pay, what, £1000 a year and cram into a full train every day.

Anyway, bollocks to them; I had a seat all the way and had a very average commute. I actually arrived on time to work.

Apparently the Waterloo & City line has been closed due to 'dust'. Well done, everybody.

While I'm here, I must mention a book I read while commuting earlier in the year - Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. It's awful. To make matters worse, it's about 1000 pages long and is awful throughout. I expected (why, I don't know) some sort of Holmes/Watson interaction between the two main characters, perhaps in some light-hearted, but strangely intriguing, romp through Victorian London or similar. What I got was a dry, badly-edited, meandering tale of nothing in particular, filled with nonsense about magic and fairies. When I was about 80% through it, a chap on the Tube asked me if it was any good. He'd started it and stopped half-way through - since I'd almost finished it, I must know whether it improved. It hadn't. I was waiting for a fast-paced, exciting ending, in which everything was revealed and loose ends were tied up. It wasn't and they weren't.

Avoid this book. It weighs too much for a commute, and is a complete waste of time.