Thanks, Southern Railway: Weekes Rides the Bus

The quickest way for me to reach the Upside Down from my Right Side Up house is to take slow, rickety, over-ground trekking trains.

Fortunately, my local station falls on a Southern Railway route, and as a regular commuter, I feel pretty qualified to give you a review of their services:

Soul-destroying.

For those of you who don’t know, Southern Railway—national scourge—has been having some serious problems lately. Just a few weeks ago, a journalist at the Metro interviewed a man who was sure that it would be Southern Railway who would cause him to miss the birth of his child.

He’s right: that is just the sort of thing that Southern would do.

With their deceitful timetables, liar liar pants on fire departure boards, and Dementor execs, Southern Railway are on a mission to ruin the lives of honest, hardworking people one cancelled train at a time.

It seemed that things were running along shittily yet not catastrophically until several months ago when apparently a latent strain of the Plague ravaged the majority of Southern staff, rendering them unable to come into work and drive the trains.

First it was last minute announcements: ‘This train is cancelled due to … driver sickness!’ Then someone at the top decided that Conductor Plague was such a good and effective excuse that the company began altering entire timetables around this irascible, driver-specific illness.

Joining train strikes and inclement weather (please click here to read about the driver for whom the strong English winter sun was too bright), the Conductor Plague really tipped the scales on services, I’m afraid to report.

But it all started to make a little more sense when I learned that Southern’s timetable had been replaced with an avant garde poem.

This week there is a five day train strike on Southern. Five. Days. Five! So… you mean…the entire work week. Jolly good!

I have been reduced to riding for over four hours daily roundtrip on THE BUSES—where you are guaranteed to encounter threatening youths and at least one person resembling Aughra from The Dark Crystal.

But ‘every cloud’ as they say : whilst sitting on life-sucking buses this week, I have at least managed to learn some interesting new things about English history thanks to David Crowther’s ‘The History of England’ podcast as recommended to me by the hubs (B). Don’t worry–I will feed back any amazing tidbits I learn along the way!

Anyway, the time has come for me to wash away the pains of buses and trains with my sponsor: Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Pinot Grigio (treat yo self 2016!).

I will leave you with my first Weekes Word (interesting [to me] words pulled from my current readings):

Stertorous: from the Latin stertere (to snore) and meaning laboured or noisy (as pertaining to breath). Ex: In order to drown out Aughra’s stertorous breathing on the bus, Weekes popped in her headphones and cranked up the volume of her ‘The History of England’ podcast.

Cheers and happy public transport riding until next time, bunny rabbits!

xWG // #dazeandweekes