The buses are beginning to bug me. And I know I'm not alone. Yesterday I had to go to Kings College Hospital. The only way to get there is by bus. In the end I got three buses, one there and two back (I stopped off in Brixton en route back). By the time I reached home every item of clothing I was wearing was nasty and I couldn't wait to strip off. I had been wearing them for less than four hours.
It wasn't so bad going out in the evening, but still uncomfortable wearing just a very slight dress and the minimalist of underwear. At the Coliseum, I overheard someone discussing how she was going to get home. She could get a bus from Trafalgar Square but preferred to walk to Cambridge Circus (Admittedly, not far) to get a 38, which is one of the few Routemasters left.
I got a Routemaster this morning - a 159, as it happens. I know that Routemasters are past it, particularly in being inaccessible to anybody with accessibility challenges, and are also quite dangerous when people fall off the back but in so many ways they are a superb design. The ventilation is simple but effective - have an open door, and, most importantly, have the dinky wind down windows that enable a through-draught.
The Routemasters were designed by Engineers at London Transport depots. Modern buses must have been designed by a committee of ivory-tower residing computers. One of the most important factors in design has to be fitness for purpose. Not for usage by computer-modelled theoreticals but by real people. Of course, it is easy to me be wise after-the-event about how the modern buses are not fit for purpose. But it beggars belief that so many have been built and bought and no-one making decisions has even thought about how it is affecting ordinary people.
Of course, it's typical of Britain. Britain as a whole is designed on the basis that temperatures are always between 2 and 25 degrees. Which, for most of the time, they are. But on the odd occasion they venture outside these extremes, the country descends into chaos. Yesterday evening, going through Brixton I noticed a chap sitting in the fountain in the Peace Garden. Not a Trafalgar Square-style public splash pool, not the three-tier one that has been nicked from outside the Tate library, but one that is no more than a glorified birdbath four foot off the ground.
Walking from Charing Cross to St Martin's Lane, I saw a chap lying on top of Oscar Wilde. "How gay is that?" I thought. He was still there four hours later, but he had a woman on top of him. Not very gay, I decided...To be honest, they were both rather the worse for Substance Misuse, and probably didn't have a clue who Oscar Wilde was.
Coming back on the bus I overheard a woman on the phone to someone. She had been away for the weekend and had just got back in time to rescue the garden. She's going to Majorca on Monday for a week and doesn't particularly want to go, except that it's someone's birthday party. Having putting so much effort into the garden she doesn't want it ruined in her absence. Would you believe that we have a tomato plant dying through excess heat? It's a good thing that Jimmy's watering them everyday. It's looking very beautiful right now - especially the plants that Eleanor helped plant...
We put all sorts of stuff on the garden. All organic waste is dug into the soil. Jimmy runs a cafe and gets through a lot of eggs. He has taken to collecting them up and transporting them home, crushing them and putting them on the garden. I noticed the other day that Starbucks are selling off their coffee grounds as garden compost. Duh! I thought, I generate coffee grounds at home, seeing as though we all are already putting our teabags round the rosebushes, it would make sense to add the coffee grounds. when I start saving them up and bringing them home from work, you'll know I've gone doolally!
The other day, Andrew Turnbull said that, so long as Civil Servants looked authoritative and professional, they did not need a tie.
This really comes as no surprise to me. On an ordinary day I would doubt that more than 50% of male staff are wearing ties. Today, I calculated it was less than 10%. And, to be honest, I think the majority of them look perfectly fine. I was in the lift with a chap wearing shorts. He would have looked perfectly fine if he had not been wearing a sloganned t-shirt. Nice pair of shorts. Nice pair of legs, actually, shame about the face. Didn't seem to have much charisma, either. In a polo shirt, he would have looked neat and sufficiently serious.
Fifteen years ago I had a manager who didn't wear a tie as a matter f course. He kept a couple in his desk to wear for the occasional formal meeting. I know some men really object to wearing ties. Others like to wear them in order to complete the look, to project an image, and, perhaps, to boost their self-confidence. I understand that. When I have a meeting, with someone senior or someone unfamiliar, I wear a smart suit. Today, dedicated to report-writing, I was wearing a cotton blouse and linen skirt. Although the skirt ended up quite creased, I don't think anybody could have accused me of looking unprofessional.
The very strange thing about my office is that when temperatures were only in the high teens, the office felt warm. This week it has felt deliciously blissfully cool.
I am hoping that my Song Du Jour tomorrow will be "Take Me Dancing Naked In The Rain." When the storm comes I want to be out in the garden, dancing, as near to naked as modesty permits. I am so looking forward to it. Remember, when it rains at Wimbledon, it rains at Gert Cottage.
