Three short ones

Travel to London always seems to get the blogging juices flowing, and today was no exception.

The Tutter.
This morning, catching the Tube from Victoria Station heading for Westminster, I stood next to a tutter. I don't know what she expected. It was 8.30 on a Tuesday morning. The middle of the rush hour. And yet whenever anyone jostled her, she'd make with an annoyed little tut. Like it was a personal affront, or something. I was behind her on the platform and we stepped aboard together. Having already had to let one train go due to overcrowding, those behind us were determined not to be caught out again, and heaved forward into the train, forcing us right up against those already standing inside. Sardines have it better. But it's nothing unusual for that time of day, on that particular part of the Underground.

After the train departed, the jostling continued for some minutes, as people made themselves more comfortable and adjusted their body shapes to fit whatever space remained. An elbow here. A laptop bag there. Tut. Tut. Tut.

The Wrong Date.
I've been blogging about travelling down to London on and off for almost two years, and actually making the journey for a lot longer. One thing has always puzzled/annoyed me. That car park in Fairfield Street never has the right date on its ticket machine. How hard can it be, I thought each time the ticket was served up, to set it to the right date? In my experience it is the only machine to suffer from this ignominy, but for at least three years it has been set exactly one day ahead.

On occasion it's even occurred to me to phone the number on the machine and complain. Why don't you get the flippin' date right on your machine? Funnily enough, after all these years when it's been the only machine with this problem, I found another one last week when I went to Wakefield to give a presentation. Right opposite our offices. Same problem.

Am I glad I never called up to moan about it. Don't know what it was about this morning that made me more awake than usual, but I finally had a Doh! moment and realised what was going on. It's a full day journey to Westminster and back. I feed the machine to the max. £4.50. It gives me a 24-hour ticket. It shows the expiry time. Tomorrow.

For an intelligent guy I can be *really* dumb sometimes.

Final presentation.
The last of my roadshow presentations this afternoon, and a much reduced audience after last week's high of 19. Both morning and afternoon sessions only had 5 attendees but the second one was marred by one of my audience texting throughout the whole performance. I'd have considered this rude whatever the size of audience but with just the six of us in a tiny meeting room it was not only rude but astonishingly blatant. A couple of the messages were deemed amusing enough to show to her immediate neighbour, along with exchanged smiles.

I just kept on talking. The consummate professional. The old guy at the front never noticed the smiley exchanges. He was asleep for almost the whole thing.