paranoia

getting around this city is getting harder and harder, particularly at the weekend - this morning I took a bus, another bus, a tube (with a change) and then two more buses, for a journey that I could do with one overground and one tube on a weekday (in about half the time).

serves me right for attempting to get to work on a saturday morning, i suppose, but with all the station and line closures around town, it seems almost like a concerted effort to stop people travelling about.

i doubt there's a quango in whitehall scheming up ways to annoy londoners (and tourists), but occasionally it's not that difficult to imagine a bureaucrat, with an office in city hall dedicated to making my life harder.

"yes," he would say, "definitely close shepherd's bush central line station for eight months. excellent. the next matter on the agenda is what to do about the victoria line, she's been taking that a lot recently."

his cowering subordinate offers a suggestion: "what about if we shut it at 10 in the evenings and completely at the weekends?"

"brilliant!" he shrieks with a note of glee in his voice, "let's go to her favourite pub. gather up 30 of your closest colleagues, we're making sure she won't get a drink tonight!"