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Tag Archives: joy

Reflections

17 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by severedelays in Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on Reflections

Tags

art, joy, not-trains, photography, weather

Every day I go to work it’s pretty much the same. Up, down, up, down, up, down. Tunnel, station, tunnel, station. Sometimes I go to one terminus and sometimes to another and of course I work at different times of day but basically it’s all pretty much the same. Except it isn’t really. There are subtle changes every day and seeing them can turn into an obsession.

There’s this building. Some sort of office building, I think. Nobody ever looks at this building but for the past year or so I’ve been stopping to take photographs of it and letting my train leave late. Because it’s a magical building.

I love this building. It is never the same two days in a row. In the same afternoon the reflections change. Sometimes there’s a storm in the building and a summer’s day outside. Sometimes the weather is the same behind and beyond. Other times the building is transparent. And of course, there’s the story of the other building to watch unfold.

I think (although am not sure) that my favourite image is the one second from the end*. It almost looks photoshopped. But it’s not. I swear. I haven’t done anything to those photos other than crop out a little extraneous noise. It’s pretty hard to take a decent shot when you are legging it up a platform with coffee in one hand and a mobile phone in the other. It’s even harder when the signal is green and you know other trains are waiting to get into the platform and that you’re going to be late. I am not even remotely sorry for the trains running late. I needed to showcase a building.

Thankfully this building doesn’t need any assistance when it comes to looking wonderful. And the weirdest thing is, NOBODY looks at it. Ever. I have been watching this building for over two years now. The photos started about a year later. I spend a fair bit of time on that platform waiting to do something and I haven’t seen a single person so much as glance up. This is the equivalent of Howl’s Moving Castle slamming down on the High Street and nobody batting an eyelid. This building is such a non-event in the world that I was hesitant to even blog about it for fear of embarrassment that everyone would call it dull.

Sometimes I wonder how long I’m going to be photographing this building. Surely at some point I well get bored of it and focus on something else? Surely I will not spend years photographing this same building? And then I walk past it and it’s different again and I snap just one more shot. Because every day is different.

If you want to see the photos individually they are over here. I expect I’ll be adding to them at some point:

Reflections

*and you note the sneaky way I make you watch the entire damn thing to figure out what I’m on about.

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It’s summer so here’s a beach

14 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by severedelays in Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on It’s summer so here’s a beach

Tags

art, joy, not-trains, photography, weather

image

I concede that it’s not a real seaside beach but given the damp weather we’ve been having it’s not bad. And really, who wouldn’t want a strip of multicoloured sand to play in?

This beach is down on the southbank. Not far away there is a piano. I really like the pianos left around in the street for anyone to play. And there seem to be a remarkable number of people hanging out to listen or to play (and play well). We may not quite have a real summer and speaking as a person who spends much of their time in hot tunnels I’m glad of that. But at least we have a nice beach and good music.

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Dawn

02 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by severedelays in Uncategorized

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

art, joy, not-trains, photography

A couple of shots I grabbed while waiting for something interesting to happen this morning.

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Sensational Butterflies at NHM

03 Saturday Sep 2011

Posted by severedelays in Uncategorized

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Tags

art, joy, not-trains, photography

It’s September and I just want to give one more plug to the Sensational Butterflies exhibition at the Natural History Museum. They are closing on the 11th so you don’t have much time left if you want to visit. It only costs £3.50 for an adult so its very affordable.

I’ve been a few times and seen something new every time. This links to my earlier entry (with photos) and below are a few more images of some of the living exhibits:

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Good news

10 Tuesday May 2011

Posted by severedelays in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

joy, news, not-trains, srs bsns, strike, train, tube

The media reported today that London Underground have done a U-turn and decided to reinstate the driver they illegally dismissed. They’ve also agreed to have discussions regarding the other driver who is currently taking them to tribunal with a further charge of illegal behaviour. This is great news.

Firstly, because it means that the strikes won’t be going ahead meaning that the passengers are not affected by a situation which should never have escalated as far as this. Unfortunately LUL has a habit of acting illegally and only backing down much later when they realise they’re going to have serious problems. I hope that they will learn from their actions but I’m dubious.

Secondly, because of course Eammon will get his job back. LUL seem to have indicated that they will accept him back in a different position. sixtine pointed out the issues of reinstating an employee where there is a clear breach of trust as in this case. And for many companies that would be right. How could an employee go back to work knowing that his managers had behaved so badly in the past and may try to do so again? How could a manager work with someone they had done something so dreadful to without wondering if they were not going to be hit with all sorts of complaints. It would be difficult to say the least.

Happily, London Underground is a huge company. What I expect will happen is that he will be offered a position on another line and he need never see those particular managers for the rest of his life. If Arwyn’s tribunal also shows that LUL broke the law then I expect he will return on similar terms. The issue of a breakdown of a working relationship will never apply because each line operates as though it were separate from all the rest. Imagine someone transferring from Tesco in Arbroath to Tesco in Truro. There’s no overlap there, the managers are different, the working practices are all slightly different and there’s no chance of bumping into ex-colleagues who just happen to be passing through.

The third reason I’m so pleased is that it will save me money. Not just from pay lost due to not working but also as I didn’t see an RMT rep yesterday I didn’t get around to joining them. Not that they don’t have a point in this case but in general I find that union to be far too militant and quick to react to events. ASLEF are by no means perfect but I am in much greater accord with their ethos than that of other unions. So alls well that ends well and now it’s time for the next drama. 🙂

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It is time to speak out

06 Friday May 2011

Posted by severedelays in Uncategorized

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

joy, news, sadness, srs bsns, strike, train, tube

Today has been a day of dancing and madness at the Delays hovel. And also a day of jaws hitting floors so often that I’ve had to get my handlamp out to scour under the furniture for those that detached and rolled away. Why such expressions of joy? Because London Underground managers have been found to be idiots, conspirators, lawbreakers and such liars that in my very humble and non-legal opinion they came damn near to contempt of court. That’s why.

Those who live in London will be aware that a series of strikes are due to take place across the network in May and June. These follow strikes on individual lines after two drivers were sacked on trumped-up charges. What’s crucial about these cases is that both were union activists and that they were sacked for this. In this country there exist specific laws which prohibit the dismissal of staff for particular reasons. A company cannot sack someone for being the wrong colour or for being female. And also they cannot dismiss someone because of trade union activities or affiliation.

I’m going to mainly discuss the case for which judgement was handed down today, that of Eammon Lynch. There is a second case which I believe is to be heard at tribunal very soon which concerns Arwyn Thomas, a driver on the Northern line. For those interested in the second case, an outline and the decision of the Interim Tribunal can be found here. It is interesting in itself and gives the lie to LUL’s repeated statements to the press which imply that Arwyn is guilty of violent assault. I will just briefly mention that the Interim Tribunal for both drivers decided to order London Underground to treat the men as still employed. As is more fully explained in the linked document, this is not a usual step and is only undertaken when the Interim Tribunal feels that a judgement is likely (51% likelihood or more) to be in favour of the complainant. To have this decision in two separate cases would be very surprising if LUL had acted fairly and within the law.

In Eammon’s case, he messed up. He had a defective train and in order to get it moving he had to cut out some safety equipment which had failed. Now we do this now and again and there are procedures to follow to get the passengers to safety on a station and to get the train dragged out of the way. In this case Eammon followed these procedures but was not allowed to put the train in the depot at the most convenient point. Instead he was instructed to continue driving which is odd but doable had he remembered to get another member of staff to act in place of the safety equipment that was not working. He quickly remembered and stopped to inform the Line Controller who did not seem overly concerned and told him to carry on driving. Which he did with the train empty and travelling at no more than 10mph. For this he certainly deserved some sort of disciplinary interview. Not having a second person has some small potential to cause harm to people on other trains and in such cases a driver will be given some retraining with an instructor over exactly what he should do and he will be given a written warning which is kept on file. This will then be referred to if there are other, similar incidents in future.

Of course, all this relies on the driver admitting his mistake, not trying to cover it up and engaging positively with the disciplinary process. Which Eammon did. However, on his line the managers seemed to be desperate to get rid of a trade union rep and so conspired to sack him. The judge in the tribunal case has made extensive commentary on the fact that a coterie of managers took the dimmest possible view of the incident and worked together to ensure that the person conducting the company investigation should do as they said and not as the rules say.

The judge has also commented on the cover-up which senior managers engaged in so as to exculpate their peers from any disciplinary action. Throughout the incident the Line Controller was fully aware of the situation and instructed Eammon to keep on driving. Now a Line Controller is not God but he is several layers above a driver and he is the person we look to for instructions at all times. The driver is responsible for up to a thousand lives. The Line Controller is in control of the lives of every person on his railway. The clue is there in the job title. Yet despite Eammon being told at his disciplinary interviews that the Line Controller was also in trouble for giving out instructions contrary to our Rulebook, no similar action was taken against him. He’s still there doing his job to this day and apparently none the wiser as to his mistake or how to keep passengers safe. Though I’m not entirely sure that he’s clueless. Evidence was shown at the tribunal that the Line Controller’s emailed account of the incident was at odds with the voice recordings of radio calls and that he was not as blameless as he depicted himself.

Not only was there evasiveness in order to cover up mistakes but there was further storytelling in court. To the extent that the judge has declared one London Underground manager to be an “unreliable witness” and a dissembler. That’s lying and near-enough perjury to you and me. One manager actually tried to invent a new case for the tribunal and had her own earlier statements brought up to show that they flatly contradicted her new story’! That was one of the times my jaw dropped so far I had to go looking for it.

Evidence was also accepted that London Underground’s disciplinary procedures were ignored and that Eammon was treated more harshly specifically because he was a trade union rep. Ironically, he is a Health & Safey rep who brings our concerns about issues to management. But this does not mean that he is infallible and that was the standard LUL chose to judge him by. It was actually mentioned four times at his disciplinary hearing that he should not have made a mistake because of his union role. If I might paraphrase the judge a little, it’s not often a company who is acting illegally is so stupid as to openly state they are doing so in formal documentation. I too have been incredibly surprised at just how much effort was put into victimising this driver.

So what happens now? Well, according to the BBC the RMT (Eammon’s union) has approached London Underground and offered to discuss the situation with a view to Eammon being reinstated and the strikes in May and June called off. Apparently London Underground has refused to talk. There is nothing now to do but to wait for the judge to decide how much London Underground will pay out in damages and whether they are to be ordered to reinstate Eammon. Unfortunately this causes a problem in itself as London Underground can always ignore the latter part. This leads to a strange situation where an employer need only do a cost-benefit analysis to decide whether or not to sack a person because they are a trade unionist, or black, or female, or…you get the picture. To my mind it’s not enough that a company in the wrong be told to make a payment and forget about the whole situation. Being forced to continue to employ the people they have discriminated against is the only realistic way to prevent further abuse of the law.

And where does this leave me? I’m an ASLEF member and so had no say in the strike ballot. In general I feel that striking should be a method of last resort. But in this case I feel it is absolutely the right thing to do. I doubt that London Underground will willingly reinstate those they have discriminated against. I doubt they will even agree to discuss the idea. And in this situation I’m reminded of Martin Neimoller’s famous poem. So first thing Monday morning I shall be approaching an RMT rep and joining that union in order to support the strike and speak out against victimisation. I sincerely hope the strike does not go ahead and that London Underground agrees to behave in a more fitting and legal manner but I doubt it. I’ll end up poorer for it, of course. But this is a case where sacrificing wages is more than balanced out by the potential gains of standing up to bullying, victimisation and illegal activity on the part of London Underground.

The tribunal decision can be read here if you are interested in the details of what was said by the judge.

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Butterflies

25 Monday Apr 2011

Posted by severedelays in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

art, joy, not-trains, photography

I went with a friend to see the Butterfly Exhibition at the Natural History Museum. It is a lovely, lovely thing albeit something of a sauna. I believe the staff at the little shop (there’s always a little shop) were not entirely happy about working there as they had to deal with stinky, sweaty people being decanted from the exhibition area. Though not, of course, until after we’d all carefully checked ourselves over for stray butterflies on the conveniently placed mirror by the exit. Wouldn’t want to go smuggling them outside!

It’s on until September and only costs £3.50 for an adult so pop along for a look. In the meantime, a few photos to tempt you:

There’s more here.

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Conversations I have had – an oops edition

22 Friday Apr 2011

Posted by severedelays in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

fail, joy, kids, not-trains, weather

As is perfectly normal I was paddling with a friend in the Diana Memorial in Hyde Park. Or rather, we were sitting on the edge dangling our feet in the water while hoardes of small children raced past in the stream. Look, it was a hot day, ok?

At one point I nudged my friend and pointed out a three-year-old pushing his toys through the water.

“Look, they’re swimming. That’s a good concept.”

The small boy glanced up and in a withering tone replied, “They’re not a concept; they’re DINOSAURS!”

That’s me told, then. 😀

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Catgroove

19 Tuesday Apr 2011

Posted by severedelays in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

art, joy, not-trains

The other week emmavescence alerted me to the sheer awesomeness that is Parov Stelar and I’ve been listening to nothing else since. I may have a slight addiction problem. Catgroove is one of my favourites and I am seriously impressed with takeSomeCrime’s dancing. He’s well worth checking out with or without Parov Stelar. 🙂

No, I don’t dance anything like that, in case you were wondering.

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Dance, dance, thud

25 Friday Feb 2011

Posted by severedelays in Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

joy, mini adventure, oddness, train, tube, tunnel, weirdness, yikes

It is entirely possible that you don’t need to read this entry. If you are the sort of person who can generally be relied upon to work out content from a title then you can save yourself some time and head off now. Mind you, even if you are not the sort of person who can generally be relied upon to work out content from a title then you probably can do so on this occasion. What I’m saying is, you don’t need to waste your time here because it’s pretty much self-explanatory. There was dancing. There was more dancing. Then there was a thud. At the time of the thud you’ll note the dancing was no longer happening. Then there’s nothing more after that. Really, you don’t need to read any further. Doing so will only increase my humiliation and embarrassment at the whole thing.

So now I’ll continue writing safe in the knowledge that nobody is reading. Sometimes it’s therapeutic to write, don’t you think? Oh, I forgot, there’s nobody there to answer. Well I sometimes find it therapeutic to write. Even if there’s nobody reading. Which there isn’t. But writing is good.

Something else I enjoy is dancing. It is entirely possible that I’m the only person in the cosmos who enjoys my dancing because I suspect I’m not all that good at it. It sometimes happens that I pretend to be a zombie. And other times I start dancing. Then I stop in shame and bewilderment that there is precious little difference between the two. But that’s not important here. What’s important is that I like doing it.

Sometimes I combine the things I like. Sometimes that works out well like shortbread and cream cheese. Sometimes it works out badly like fruit juice and toothpaste. But there are other times too. Times where it starts out fine and then all of a sudden goes badly wrong. Like coffee. Delicious coffee. Just the thing to wake up your bleary self in the morning until the point you absentmindedly select the wrong carton from the fridge and top it off with orange juice.

One such pairing which results in deferred-yet-inevitably-awful-= consequences is dancing while driving a train. It always seemed like such an innocently joyous behaviour. There’d I’d be, trundling along and I’d realise I was bored or sleepy or ecstatically happy or something. So I’d get up and dance for a bit. Life was so simple then.

The dancing wasn’t simple. The dancing was damn tricky but I would keep at it because it was so much fun. So I’d dance despite the complete lack of room and the fact I was on a moving vehicle traversing some incredibly rough track. Despite having to keep a sharp eye out for signals, stations and other trains because GOD FORBID that anybody should see me leaping about like a nutter while in charge of a train or that I’d have to accurately relate what the hell I was doing when I danced my way through a danger signal, onto adverse points and a derailment. Despite my complete inability to use one of my arms because I had to keep the deadman held down. There was no waving in the air like I just didn’t care because if I did that then the entire operation would come crashing to a rather unseemly halt. No, the dancing was not easy or even good but I perservered.

Until a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago I was entering a tunnel and decided to have a dance. Yay, it’s dark, nobody can see me and if anyone in the first car enquires I can pass off the arhythmic thuds of my feet hitting the floor as “train noises”. It’s not like drivers don’t sometimes jump up and down anyway…sometimes the incredibly rough track is an advantage because I’ll be there jumping up and down and all of a sudden the train lurches at just the right moment and I’m pogoing maniacally. Seriously good fun.

But this time it wasn’t so much fun. I was dancing away and somehow found myself to be on one leg. This was in no way intentional. It just sort of happened. Likely I wouldn’t even have registered that I’d been on one leg had the train not reached some rough track and taken a sharp lurch to the right. My unorthodox stance on driving trains led to my overbalancing and taking an equally sharp lurch to the left. I would just like to underline here how proud I am that in spite of my wildly flailing limbs I at no point let go of the deadman. No. I took it with me. As I fell to the left at an angle my right arm rose and with it came the handle to a great accompaniment of airloss and brake application. Happily this did not last long as I almost immediately collided with the cab window and bounced back upright.

Once I had collected my thoughts I set the train in motion again. Then tried to look casual as though I had meant to do that. Then remembered that I was alone in a dark cupboard. Then felt my face go red even though nobody had apparently noticed. There are very few occasions when a person is all alone and finds themselves blushing and in general I find it is best not to talk about them. Which is why I’m really glad you people are all the sort of people who can generally be relied upon to work out content from a title and read no further.

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