So much for todays' great plan...

I was supposed to be on the second (annual) instalment of the new EU format CPC (certificate of professional competence) today.

Well, I got back to the depot yesterday, to find that it had been postponed - reason not stated - and that I was to do a duty on one of our other routes instead.

OK so far.

I then find this morning that:
1. The bus stand is closed (victorian water mains replacement )
2. That I'll have to hoof 600 metres in one minute to get the ferry van back to the depot later on today.

Alright. I can accept the stand being closed, there's naff all we can do about that, but asking me to run to get the ferry? they're taking the pee. I can't walk that far without getting sciatic pains in my right hip, for pities sake.

Colour me distinctly dischuffed.

Daleks get a revamp...

Watched Doctor Who this evening.

The Daleks got the first massive upgrade in quite a while this time around - not so much a paint job and a few things bolted on the chassis, but a whole NEW chassis...

So... if we use World War Two as an example (which was when the episode was set, of course), if the previous Daleks were Panzer IVs, then the new and improved Daleks must be King Tigers!

I mean, just look at them (old oners on the left of the picture, new primary coloured ones on the right) - they're MASSIVE, compared to the older ones! If you want to use the whale metaphor, looking at their side-on profile, they're Hump-Back Daleks!

A right pair of brain-dead muppets...

OK, no photos, unfortunately, as these two happened too quickly to get my camera onto them...

First off, is the driver of VW Touareg V6 registration number S8OBA, who overtook me at about 10:50 today - on the zebra crossing outside Selhurst railway station, when someone was crossing the road.

I'm left wondering if that driver is mad, incompetent, or merely soft in the head?

This miserable excuse for a motorist damn near ran over an elderly woman as she was crossing the road. I wonder if having an innocent pedestrian mounted half-way through that moron's windscreen will be hint enough to slow the hell down, and not overtake on zigzag markings?

Next up, and sorry, again no photo - or registration either this time - is the driver of the Astra-sized car that thought that overtaking to the wrong side of the road, into the path of an oncoming bus full of women, children, and the elderly, was a spiffing good idea. What a total and complete git. It's purely down to our hazard awareness training that I was clued up enough to spot him pulling out, in time to stand on the brakes, sound the horn, and hope... of course, this idiot gave two fingers of thanks, and carried on, leaving the bus driver of the bus he overtook shaking his head in amazement that a collision between the morons' car and my bus never happened.

And my passengers? They were saying VERY rude things about the moron

...And they wonder why we HATE amateur drivers...!

I can hear Michael Caine right now...!

So... there I am, doing my duty last night, when I pull up at a stop, open the back doors to let passengers off, and I hear a loud PING-like sound, and a shout from the back "OI! YER DOORS FALLEN OFF!"

Oh dear...


On my last trip, too.

Well, the engineers turned up, took one look, and decided that for this bus, the war was over (for one night only, of course!), and told me to drive the mechanics van back while he drove my bus back to the depot.

Seems that the securing nut at the top angle bracket had somehow come loose, and fallen off, allowing the bolt to rattle loose. Not something one sees a lot, but it does occasionally happen. Even the mechanical engineering folks can't predict when something like this will happen, it's unfortunately "just one of those things". They work to prevent them happening, but with the best will in the world, things like this happen.

Naturally, I was a little late signing off last night!

I can hear Sir Caine now...

"I only told ya ter blow the bloody doors off!"

hmmm.... not something you see everyday!

OK, and here we go... a week in three pictures...!

First off the blocks...

Virgin just made an impression, and not in a good way.

As you can see, he's parked, his left indicator going. So, let's see...

He's not working for a statutory Authority (private telephone/cable comms company), so that excuse is out...

He's not an emergency vehicle, so that excuse is out too...

He's certainly not driving a bus, or an authorised TfL vehicle, so that final excuse is out too...

Oh yeah, and and he's hopefully going to receive a fine in the post, as that particular bus stop is occasionally monitored by the local council from their CCTV offices...

Next up...

That HAD to hurt!

This is what's left of what I think was a rather expensive Audi, which by all accounts tried to go around a busy roundabout the wrong way. You can see the Transit it tried to argue with.

There were three lanes available here, before chummy decided to play chicken with a white rented van (not a clever move by any stretch of the imagination - didn't he know the reputation of White Van Man?)

Anyhow, the upshot is right there...

One complete write-off, and another in the workshops for a while... Oh yeah, and the Old Bill were there, scratching their heads after the event, wondering, just like the rest of us, just what the hell was going through the Audi Driver's mind when he pulled that mad stunt!

And lastly...

Here's something you don't see every day!

Southern Trains, and how they get replacement rolling stock to their depots...

Like the rest of us, I guess I assumed that they sensibly shifted their rolling stock by rail (it's a train carriage, it runs on rails, ergo, they move them around on the rails, right?

Wrong.

No wonder this was travelling late in the evening, it really gummed up the works.

The trailer it's on had a steering rear axle set-up, and boy, did it need it - that's a right angle turn it's performing, and even with the steering axle, it had to back up and try again a few times - all at VERY low speed!

I even had a few passengers grabbing their camera-equipped phones to take pictures!

Nice to know I'm not the only one!

Uh-oh...is the day starting out like it means it...?

Well... it started like it wanted to go on, this morning... I hit every red light on the way to the depot, then hit every red light to the eastern stand, and... well... you get the idea. Today's theme is, it would appear, red.

And just to add insult to injury, the vending machine at the eastern stand was out of order, meaning NO COFFEE!!!!!

A new fuel price campaign idea - and it's got merit!

This was sent to me by a mate the other day. having mulled it over a little, I think it deserves a wider audience - and you may want to actually adopt the idea too. It's a damn good one.

The price of oil is as low as it has been for a while, the oil companies have simply jacked their prices up and the government will not do anything as they rake in extra VAT for every increase.

See what you think and pass it on if you agree with it...

We are hitting £114.9 a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying £1.50 a litre. Philip Hollsworth offered this good idea:

This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the 'don't buy petrol on a certain day campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to hurt ourselves by refusing to buy petrol. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT,whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work.

Please read it and join in!

Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre is CHEAP, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the market place not sellers.

With the price of petrol going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of petrol come down is if we hit someone in the pocket by not purchasing their Petrol! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. Here's the idea:

For the rest of this year DON'T purchase ANY petrol from the two biggest oil companies (which now are one), ESSO and BP.

If they are not selling any petrol, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact we need to reach literally millions of Esso and BP petrol buyers. It's really simple to do!!

Now, don't wimp out at this point... keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

I am sending this note to a lot of people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) ... and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers! If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further, you guessed it... ..

THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!

Again, all You have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all.(and not buy at ESSO/BP) How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out to ten more people within one day of receipt,all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8days!!! Acting together we can make a difference . If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on.

PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE 90p a LITRE RANGE

It's easy to make this happen. Just join this group and get all your FaceBook friends to join or forward as an email to everyone in your address book, and buy your petrol at Shell, Asda,Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons Jet etc. i.e.. boycott BP and Esso

OK, so the grammar needs a little work, but the idea seems to be sound enough: Don't buy your fuel from Esso or PB. Fine, you'll loose out on Nectar Points from BP, but that's small potatoes, when you consider how much you're paying for fuel right now.

It's doable for most of us, too. And if you want to find the cheapest fuel in your area, there's always http://www.petrolprices.com/... just ignore the Esso and BP results that come up