Dear South West Trains

You're crap
You're really crap
Did you know that?

Yes, I expect you did, I just wanted to remind you incase you'd forgotten your duties to contribute to the continued "improvement" of the train services in this country; After being awake and travelling for over 22 hours yours was the most piss poor experience of my whole journey.

1) Your bus-to-train station "timetable" at Heathrow Airport was useless - yes, 9:10 and 9:45 but which stop? I was at stops 1-6 but there are around 20 others... which one is it? Please, just a hint... Although it would be nice to go to Bristol or Edingburgh, I'd like to be back in Farnborough just this once...

2) The same said timetable was in a reception area with an office that was... CLOSED.

3) The same reception area had numerous public phones and yet your timetable had only a web address... yes, I have my notebook and wireless, but I'm damned if I'm getting it out just to see if there's a hotspot just to look up your website...

4) So I had to use my phone's crappy web service (yes, O2, you suck some too, and especially now that you're allegedly selling out to Telefonico... Abbey, Rover, Rover again, Rolls Royce, TVR and now O2, whoever will Britain sell it's homegrown to next...?) to find a provider and search for your number. I eventually found it, called you and got a time; and that was it. Thanks! You're still crap.

5) I found some guy wondering round the terminal in a National Express fluorescent jacket. YES, it was *their* office that was shut but at least he knew more about *your* service than YOU did. He directed me to an unpainted white coach, saying that was the RailAir service to Woking train station. How come the Reading service gets painted, highly visible coaches and Woking doesn't? I know I'm a guy and it's a visual thing, but that would ghave given me a clue... oh, and the coach was at Bus Stop 4. Just incase anybody else asks, OK? ;)

6) That coach, yeah, the all-white one?... Fix the fucking brakes OK? Your driver stopped after ten minutes because he said the brakes were binding and pulling to the left. He thought it was unsafe to drive and pulled up at the next bus stop to let us off. The suits all groaned & got miserable (haha) but I thanked your driver for his concern and waited patiently for your next coach.

7) Your #2 coach was also white and unmarked

8) Your #2 coach was obviously driven by someone with a taste for tropical weather. The heat was on full blast and almost unbearable. But I wore a t-shirt and the suits sweated... so I'll let you off that one ;)

9) Woking train station - Your ticket machine wouldn't accept notes. You suck, OK?

10) The "permit to travel" machine was also broken.

11) I queued for 15 minutes to get a ticket.

12) Your timetable said the next train to Farnborough was platform 1. When I got to platform 1, the digital sign showed the next train was to London. That's north. I wanted to go south. I asked a guard and he said platform 5 - that's where the timetable directed me to platform 5. Hahaha - thanks, FUCKERS!

13) Ooops, the signals weren't working at Fleet, so any poor bastard awaiting to get off there would have to go to Winchfield, jump off, go to the other platform and thenget the next train northbound. Sort it out!

I'm home now and I have put down my heavy luggage after a wonderful four weeks in the USA with the girl of my dreams. I've had some sleep and a few days to reflect, and you know what, South West Trains?

YOU SUCK!!

PS: You're nearly as bad as those chumps @ U-Haul, and U-Haul Suck too!

PPS: If it ain't broke, don't privatise it.

Salem's Wet, Boston's Lot

Friday: With 16" of rain last week in parts of New England, the drive from CT to MA was a real trip... It totally pissed it down, and I mean PISSED it down, ALL the way along the 170 miles of Interstate to Boston... when you felt you'd had enough you realised there was still more to go... that was probably THE most intense drive ever...

Saturday: Salem was wet, interesting, but full of cheap tourist traps.



Sunday: Boston was excellent, prettier, more cosy than NYC

And parking, well, in the presence of BBFK that's a story in itself...

Parking was the easy bit - we grabbed a ticket from the machine, found a parking spot and headed to the elevator down to the streets of Boston... just before the big sign...

TAKE YOUR TICKET WITH YOU

Lever: "You got the ticket?"
BBFK: "Oh Shit!"

BBFK rummages in trash can

Lever: "WTF are you doing?"
BBFK: "I put the ticket in my pocket then threw the litter from my pocket in the trash... wait... here it is..."

BBFK pulls our crumpled ticket from trash can, complete with unidentified filth on it

Lever: "Thanks honey, and for the brown goo on it too. Thanks"
BBFK: "Sorry."

The parking fees were going to be stupid but just about worth it to park so close to the Freedom Trail and stuff like that. Any stay over 80 minutes up to 24 hours was $29.00 !! Fucking expensive but hey, it made me feel at home...

We spend the day in Boston - awesome. Interesting. Homely.
We get back to the car park - I insert the ticket in the pay-point.

You owe us $58.00

What??? $58.00??

BBFK asks the assistant for er... assistance. She checks our ticket... she shows it to us... it states, quite cleraly, that we parked up sometime on Saturday. Saturday?? How the fuck did we manage that??

It turns out BBFK has only gone and pulled the wrong ticket from the trash can... when she volunteered to have a look in the trash again for our ticket I just said "no honey, no"...

So yeah, we get interrogated, stripped, searched... Nah, not really, they just checked a list of the plates of the cars in overnight and found we weren't listed. Whew. Thank fuck for that. It's ONLY $29.00. Yeehah!!

I think BBFK was a Parking Warden in a past life...

Catching some rays...

...in the Mohegan Sun...

But wait... it's New England... it's new raining... fucking typical... It has now rained for se7en days straight... I hear Old England has been warm and sunny...

Just to re-cap, it was Kat E and J's wedding last Saturday... sweet and succint - and for the first time ever no bloody hymns - hoo-fucking-ray, or should that be hallelujah (funny word that) So, if hymns were that good they'd be climbing the charts, right? Somebody would have covered and remixed "Oh come all ye faithful" a dozen times by now, let alone all those other instantly forgetable "tunes" like...

OK, I'll stop now.

...and in the darkest depths of the Connecticut countryside, some place called Canterbury with no cathedral, just miles and miles of forested roads to a rather pleasant wedding in the presence of mother nature... bliss...

And then, after the wedding reception, where Ergo & "Gappy" got to know eachother's inside leg measurements, we were catapaulted into the Mohegan Sun casino, run by the state's Mohegan tribe... what an awesome place... over 6000 slot machines in that complex and they all hum a constant tune, together forever generating a cacophony of white noise, like a cosy cocoon of warmth and ecstatic oblivion, comforting the soul with the drone of circuitry, inducing that primeval feeling of ultimate calm and harmony...

...now that you're sitting comfortably you can give us all your money...

No gambling for me, I like sure-fire winners...

And like a zombie I trudged the malls of the massive venue until 2:30 in the Monday morning... I didn't even get drunk... I haven't been drunk since I got here... I miss that feeling...

We came back to Norwalk from Norwich... and they pronounce both those places with the same N-O-R... what would Alan Partridge have to say about that?

Oh and BBFK sure knows how to get a guy to vacate a hotel room quick... just play some Erasure... AH, NO, anything but THAT!!!

See this truck...?

The one being towed...? Well, the driver cut me up on the way back from dropping off BBFK and Noel in Westport this morning. He just pulled out into the road just as I was overtaking his stationary truck & trailer, no indication, nothing, then belatedly lent out the window to shout and wave his idiot intentions...

"I'm pulling out"...

Yeah, I know, a bit late for that now, dickhead!

So when I got back to Norwalk, mission #2 was to drop Ergo off at SoNo rail station... on the way back I saw the same truck, complete with U-Haul trailer, being towed, haha, as you can see...

Funny how things like that happen

Better than Niagara

Last Friday was one of those spontaneous days... OK, it's 5:30, let's saddle up and go to Canada...

The 6.5 hour drive to Rochester, NY was same as last time, except it was getting dark, Lever taking the reigns from BBFK at near midnight and us getting there at nearly 2am... Oh, and Syracuse never looked so good before ;)

Saturday was a buzzy morning, get up, hit the Parkway west along the southern shore of Lake Ontario, stop for food at a great diner and finally cross the Rainbow Bridge into Canada, eh?

Book the second to last available hotel room in Lundy's Lane (just up the road from the site of the Battle of Lundy's Lane, in the War of 1812) park up and hit the shoreline and ride the Maid of the Mist, drifting past Niagara and powering into the surge of the Horseshoe Falls...

I called my friends in Mississauga, just an hour away, and they said they'd come down after their business meeting - Saturday night, 8pm!! Great time for a business meeting huh?

Being near supper time me and BBFK went for the most bizarre Indian curry experience ever. They'd obviously just moved into what used to be an Italian restaurant (red, white & green decor), we got served by a Chinese girl and get this... they didn't serve beer. WTF!! NO BEER!! No Cobra? No Kingfisher? Not even a Bud or a Moulson? I contemplated leaving, but stuck with it... we didn't wanna walk for miles just to end up at another Niagara Falls Indian Restaurant and risk being in the same no beer situation...

I'll leave BBFK to tell you all where the grubby, noisy restauranter's kid stuck it's dirty little finger, but it did keep pointing to my butter chicken dish and shouting "BAD, BAD, BAD!!" at the top of it's voice... How reassuring... thanks Mowgli... does anyone wanna hit the Cove Tandoori with me when I get back to Blighty?

We walked off our dinner before geting back to the hotel to wait for our friends to show up, and ended up crashing out until the phone rang at 11pm... when they came to pick us up and took us out for more food and on to the Falls View Casino for a looksee... 3000 slot machines, 150 gaming tables, 350 hotel rooms, 10 restaurants and a shopping mall, all packed into a $1billion complex. They dropped us off at 2am and didn't get home until nearly 4am themselves! Thx guys, lovely to see you :)

Sunday we hit the strip... the Vegas/Blackpool-esque Clifton Hill, and ended up having another BIG pancake breakfast before attempting to cough it up in the Frankenstein House... which was totally pitch black... No, not the picture, that was Bur Gerking, just next door; the Frankenstein House was like a ghost train just... without the train. I had to keep taking flash photos just to light up what I was gonna trip over and break my neck on, seriously, it was that dark - either that or my night sight is just shot to funk... BBFK did a sterling job of blind leading the blind ;)

Leaving Niagara at 2pm we got stopped by a traffic cop just 5 minutes inside the US border and with our most imploring looks, got away with our minor misdemeanour and got a police escort all the way back to the Ontario Parkway...

And with Yours Truly driving 6.5 hours back to Connecticut, I shan't bat an eyelid when considering driving to Scotland now... except I may need a diesel station wagon with the Yanks here moaning about 20 quid being expensive for a tank of gas!!!

So... that was last weekend, and I do apologise for the lack of updates, we've been busy :) Hoow're y'all doing? :D