if I don't qualify for the olympics its southeasterns fault

So Thursday night I left work at the crack of 5:30 and put a little jog on to get to Cannon Street for the 5:45. I had a cunning plan get home put my trainers on and go for a little jog.
All part of my Olympic training schedule, a quick little 3 odd miles before dinner. But the best laid plans of mice and me can always be completely cocked up by public transport.
The train got to just outside Grove Park and stopped. Broken signals were the cause, which the southeastern guard was at pains to point out was not southeasterns fault. We don't maintain the tracks we just use them.
Thank god we have someone like Bob Crow to make sure the tracks are kept to the highest standard and no useless dead weight gets shed from the well organized and run railtrak.

Sneeky

So last week was a week without any real delays to speak of.
Same for most of this week except today 10 minutes late into Cannon Street "Due to congestion" Someone brought their own train again..
But then I looked back at my times arriving home last week and this week and realised that although it was only a few minutes here and there if you add it up you are looking at least 15 extra minutes of my life being snatched away by Southeastern per week.
It is amazing that even after they introduced the new timetable in the winter that added a extra 10 minutes to every journey they still manage to constantly fail to meet it.
It is a perfect case of Parkinson's Law "Work expands as to fill the time available for its completion". http://www.berglas.org/Articles/parkinsons_law.pdf worth a read for all you cynics out there

So to counter this the next timetable from Southcrapyeastern should chop of 20 minutes on every journey they the trains would be late but inside the original times.
It won't stop me complaining but it will give me back 15 minutes of my life a week.

bloody hell I would like one week where the trains arn't delayed......

So this morning my train was 25 minutes late how about that.
They might as well have cancelled the bugger it was so close to the later train.
I get on the late thing after freezing my a$%e off waiting around at the station, only to find the carriage I got into has no heating.
I thought I was just so cold to the bone that I wasn't feeling it at first.
I was sitting there waiting for the frost bite to set in but thankfully the apologetic guard announced that he was sorry about the delay and that the heating didn't work in carriage 8 and he was about to commit Seppuku (Ritual Suicide) at the front of the train due to the shame of southeastern failing to provide a service again with his ticket punch if we want to watch.
I think the last bit was just in my mind as he was apologising again and again on the way up.
So I trundle off to the next carriage to sit down with my metro and watch the chaos commence. Of course by the time the train got 3 stops the heated carriage was full to bursting. I think the cold one would have been fine by now with all the compressed body heat.
So more of my life stolen by southeastern and their shoddy service.
I recommend signing this if you travel on southeastern http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/SETrainservices/

Late in

So 15 minutes late this morning.
According to the train due to congestion in the London bridge area.
But it was really due to overrunning engineering works at the weekend causing the congestion in the London Bridge area.
Not sure if this was meant to be a blatant lie or just a stretching of the truth.
I think they should pay the people that work on the train infrastructure per job not per hour. That way it would be in there interest to get it finished on Sunday and get home early for the same pay than to plod along let the work overrun and get paid overtime.
The aggravating part is that you can almost see your stop you are just sitting there waiting to get onto the platform.
Luckily for me I am so bad a Sudoku that I had time to finish the tough one in the metro.

A questionnaire

So this morning on my train in I was given a questionnaire about the southeastern service.
they gave on to me! did they not see the look in my eyes as they were handing them out.
I thought great let them know what I think of them, its 4 pages it must have a page dedicated to the shoddy time keeping of the service.
Nope endless questions about politeness of the staff how well they were turned out, did I feel safe travelling on the train.
Only two multiple choice questions about the punctuality of the train. No box to put comments in either. So I wrote at the end of the page it should have a comments section like any good questionnaire.
To be honest I don't really care about how well the staff are turned out just that my train journey is as quick and punctual as possible.
The main part of satisfaction with a service is does it deliver on the basics then deliver more that set it apart from other services.
So Southeastern get the basics right then I will worry about whether the staff looked nice and happy.

Another feather in the cap of crap southeastern.

So I am only updating this blog when southeastern make me late. Its midweek and this is my second entry. Not even 50% of my journeys have been successful.
You better pull it out of the bag for the second part of the week southeastern.
We were delayed today due to a slower train in front of us, so that I can understand a bit I suppose its not like it can pull over and let us pass.
But to add insult to injury, when we get to Ashford the train sits outside the station for 10 minutes waiting. I can see my home let me off please….
When you look around you can see the other commuters dying a little when you look into their eyes. So I think I might start keeping a time log of how much longer I spend on the train compared to the southeastern timetable which I think is really a work of fiction by Terry Pratchett.

Already

so on day one of my blog southeastern have done it again.
The earlier train that I do not usually get unless I run to the station, has been cancelled. I had a bonus because I didn't run today.
But it means the train is already packed and we haven't called at London Bridge yet.
Just another well done for a terrible service southeastern