Hell's Monday

For those of you who think that Mondays generally are forged in a special pit of aspic-dripping awfulness in the netherest of netherhells, I'm pretty sure I'll get a 'Testify!" out of today's entry.

Up at 4.30, having decided at midnight that actually going to bed was just feeding our delusions, and that really, sleeping on the heated couches probably wasn't that bad an idea. Turned on the TV, to have our vulnerable brains stoved in by anodyne Irish TV host Eamon Holmes and "TV Scrabble."

Out the door at 5.15, cab down to Cardiff. Froze briefly to death at Cardiff Bus Station, elbowed a couple of people in the throat to assure pole position on the bus.

Froze more leisurely to death on the bus. Hardier souls than I asked the driver to turn on the heating.
"It is on," he frankly lied.
"No really," said one poor Indian guy who was turning an altogether unlikely shade of blue. "I travel on buses every week, and this is nor normal!"
"'T'is for these buses sir," said the driver, and that was that.
Got to signs for Chippenham (about a fifth of the way), and ground to an unceremonious halt. Gridlock. Three lanes of motorway reduced to one lane, due to an accident between junctions 16 and 17. We sat there for an hour and a half with the engine off. At one point, the driver buggered off to take a leak, and, as we'd all by that point begun to suspect, nothing of consequence happened to the traffic in his absence.

When, finally, we inched past the accident, we began to pick up speed again, only to be met with "long delays between junctions 10 and 11" signs. Several of my fingers and possibly my penis gave up the ghost then and dropped off from frostbite (which explains why this blog comes to you late in the day...I always type with my penis....Ohhhh, the old ones are the best.....here's hoping...). As it happened, junctions 10 and 11 passed by in relative obscurity. It was as we approached London that things got peculiar again. The driver made an announcement.
"The maximum number of hours a driver's allowed to drive," he said, "is four and a half. As of this moment, I've done four hours, twenty minutes. That means I can't take you into Central London. I'm going to drop you off at Heathrow Airport."
Ignoring the ensuing chorus of "What-the-fuck"'s, he continued.
"A representative will meet you at Heathrow and lead you to another coach, to take you the rest of the way," he explained, and a chorus of Eskimo groans went up from al parts of the bus simultaneously.
We got to Heathrow, and clearly, no-one had told them about the need to provide us with a replacement bus and driver. I was two hours later than expected at this point, on only the second day I've done this uber-commute. Keen not to piss off my boss too much too early, I decided to give up the bus and jump on a tube. It was only when I reached the automatic ticket machine that I realised that d still had both my cards, from when I'd given them to her yesterday to do shopping and pick me up some cash for my morning cab.

Bugger. Fortunately, I'm changing my bank at the minute, so I have a card and an account with an overdraft facility, so I used that in the relative emergency of this (by then) afternoon, and now technically owe myself £8! Finally staggered into the office by about 12.30.

And weirdly enough, am finishing this blog at 5PM on the dot, which means I now have to haul my ass to Victoria to get the bus home. Here's hoping that I don't have the same kind of palaver on the way back, or I might miss my connection up the Valley, and tomorrow's blog will come from the pile of Welshman-granita in Cardiff bust station.

Hmm...wonder if flab's easier to lose if it's freeze-dried...