Transport Crucible

As the late great Douglas Adams revealed in one of the finest books about transport, travel and everything ever, namely; The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, the answer to the question; what is the meaning of life? Is 42. (As the BBC explain here) And, lest you have forgotten the stern warning that our Prime Minister, Mr Brown, issued last week, let me remind you now that we now have only 42 DAYS(!) to save the world from frying – and the UK from being awash with floods and heatwaves – and associated unseemly climatic catastrophes. There has been a mixture of reactions to this news and of course my highlighting it here last week. Of these, some seem to be giving the situation the sort of earnest attention that our PM will like – amongst whom is a rather concerned sausage called Anna of chemistryworldblog. Then again, in my trawl through the blogosphere I came across a slightly more cynical sausage called Mrs Rigby – who seems to have links with all sorts of folk with a rather more sceptical view of our PM’s latest decree than he might care to see. However, closer to home, I have been focused on tackling a more immediate and, for me at least, pressing transport related problem – and of course it’s potential impact on speeding up or slowing down the end of life on Earth as we know it. This has arisen with the arrival last night of my best mate’s son – who is staying saying with me here at TC Towers while doing a week of work experience in a very prestigious department of Mr Brown’s UK government. (This, I hasten to add, was not arranged by me but the lad’s well connected Economics teacher in Wales)

Anyway, this contribution to the education of my mate’s son presented the challenge of a daily commute between Sarf London and the heart of Westminster. – And, of course, a specific concern as to what would be the best balance between a desire to save the planet that many well educated teenagers seem to have these days – and my duty in loco parentis to get the lad back and forth between his temporary place of residence and work without adding too much stress for all concerned – and to do so within the bounds of real world transport right now as distinct from vogue theories about it. Perhaps sadly for the future of the planet and all who who wail on her about the need to shun motorised transport, Walking and bicycling the six and half miles were ruled out for various reasons. These included the lad’s blissful ignorance about the streets of London that has resulted from a life in the shelter of Welsh Wales. Finally we settled on a combination of one or two buses and a dive into the dark deeps of the Northern Line branch of London’s underground rail system, colloquially known as the Tube. And this reminded me that the strength of public and political enthusiasm for combustion engined buses – including the much revered London Routemaster has ebbed and flowed since they first plied for trade in the capital in the early 20th Century. In fact a quick skip through the web reveals that many still regard these large people carriers as a Transport of Delight. Two of them even performed a song about them back in days when political correctitude was yet to be invented and spread to save our minds from pollution of an ideological kind. As to whether we have made the best transport decision for this week of teenage commuting, I guess we all have to wait and see. But in the meantime the wonders of the world wide web enable you to hear what Flanders and Swann sang about the Transport of Delight when the end of the world was expected to come from us running out of oil and the world cooling towards a new Ice Age. Oh how transport times change, as well as our climate…