If ever there was a godforsaken thing, then commuting is most definitely one of them.
With my last job I was bloody lucky if I could do the daily journey in an hour. Usually, with the delays and traffic, it was more like an hour and a half each way. Just add that up. Three hours a day, five days a week, twenty days a month. That's sixty hours being penned in, thinking you've had a right result if you managed to get a seat, even if it was beside a sweaty reprobate with the personal hygiene standards of a sumo-wrestler on a dirty protest in a Bikram Yoga session.
Hearing the news about yet another train strike, that puts thousands of people out, in some of the hottest weather of the year, makes me so glad that I work from home.
My commute now takes around two minutes. It is quicker if I don't have to negotiate the ever so deadly to the bare feet, hidden lego related landmines, left by a bored toddler.
Now if I have to go to a meeting I have to find another form of transport. I regularly lust after a 1960's Vespa or two if I see them gliding around the streets of Brighton. Sadly my pocket money doesn't quite stretch to that, so I have to leave pretending to be an 'Ace Face' to my son.
We Are The Mini-Mods
So I've got a micro scooter, well if you can't beat them. This, once I had gotten over the potential embarrassment of being a grown man on something that is usually associated with the speeding toddlers on the school run, is actually pretty good fun.
No looking for parking spaces, or getting caught in traffic jams and it actually burns off a few calories (100 of the suckers for every 18 minutes scooted, according to the people that know this type of thing**) - Try doing that with an Oyster card.
The other thing I've discovered about scooting is that I am now able to race my son, rather than walking behind, shouting at him to mind the old folk, as he tries to beat yet another land speed record.
For an 80's BMX kid like me, being able to do a few tricks is also pretty cool. Obviously, my bones don't heal as quickly as they once did, so I am being a bit careful. So after building up some steam reenacting part of the Beastie Boys 'Sabotage' video >
I took the boy down to the local skatepark to show him that his old fella has still got 'it' whatever'it' is. I swiftly found out I hadn't.
The assembled group of semi-threatening teenagers didn't phase me, but the sudden realisation of 'Oh sh*t that is really going to hurt', became louder than a bomb, so I bottled it in under five seconds. Thankfully, good sense and middle-aged decorum prevailed and I left it to the assembled people born after 2005 to do properly.
Who knows, over the following weeks or months, I might pluck up the courage to drop some Bunny-hop's, 180's and even try the odd Grind, on my commute. (FYI - That is definitely a trick, not a reference to me trying a gent's specialist dating app..)
For more of this kind of nonsense check out Don't Believe The Hype