This morning's commute and other commuting stories

Agreed, exactly what I did. Did not even try to get in the first train when people where running up and down to try and find a space....I stayed sat and zen on the bench not bothered with a look that was saying "look at you miserable pigs rushing to the slaughterhouse"...Until I got to Liverpool street myself and I was queuing on the platform to get out of the gates...then I thought I am also a fucking sheep, Back on the bike next week.

hehe

I miss Liverpool St.

When I lived in Bern, 'Schriftdütsch' and 'Hochdütsch' were synonyms. My dad once went to a meeting where the conversation was all in Mundart, until the other attendees realised he was there and apologised. 'Kein Problem,' he said, 'ich verstehe Bärndütsch.' The meeting continued, but when they'd finished and were getting ready to leave, one of the people came up to him and complimented him on his German. 'Aber nur noch ein Ding,' he said, 'das war kein Bärndütsch, sondern Baslerdietsch!'

It sounds to me you have the commute routes from hell with all the asshole drivers you meet :/

There's been no change of weather to speak of up north! Glorious freezing cold clear skies for 3 days now

I think we share a commuting route. I'd be interested to hear what your detour is. I cut through the park in the summer to avoid that bridge, but it's rather Somme-like on wet days, so not really an option for much of the winter.

Glaswegian is written down, but it's written down phonetically, as there's no 'official' spelling. Same with Geordie. Never ask a Geordie how to spell 'dut' (hat) as a fight will start shortly afterwards. Definitely don't ask what it means, as a riot will swiftly ensue.

Sure, but what defines a 'written language'? The only ones that I'm aware of that were not written down following the invention of writing were various kinds of argot, for obvious reasons. I'd argue that Schwyzerdütsch is very much a written language. As I said above, there may be a confusion around the concept of "Schriftsprache", which Schwyzerdütsch isn't.

It's certainly true that there aren't official spellings for most and perhaps all dialects. I don't know what the state of Swiss legislation is on that count, i.e. whether Schwyzerdütsch has any kind of protected status.

It doesn't, at least not in the Académie Française sense. I started reading a Schwyzerdütsch dictionary (yeah, go me), and it had more possible spellings for each word than the number of words used in the definitions. It's madness out there, I tell you. Madness.

Ha, it would take a bit of work to bump it up to Académie Française status. :)

Multiple spellings were extremely common in all European languages centuries ago, of course, because it takes a great deal of development to reach standardisation.

Yes, but what is so exceptional about that variation? It seems quite standard as dialects go. It's not only Switzerland--if I go to deepest Swabia, Bavaria, or Austria, I won't be able to understand the local dialect. Dialect variations are certainly more pronounced in German than those in English throughout the British Isles, probably because the role of dialects was often taken on by vestiginal Gaelic languages, and what we understand as an 'accent' was people trying to speak 'standard' English, albeit with the inevitable lexical variation creeping in. I haven't studied this, though, so that may be bollocks.

Back to commuting

Boo hiss. :)

Rubbish experience. Anecdotally, bus driver behaviour seems to have become worse again after improving steadily for years when Livingstone invested heavily in bus driver training and increased pay standards.

Do you mean he first passes you on the bridge where the concrete barriers are? I can't see a junction with such barriers nearby. These were undoubtedly not installed because of fear of terrorism but out of a general fear of drivers veering off the carriageway. With most older bridges, the parapet structures are not strong enough to withstand all vehicular impacts, and rebuilding the bridge is obviously a lot more expensive than putting some barriers down.

It's a really problematic layout at this point, and I would seriously question the wisdom of putting it in. The reason why the southbound lane is so narrow is obviously because the northbound direction includes a bus lane, a general traffic lane, and a right-turn lane which starts ridiculously early. This will have been put in because the right turn into the business park further up used to cause very long queues at certain times of day, but it leaves the layout totally inflexible. I think it's far too long and should definitely not be present across the bridge. I imagine that it leads to a lot of driver intimidation of cyclists going southbound.

The best solution here would be to close the Lombard Road junction completely, even though that would, of course, cause problems with the driving arrangements inside the business park. However, it would be much easier to install a long right-turn lane in the wider section of the A24 leading up to the junction with Jubilee Way. A less effective, but more politically acceptable, thing to do would be to un-stagger the A24/Nursery Road/Lombard Road junction, which would make it possible to shorten the right-turn lane.

None of that helps you, but it's basically this narrow-minded approach to street design that caused the incident here, near the tip of an iceberg of other problems with it.

Rubbish experience. Anecdotally, bus driver behaviour seems to have become worse again after improving steadily for years when Livingstone invested heavily in bus driver training and increased pay standards.

On that note, more commuting cyclists should visit the Bus Cafe at Waterloo Bus Depot on Cornwall Road.

It's dead cheap (a "small breakfast" is under £4 and won't fit on a plate), the food is nice, and they have cycle parking - just push your bike aong the footpath a short way past the cafe and there are some wheel-bender stands.

luckily I was able to gain the upper hand and shout "nice dead end job while everyone else is asleep you loser cunt" as he (very closely) sailed past the back of my bike as I veered into the side street.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2k1iRD2f-c

Rode through some school grounds at 4am last night. In touched snow but thered been a bit of rain n wind.
The most incredible sound!
And now my tyres look brand new too.

it's easier to look at the route on strava. it has it's own problems in that getting into the correct lane outside south wimbledon to go straight on is impossible if you use the segregated cycle lane and dorset road in spite of being 20mph and covered in speed bumps attracts speeders as it's a common rat run and they love to crowd you and overtake at the narrowest points but it's better than the main road.

linky: https://www.strava.com/activities/1268273984

yeah, totally cringeworthy and not proud of myself but was the most cutting thing I could come up with at a split second.

Never ask a Geordie how to spell 'dut' (hat) as a fight will start shortly afterwards.

Off topic, but having grown up in the north east, i have no idea what the word 'dut' is — could you enlighten me?

There were three green-dressed 'elves' draped in blinking lights running towards Hyde Park last night. Not something you see every commute.

A dut is a hat. Something you wear on ya heid.

Thanks. Yeah, it seems to be one of those areas where 'least worst' is the best possible option.

I had to google it too. Grew up in Newcastle and never heard it. Not saying it's not true like, just not much used.

great suffolk street, powering along, see the lights start to change so drop anchors, it's looking a bit tight so when i get to the asl i roll a bit to the right to take the edge off at which point some utter fucking specialist starts screaming at me to get out of her way because red lights are for losers. she connects at about 20 mph, we both go down and now my knee really fucking hurts.

shout out to the ten or so other cyclists stopped at the lights who didn't so much as ask if either of us was ok when we managed to scrape ourselves off the tarmac. not a fucking word.

^ :(

Hope your knee is going to be ok.

cheers ears. it's a bit twingey pingey limpy wimpy, but i'll live.

Likewise. And that any of the other riders didn’t bother to ask if you were ok? Doubly depressing.

Boo. HTFU GH.