OurStory

I took Alf Roberts to London today. His rear bushes needed seeing to so I had them replaced with polyurethane from Powerflex. Also had a few other bits done and new Bilstein dampers fitted, here's a picture. Well why not, the rearsuspension was already beingdismantled seemed churlish not to. We were booked into the Alfa specialist in Harrow, at 10.30am. In the morning. On Saturday. Good grief.So I had called the specialist a few days before and he say "Ah bring it in at 9am Monday to Friday and I'll go through the schedule of work etc etc" and I cried "ARSGH! WHAT? THE MORNING?! I CAN'T DO THAT!" So we compromised with Saturday and 10.30. This still necessitated great planning:getting up, eating, dressing, that kind of thing. Actually it was fine, I had planned a route using a real map which of course worked fine, right up until I wanted to cross the Thames. Now London as many bridges and I had chosen London Bridge as my bridge of choice, Dead simple for me, straight up Jamaica Road, swing round London Bridge Station and onto the bridge itself. Unfortunately being London (with evil shite Livingstone and the Tfl Gestapo) in thiscountry I couldn't find London Bridge due to being forced over Tower Bridge. Now that's not so bad, nice view, but it did mean that I had to divert along Lower Thames Street to get back on track.Now you would have thought that something as major as the City of London, the actual city, Bank of England, Mansion House that sort of thing would be marked on a sign by the roadside. NOOOOOOOOOOOO! Of course not that would be too easy. Blimey start doing things like that and you'll be encouraging travel next. Thus I found myself driving underKing William Street thereby missing my planned, desired, easy route of Princes Street, Moorgate, City Road for the A501 (my old route to my first job) and heading for the unknown in so much as there aren't any bloody signs anywhere in London. I should have turned up Arthur Street; Captain Hastings would have known that. Thanks to some judicious map reading by my Dad we made it via Kingsway and Russell Square to Woburn Place and the miniscule junction with Euston Road. You'd expect a decent sized junction, couple of filter lanes, decent signage. Well yes you would in a normal country, but in this country you can't even see the bloody traffic lights thanks to the hopeless positioning of them.Anyhoo we get there via the A40 past the beautiful Hoover Building (bathed in a green glowat night) and make it dead on 10.30. In the morning. A full85 minutes later (talk talk talk, blimey that mechanic just went on and on) we leave for Rayners Lane tube station, conveniently situated opposite. Ah it's very Metroland out there, beautiful 1930's LU architecture. By then though it was too late to go exploring on the Metropolitan line not least because I was hungry, cold and needed my afternoon nap.Took the Piccadilly line to Green Park. It's a real novelty for me to travel on the underground overground and saw the ludicrous Wembley waste of money before diving underground. Then onto Waterloo East and via cakes the train home but not before waiting for twenty minutes in the freezing wind for a bus because integrated transport doesn't exist in this country.