Victoria Line Down - cement + signals = the sound from Family Fortune

So someone, a few hours before rush hour today, poured a shed load of quick set cement into the signal box which covers the Victoria Underground Line here in London. The line is now down from Warren St to Brixton, and the signal box looks like this...

And it's got me thinking. For a while London just hasn't been an easy place to get around. By "a while" I mean since I moved here. I used to live 30 miles out, and initially moved into London (Streatham to be precise) to cut down my commute of 1.5hrs each way. Only, I made It worse.

Eventually I moved to Shepherd's Bush, within sight of work, and for a while everything was peachy. I took trips home for lunch, I mooched back after work in time for the end of Come Dine With Me. These things might be normal in the rest of the country, but here in London, well, they are more rare that a High Street without a chicken shop.

The life of a freelancer is never sweet, but sometimes things go to plan. That old fairy tale happens, you know the one, you fall in love and move to New Cross. Oh and you start riding your bike the 20km round trip to work...

And things work again. You arrive in time, if a little sweaty. You feel healthy, despite the crippling amounts of warm air from the back of buses and the occasion near miss with a Transit driver.

Life, heck, it's good.

But then people start dying, or rather they've always been dying, but now you get angry about it, and your watching too much Breaking Bad at the time, so you start to get a bit paranoid too. And you see it as a sign. When getting around, even by bike requires protest, requires shouting and anger, and helmet cams and insurance, you realise this might not be the place for you.

So, remember the moving to New Cross and falling in love bit?! Well, one day the wife says "We're moving to Geneva, goin' each me a lot of cheeses" and you appreciate the nineties reference as much as the idea, and you say "let's do it".

And then some schmuck pours concrete onto the signals controlling the Victoria Line, and people don't even get annoyed anymore, it's just expected now. They just find another way home, get all huffy under the shirt collar, and schlep back. And the cyclist ride, cars plod, and trains grind forward, taking people back to the bit of London, or the Home Counties, or beyond, that is theirs.

London, I love you, but your transport system lacks a certain "Je ne sais pas". London, I am done.