New camera

I decided that in my choice of a new camera portability had to have priority over a good lens that could only be had at the price of bulk. If I can’t carry a camera casually and without it being a burden, I judge that I'm unlikely to use it much. The fact that a Nikon that seemed vastly superior to my years-old Olympus was only £70 (plus card) decided me. So far I've had little chance to use it -- weather’s been gloomy or rainy, no incentive to take pictures. Photographing documents in the National Archives seems to have gone ok, but it’s something I didn’t do with the old one so can’t compare.

Here’s one I took on the way to the archives at Kew.

This was on a railway route that I used to know as the North London line but I now find is called the Overground, which I presume is a new train company. I’d seen signs on the Underground directing passengers to the Overground and had assumed it was simply a convenient term for trains that weren’t underground. Evidently not. Stupid name, in that case.

Anyway, I don’t much like it. This sort of carriage, with seats along the side, isn’t what you expect in a train as opposed to a bus or tram. Fortunately I only have to use it for one stop, from Richmond to Kew. The rest is good old South West Trains, which I like and is comfortable and apparently well run.

Onboard irritations

"On behalf of the onboard staff, thank you for travelling on South West Trains."

As if I'm bestowing a favour on them, as if I've thought deeply about all the different train companies that run services from Surbiton to London (there is no other and there’s no direct bus) and on the basis of a dispassionate evaluation, and perhaps some sentimental attachment to a much-loved outfit, I've decided that my necessary commute should once again -- like every single other journey I've ever made between Surbiton and Waterloo -- be by South West Trains.


Notice what’s so clever about this. Their thanking me disrupts my normal sense of the natural order of things, which is that it’s for me to thank them if they do their job well. Which I must admit on the whole they do, apart from whoever thinks up their constant bloody messages and treats the public address system as if at all costs it has to be unremittingly used if it's to justify itself.

So clever or so stupid, since the effect of their thanks is to make me grind my teeth and go to the trouble of naming and shaming them to my millions of blog readers.

And, by the way, as others have said but I agree: I'm not a customer -- I'm a passenger.