Northern Rail Best of the Worst

Apparently Northern Rail (the unreliable, crowded, filthy, decrepit service I use) was named 'Carrier of the Year' or something. The conductor announced it this morning but doubtfully heard the titters, guffaws and sighs of disbelief from the passengers.

Northern Rail has been voted public transport operator of the year in the National
Transport Awards 2007.
The judges praised the company, which runs local and regional trains across the
north of England, for its success in attracting 20% more passengers since it started in
2004.

Uh huh. So, where's that extra capacity then? 20% more passengers yet fewer trains and fewer carriages. And er, wouldn't those numbers have more to do with relaxing restrictions on bikes? Or maybe the volume of homes built in areas outlying Manhchester?

Press Release

Why no shoes?

From Art.com

I ventured out into the wildes of Manchester city centre yesterday. It was a nice afternoon, the first that's lasted more than 4 hours in what feels like about 50 years. I'm not a big fan of the whole shopping experience. I find it tedious and wasteful and a massive test of patience. But I had some shopping to do for various birthdays, houswarmings and necessities.

Oddly, Market Street wasn't the usual blend of rudeness and shop worker malaise. People were helpful and with the sunny weather, in a decently good mood. In some cases, too good. (I'm talking to you chubby Chav on tram who's going to get SOOO STONED LIKE ON FRIDAY WITH HER LIKE PREGNANT FRIEND LIKE AND IS BEGGING MONEY OFF EVERYONE SHE KNOWS. Curb your damned enthusiasm. Also, quit the cigs sweetie, you sounded like you're about 40.)

I managed to get just about everything I need, except the damned necessities. The two things I'm searching for: a decent messenger bag and new sensible-yet-not-vile-shoes weren't forthcoming. There were massive creations of vinyl/leather/sheepskin with crazy handles and heels into accessory infinity. But a bag that looked nice and slung over my shoulder and a pair of shoes that wouldn't put me in line for an AOP bus pass or A&E, nada.

My eyes glazed over row after row of ballet pumps, 6 inch spikes, 3 inch stacked, slippery soled boots, sandals made of a sliver of wood and a strip of leather. All completely inappropriate for dashing across the city centre to a train station. And utterly, utterly useless for protecting from Manchester weather. In the small sections dedicated to women uninterested in back pain and ankle problems, there were the quintessential black shoe of hospitals. The kind of vile jet black creation I had as part of my uniform at Burgerville. They'd probably work. But god help me, I'm only 28. I'm not ready for that sentence to horrible sensible just yet.

The bags were just as crippling. Huge things that looked as though the leather had been beaten into shape and sprayed in gold paint. The handles barely looked good enough to hold a tiny bag, nevermind these monstrosities. If designers had their way, I would have walked out of the Arndale balancing on one tiny stilletto, lopsided like something out of Notre Dame.

I honestly think all this crippling fashion still says something about how women are portrayed and behave. You can't move in most of what's on the display shelves. Look for something waterproof, reasonably nice looking and maybe a bit stylish and you're absolutely out of luck. For now I've gone back to my old favorite, good old 1925Z complete with steel toe for protection from crowded public transport.

Yes. I can cook.

One of my train buddies said to me 'so, what are you making your husband for tea?' Me, being me and missing the derisory nature of a lot of English humor completely missed it. 'Oh, I don't know. Pork chops maybe? Though I have some diced turkey in the freezer. Maybe a stir-fry?' Train buddy interrupted my ponderings with incredulity. 'Wait, you can COOK?' I smiled, this is what he was getting at.

I'm not the most feminine girly hanging around at Atherton train station. Today, for example, I'm wearing dark blue pinstriped trousers and a navy blue v-neck top. My hair is pulled back into a messy bun, I'm not wearing any make-up and my shoes are 8 eye Docs. When I go out I wear a tan Mac type thing, light enough to wear in Spring (and this particularly awful Summer) but warm enough to keep the chill of the Salford Quays winds at bay.

The effect is sort of nerdy, possibly a little dishevelled. Everything is clean, fits and suitable for business casual. I'm not making any statements by dressing this way, I wear what's good for my job. In the past when I had desk type employment (customer service, tech support) I'd wear skirts and dress up a little. Now there's every likelihood I'm going to have to crawl under a desk to fix a cable or dangle mid-air to change a projector bulb. Make-up (which is easily smeared and runs) carefully combed hair (really no point in the Quays) and fashionable shoes (5-inch spikes mostly) don't really have a place here.

To some degree I do feel as though I've sacrificed a bit of my femininity. I used to like wearing skirts to work, or even make-up. But now I can't even bring myself to put on a button down shirt for fear it gets caught on a wire or case somewhere. Not to mention how it bulges when you lift a machine against your chest. I make up for this by doing full make-up on the weekends and really going for it if we go out. It makes me feel quite girly again. Almost like a double agent. Secret geek in a girl's body.

Weekend Tiffany probably wouldn't have train buddies in awe she could make a casserole. They'd expect it. Red lips, red nails, not until the angry diatribe spilled from her mouth would they doubt she fulfilled a certain role. And maybe that's the problem here. Folks assume because I have a 'male' career, 'male' hobbies and 'male' dress that I also don't know a grill from an elbow. It's a shame too, cooking should be a life skill, not one relegated to housewives and the 'feminine.'

Dinner last night:
(Modified from a Sea Bass Puttenesca recipe. I couldn't find Sea Bass or capers. This was delicious as/is though.)

* 1/2 teaspoon olive oil heated and 1 clove garlic chopped & sauteed 30 seconds
* 1 cup chopped tomato, 1/4 cup white wine, salt & pepper added to mixture & simmered for 10 minutes until like a sauce 1 tablepoon black olives stirred into sauce
*Two fillets of Rainbow Trout placed on top of mixture, covered, & simmered for 10 minutes until fish is opaque

A bit private

Mr. Me and I were engaged in conversation by one of the locals yesterday. We learned who was doing what with who, who'd fallen out with who, who was a bit funny, etc, etc. I also learned that we're considered 'a bit private.'

Mr. Me tells me this means they know little about us and would like to know more. I'm slightly afraid. DIY Steve, however, seems to understand (after interacting with the local characters) exactly why we 'keep ourselves to ourselves.'

I find this amusing. I can't think of many in our social group or at work that would consider me a private person. It's just my idea of community consists of work and hobbies, not necessarily where I live. It's also not so much a matter that I think I'm any better than my neighbors, just that we're separated by class boundaries and interests.

I honestly couldn't see getting any of these people to the Retro Bar, nevermind a night of Elgar.

We also discovered that the next apartment block has some drug problems. Apparently the mother is on disability of some kind, while the kids (18-19) just run riot over the place. Two of our neighbors called the Greater Manchester Police on them to no avail. Wigan and Leigh Housing, likewise absolutely useless. Both are terribly unsurprising. My experiences with both agencies were all negative. Not once did I find them helpful, fast, interested....

Mind you, if I'd been smoking at a train station and looked wrong at staff, they'd be all over me like trash in Wigan town centre. Such priorities!

At least I work in a post code where they give a flying, if not live in one.

Walking around in.... Manchester.

Over the last few months I've been thinking it might be more efficient to use some leg power to change stations during my commute. My three-legged monstrosity, proof that transport planners in Manchester used cockroaches with paint on their legs and a big map of another city to sort the Metrolink/train connections out, contains many opportunities for mishap. I thought perhaps if I cut one of those connections out and used my own you know, body, to get around, then I might be on time for work and home more.

My commute usually goes: Wigan via Atherton/Salford Crescent/Deansgate/Eccles. It's the shortest time between the three using rail and Metrolink. Supposedly it's fairly efficient and virtually foolproof. But then the Manchester Airport train shows up with only two carriages or the trams are delayed by 25 minutes. Sadly, I can't cut out the Metrolink or Wigan via Atherton portion of my journey. Both are non-negotiable. The bus system into Manchester and out to Salford Quays is probably about 20x worse than the trains and trams. And that's due to having to deal with Manchester traffic. But there is one leg I can cut out and that's the connection from Salford Crescent to Deansgate, or from Victoria to the Eccles line.

I gave it a shot this morning and managed to make the 9:14 tram to Eccles. That's a damned rarity when attempting to use the Manchester Airport connection or trams from Victoria. By my estimate I managed to get to St. Peter's Square from Salford Central at around 9:04, roughly 10 minutes from when my train arrived. I was curious though, what's actually the nearest Metrolink station on foot?

I consulted Google Maps as a first point of call and discovered all directions are for driving folks. Not very helpful, except for seeing where things are on a map. I did some searches, hoping for some estimated walking times. No go. I then consulted the ladies of the loos and received loads of answers.

The first was a guide to London, Birmingham and Edinburgh called Walk It. The point of this being people need to move more and due to the functional nature of London's tube map, no one actually knows where anything is. If you provide pedestrian maps, people will use the tube less, get more exercise and see a little bit more of London and other cities. No doubt they'll have a Manchester up there soon.

The second was multimap's walking option. Which sounded like exactly what I needed. Except it's quite poorly implemented.



The walking directions are supposedly there on the right. Except you can't see a significant portion of them, they're covered by er, words. For the life of me I couldn't figure out how to get rid of that text box.

The next one, discovered and recommended simultaneously via the loos and a post on the bradlands blog was the Gmap pedometer. Using this I can plot out the distance between two points and how many calories I've burned by walking it. According to Fun Trivia it takes around 17 minutes to walk a mile at a leisurely pace. So, .69 miles comes to about 11 minutes. If I'd stayed on the train the GMPTE journey planner tells me it takes about 20 minutes by train and tram.

This sorts out another issue I've been contemplating. I don't have a whole lot of time to get to the gym. And girly magazines always suggest getting off the bus or whatever one stop earlier. Not really a possibility for me since my nearest tram stop is across the canal. But with 20 minutes more exercise every day, especially first thing in the morning, I might just get off my lazy behind yet.

How UK Cosmo got it so, so wrong.

I don't read these types of magazines often. I bought this copy because, for some reason, the local shop only seems to stock Vanity Fair once in a blue moon. Most of these magazines are pretty much the same. They all have the same advice on losing weight, getting a man, having good S.E.X. and pseudo-journalism. Inevitably the latter tends towards sex work or prostitution.

On the surface this month's Cosmo article about students working as escorts seems straightforward. Students are turning to hooking to pay off debts or make some quick and easy cash during tough times. Fair enough right? And alarming of you're in certain demographics (or are unaware of what those escort service flyers mean.) But underneath the 'investigative' reporting Lisa Brinkworth had her story already written.
[Link NSFW] Anika Mae is one of two escorts 'featured' in her article. Her perspective on what happened when meeting Lisa Brinkworth is quite different from the article's tone. She's corrected many factual errors.

So, here are my corrections:

"Minutes later, without embarrassment, she whips off her coat and stands in front of me in a skimpy Wonder Woman leotard teamed with black fishnet stockings and red baseball boots, and the rucksack is unzipped to reveal a baffling array of sex toys."

I don't have a Wonder Woman outfit, sorry. Also, did I mention that we were in a café? There was no leotard.

My outfit was eyecatching though, it was the one I'd worn to Erotica the day before. I wanted to dress up and thought my Supergirl outfit would stand out more there than some corset getup. Sadly I don't have a picture to show you, but it's made up of a Super baby-tee, red mini skirt, blue fishnet hold-ups and red Converse hi-tops.

As for the sex toys, we went to a fetish club after Erotica so I might have had some with me, but my backpack was mostly full of my sleeping bag so there wasn't space for a baffling array of them.

She should have seen what I wore to the fetish club.

"After we've talked for hours, I agree to pay her £800 for her services for a night, plus drinks and dinner."

We talked for about half an hour. Dinner plus overnight would be £850.

"On our first meeting"

... which was also our only meeting.

"I'll carry on until I stop enjoying it," she says. And from the look on her face, that won't be any time soon."

For all she knew I could have been gurning while I said that. She asked me on the phone.

Simple artistic license? Excusable exaggerations? I realize we all have to take much of what's reported with a grain of salt. But this is a timely reminder that many journalists, regardless of what their subjects actually say, will mold anything to fit their thesis.

Edit: Link edited as per request.

I'm more afraid of the people enforcing the smoking ban.

Usual nonsense on homeward bound trains yesterday. Attempted to get home early, was thwarted by undeclared Blackpool train lateness. In such circumstances I usually light up in between trains. Train Buddy Dave and I had a quick peer around on the platform, no signs saying no smoking (except on the waiting room, but that's always been non-smoking.) So, I light a cigarette.

Within a moment I was tapped on the shoulder by an older woman in a blue jacket. "EXCUSE ME." I'm not so fond of the random touching by strangers so my blood pressure was rising. I shouldn't have paid her any mind but the horror of being tapped again by this insistent cow forced me to look over. "What?" "It's no smoking here." *sigh* "There aren't any signs or anything." "But it's ILLEGAL." God I wish it was illegal to be that irritating. And according to the laws I read, it's only indoor places. I'd hardly call a train station with two poles and a roof indoors. "You get someone who works here to tell me and I'll put it out." To which the poking old woman kept rambling about laws.

Then Smiley, station staff, said it was no smoking.

Ok then.

Train Buddy Dave and I wandered over to the stairs down to the station. I sat and as I was finishing my cigarette the guy in the ticket office came over the intercom and shouted at me: "NO SMOKING ON THE STATION." My response? "Sure" and stubbed it out.

For the record I'm all for a smoking ban in indoor places. It's cheaper and means Mr. Me won't hack the next morning. But to ban it on train platforms and force people to go up the stairs? What the shitting hell? People need something to do when their trains are (inevitably) late. Every time I light up I'm also now worried that some meddlesome, self righteous individual is going to shout at me. Fuck lady, you're doing more damage to your lungs just by being in Salford. My cigarette isn't going to kill you. And, for the love of god, you're lucky I didn't punch you when you touched me. Lesson for the day? Don't stab strangers in the arm with your withered little crone finger.

Here's a pygmy hog. Unrelated.

LOTRO: WoW players go home.

Since the Lord of the Rings Online beta there's been a varitable plethora of WoW players coming over to check it out. At first they whined about the lack of PvP. 'No PVVPPPPP, WOOOWWWW IS BETTERRRRR.' To which many in OOC (prior to adding them to the ignore list) said 'well then, go back to WoW.'

The 'debate' flickered and died, or I've pretty much managed to ignore every WoW players riled up about PvP, as I haven't noticed talk of how Player versus Monster Player isn't as good for a very long time. Instead, what I am noticing is some of these people actually stuck around, despite the lack of their precious PvP. And For the most part, folks are reasonable. Or at least as reasonable as they can be. But 3/4 poor experiences I've had in game recently spawn from admitted WoW devotees. The other I think is a side effect.

The first type is the typical, quintessential female gaming experience. I play a female elf Loremaster on Evernight. I'm not obviously female and I've seen Hunters wearing far less. There isn't anything particularly sexy about my elf, she's just tall and has a hoodie. Yet, you know, a hobbit player thought it was appropriate to try and hit on me in the middle of a Great Barrows instance. He wasn't taking the hint either and I didn't want to be out and out rude (we needed as much help as we could get.) But that tiny portion of his gaming brain that thought I'd be interested in A. cybering or B. being hit on while I attacked elites must be killed with fire. It's not just my elf that's amazingly sexy either (apparently) my Hobbit also had a bit of love in the Laurelin server.

Just a few days prior to being told by Hobbits they could 'LICK ME GOOD,' again a Great Barrows instance, was another player who mentioned first thing he was from WoW. I should have been aware when his username had the letters 'FTW' in it. He dominated our Fellowship leader, tried to boss the rest of the group around and was just generally obnoxious.

Then there was my experience last night in the North Downs. I'd been in the Snares for ages. (Small area, full of fucking spiders.) As usual the quest text wasn't so fantastic. I couldn't find the damned gem pouch and asked for advice in.... Advice. I wasn't the only one, a friendly Hunter who'd healed me a few times couldn't find it either. (Side note: the pouch is actually just outside the Snares in a cocoon if you're looking.) So, some folks pointed us in the right direction. She posted 'Found it!' to which my response was 'I am jealous.' While frustrated, I meant this in a most flippant kind of a way.

I then got asked why I was shit talking in OOC.

What? On my breaks at Stream in the Quake room, I used to shit talk. I used the words 'pussy' and 'little girl' a lot. I whooped uncontrollably when I managed to blast someone apart with my rocket launcher. I was a generally obnoxious, loud, abusive shit talker. As far as shit talk went, I was the fucking queen of shit talk. And let me tell you sonny boy, making a joke in Advice is nowhere near what shit talk really is. Thankfully 'Deadaim' now has me on ignore so I won't further harm his delicate sensibilities.

The last one may seem unconnected to the lecherous behavior, high pitched gamer whining and domineering qualities of the other examples. But my thoughts about Deadaim's unfounded and mildly histrionic accusations go in two ways. He's like me and getting sick of WoW rejects and refugees dominating the chats because they can't read the quest text, or understand how PvP works, or understand female characters don't want to be hit on, or that they're not the big MMORPG experts. Or even understand that stupid Internet speak character names are annoying... As a result of these crimes, he's become intolerant and sensitive. My ignore list has over 20 names on it... Which seems rather high. The other option, of course, could be that he's already intolerant and sensitive from all the impotent nerd rage boiling away in his soul.

Regardless, these idiots are why I'm so damned intolerant. 99.99% of players realize women game for fun, not necessarily to get picked up. 99.99% of gamers listen to their Fellowship leader and take a game on its merits. They understand that most of us are on LOTRO servers because we're not that fussed about PvP. They also know to hit 'Greed' when looting (if they don't need something.) But that .01% of players, almost all who admit to being from WoW, are dragging the game down to a level most of us don't want to be at. So, to all those WoW players fucking up my current favorite game: kindly go home and leave us to Eriador. It was better without you.

Edit: Oh. So this is why hobbits think that kind of behavior is appropriate:
Australian Woman Arrested Trying to Meet Underage WoW Boyfriend