So now I am on a bus with my shoulder pushed roughly against the window frame as I have to sit turned towards the centre aisle if I want to use the laptop to tell you that I am now on a bus with my shoulder pushed roughly against the window frame as I have to sit turned towards the centre aisle if I want to use the laptop to tell you that I am now on a bus with my (it will be a good day in blogging when the function is introduced so I can turn the central eternal continuity of this paragraph into some kind of merry-go-round of text indicating its eternal or at least continuous nature). It is going to take me another ¾ of an hour to get to the library where I had it all planned out I would unproblematically be at 9 am when it opens. Everything is late in this day and age. We all know that if you don’t catch your flight, you don’t get a refund and it doesn’t wait for you. What is the reasonable amount of time before which you can say to the airline (in this case, the always merry Virgin Blue), look I’ve been waiting at charming Tullamarine Airport for 1 ½ hours now, why don’t we just admit this isn’t going to work? Give me my money back and I will apologise to the Canberrans and not attend the meeting. As it happened I was planning to do that 1½ hours after and they started boarding 1 hour and 25 mins (that is, 1 and 5/12 minutes after.
Much much later. Can you believe I am now in Goulburn, jewel of the Goulburn area as it is often described. I am in the Paragon café, jewel of Goulburn cafes (the other one from what I can gather is a Gloria ‘Pissininyer’ Jean’s). I am drinking a glass of Paragon red and waiting for a greek salad and reading today’s Goulburnienest, or at least I was before you butted in.
I am gonna see a crappy movie (I must like them – otherwise I wouldn’t be letting myself in for another so soon after last weekend i.e. within one lifetime) at the Lilac City Cinemas, Goulburn. I have till 11:17 when the train comes to take me back to Melbourne or as some would have it ‘Melbs’. No-one ever says Melbvegas, I wonder why not.
Later so I went to see Bounty Hunter at the Lilac City Cinema, it was pretty OK on most fronts, I was particularly interested in what the audience might be like, they barely laughed. There was an audible reaction when the guy who looked like Shane Moritz got a big horse tranquiliser injection in his neck. I didn’t laugh at that or any other part of the film, but I enjoyed it. I thought Jennifer Aniston was actually pretty good in it. You see, I am part of the cool crowd who doesn’t like any mainstream performer, and cannot admit they may have talent to do what they do. That kind of approach was subversive at one point – before about 1980 I think. But now the only way anyone can be subversive is to reverse that and only like mainstream things, like everyone else. I don’t particularly want to be subversive or versive. And some people don’t want to be subversive – they just don’t like Jennifer Aniston. But I think she is OK after seeing this film. I never had a very high opinion of her before. I guess she was in that show Friends which I never really ‘got’ either. Now I am back in the Paragon. It’s not so bad.
Later imagine my surprise and awe when after paying my dues of waiting an hour plus at Goulburn station (there being nothing open in Goulburn as far as I can see after 10) we are informed that the train will be 25 minutes late and that Countrylink apologises for any inconvenience caused* and that they will be giving us regular updates. Imagine how impressive it is when we are then told in the next update that the train will be 50 minutes late, and then in the next update (delivered by a robot woman) that it will be an hour. Luckily there was no advance on the hour, but that hour did pass slowly. I thought I heard a ‘wah wah wah-wah’ trumpet at the moment a family of three set up camp close to my seat and all lit up together, inc. the late teens daughter. Just the cherry on top of irritations.
*Apologies for any inconvenience caused is a double insult. Firstly, it is too broad. It’s not ‘apologies for the lateness of the train service’, it’s kind of like the polite version of what are you rebelling against, Johnny? It’s like, we’ll apologise for anything, absolutely anything, because apologies are cheap and easy and we actually have no obligation to give you anything at all. And then it’s also offensive because it’s so unwilling to admit there is by definition an inconvenience. I suppose there is a possibility, a very minor one, that you really didn’t want the train to come, because you were going to meet someone who was going to punch you in the head, or you struck up a conversation with someone hot because you were both eating chocquitos or something. But let’s face it on the whole a train being late is by definition an inconvenience in itself, apart from the follow-on effect, having to reschedule appointments or having to rearrange your day to get everything done, when you waste an hour (f’rinstance) at Goulburn station. In my case I suppose I won’t have to rearrange my day too much, it’s a Saturday, going to Bendigo, but I guess there are other aggravations around it and despite the fact I came up with some good examples of why you might be like ‘wow, I’m so glad that train was late!’ you’ll still most likely consider it inconvenient in some way. My preferred announcement would be, Countrylink apologises for the lateness of this train. Countrylink (or Metro or Virgin Blue or whatever) doesn’t have to do more than that, I would say, in terms of social obligation. Of course the extra obligation which they would be doing, since this is actually a financial undertaking/contract, is that they pay you money on an hourly rate to compensate you for the time wasted. So people would be saying to me today, wow you’re so lucky that so many of the transport services you paid money to use were late, and I’d be like yes I struck the jackpot they were all significantly late and I got half my money back! I mean while this financially makes no sense at all (and the cost of transport would just go up, because the companies would all have to cover themselves and would pass on the cost to the consumer anyway) it is certainly very much the right thing to do.
And that reminds me. Metro still haven’t called me back with a lame reason for why my train was late on Thursday morning. I do love it when they do that because they always give a reason, and it’s always ‘the delay was caused by faulty brakes at Craigieburn’ or whatever, i.e. trying to blind you with pragmatic truth, but fuck ‘em, it’s not really the point, the point is, I want that time back and not to have been spent waiting around in places that are really not even nice places to wait. Maybe that’s the solution. Make these places nice places to wait. Because at the moment Goulburn railway station hasn’t got much, well, it does have a signals museum but that was closed when I was there.
Actually the cherry had a cherry on top which was: on arrival at Southern Cross I went to the information counter to discover how I could get my two hours’ free travel in Melbourne having come in on a country train. I got chapter and verse on how it works then had to present my ticket for a stamp. Imagine my surprise when I was told that actually since it was a Countrylink trip I did not qualify.
As it happened the Countrylink train had passed right through the station I wanted to get off at, but did not stop. I can’t gripe about that because it is of course a minority interest, getting off at Broadmeadows. Nevertheless one has to show intestinal fortitude at the various whammies of being an hour late to your destination, part of that hour being the excruciatingly wasteful time spent traveling Broadmeadows-Southern Cross (an interesting route, I have to admit, going through Brooklyn) and then having to pay for the privilege of returning to Broadmeadows. If I may count that as an hour and a half wasted on top of the hour wasted waiting for the train yesterday and the hour and a half wasted waiting for the plane yesterday, that’s 4 ½ hours of wasted time. I would like also if I may add another half an hour of time wasted trying to get out of Canberra airport which means my trip overall would have been 20% more effective if everything had been more punctual. I suppose I should then translate that into some kind of ‘man-hours’ calculation by which my hourly wage multiplied by 5 becomes the wastage gauge.
But you know I had plenty of contingency material at my fingertips like the laptop and ipod and books and blah and some more blah blah, so it’s not as though I was sitting there staring into space. I honestly can’t understand how people sit and stare into space. When I was in the Paragon there was a girl waiting for something takeaway (something chicken, I don’t know what) and they seemed to keep her waiting well over half an hour, during which time she simply sat and stared ahead of her. God I would not be able to cope with that. She was American, short and had a red and white striped top so if you see her round Goulburn please buy her a book. I am sure the red and white striped top is her iconic item of clothing by which everyone recognizes her, her name is probably Ditzy Mitzy and her catchphrase is, ‘I can switch off LIKE THAT!’
Hey Ditzy Mitzi
Wassup
Oh god don’t ask! I have been so delayed in my journeys over the last day! It has been one big hassle. First my plane was late to Canberra blah blah blah
(Mitzi shown staring into space with a thoughts bubble above here head showing elipses, or perhaps a ‘back in 5 minutes’ sign, or some other iconography suggesting absence).
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