movement

Just a note, seeing that I've had a couple of confused messages through my inbox, to say that if you meet with strangeness on accessing this page (Apache Server SSL/TTL notices and the like) that all is normal.

My hosts are migrating to a more powerful set of servers, and this has meant updating my nameserver details; in summary, the site is being moved to new servers, the nameserver address of the site is being updated, and since these two processes are not interdependent, some minor interruptions are inevitable. Since your day does not centre around being able to "access me" freely, it shouldn't bother anyone unduly.

I seem to have missed out a couple of days of worthy inanity for a number of reasons, notably being absent, having read three fiction novels in the last week and a half at the expense of life, having plenty of work to do both at work and at home, and a minor need to avoid stringing full sentences, with which I've been having some trouble recently.

I was caught, rather spectacularly, in the massive blackout that brought London to her knees last Thursday. Scariness. Actually, not at all; it lasted less than an hour, and only affected a band across the Southern parts of the city. It did, however, mean that my fifteen minute ride from Vauxhall Station to Wimbledon took almost two hours as a result of the considerable delays brought upon the overground train services. Heavy rain, no taxis, and too far to walk. Groovy.

I would have granted the occasion the full brunt of my considerable apathy were it not for the fact that I had an appointment with a physiotherapist. Which I missed. Not so groovy. Hey, groovy is such a dated word - old enough for me never to have used it before.

Heck, this was a day for bad-jokes-by-God; even before reaching Vauxhall, a passenger pulled the emergency cord on the Victoria Line, bringing the Underground train to a halt for five minutes at a station, Oxford Circus, perhaps. Then on we went until just after Pimlico where, as we travelled under the Thames, the train made some crazy banging noises and jolted to a stop (cue the power cut), and then started to lunge forward in hopeful little spurts of reserve power driven optimism until we finally lurched into Vauxhall.

The station lights are extinguished, alarm bells are sounding, and the eerie glow of reserve lighting brings everything on the platform into soft relief. We are told that we will not be able to alight at this station, at which point the doors open anyway and we all pile off. Walk up the lifeless escalator, enter the mainline station, learn that no-one is going anywhere fast because there's no power.

No power? How is it that some of the trains are still moving? That all the lights in the tower blocks nearby continue to bless the immediate scene with their benign, cheery glow?

We're dismal at power failures, people.