Category archive: rants

I always buy my one-month passes and top up pre-paid credit on my Oyster card online. It takes me seconds, one click or two, it's done. Call me irresponsible, but I trust people to keep my credit card number safe and I let them store its details for my next visit.

The greatest feature of the Oyster online store is the email reminder that you can set, from 4 to 28 days before the expiry, to prompt you to renew.

Except when they fail to send it to me (or I fail to receive it, although I doubt it because I checked all the spam folders I could think of) and my pass does not work at the gate. And when does that happen? On a bloody Tuesday morning after a bank holiday Monday when everyone is buying or renewing their weekly passes.

So now I've got an additional monthly recurring task in Outlook, 'Renew Oyster Pass' right next to 'Change water filter' and 'Replace monthly contact lenses'.

…and smile :-)

Every Wednesday, Transport for London emails me information on tube closures for work over the weekend. I am not complaining, I have signed up for it – although I would have rather subscribed to an RSS feed which unfortunately, last time I checked, they do not provide.

This week's email has a slightly different subject line: they are not 'closures' any more, now it is an 'improvement' – which I suppose it is fair to say. The content of the email is unchanged, as, I fear, the delays I face every single bloody Monday morning on the way to work because of what I am convinced is weekend work that did not finish quite on time.

A friend of mine who works for WWF yesterday sent me a link to the WWF Footprint Calculator. Turns out I am not so kind to Old Mother Nature after all. Here's the reply I sent my friend:

Thanks for the link to the footprint calculator. Another 3.09 planets [my test result] for me I'm afraid. Not particularly shocked, I knew travel was bad.

The thing is, I do more than your average guy to keep an eye on the environment: energy-saving light bulbs; UK cox apples instead of USA pink ladies; and recycle everything that can be recycled, even if our kitchen looks like a dump. I switch off lights, re-use things, avoid buying unnecessary junk, take regular trips to charity shops to give/buy stuff.

I'm the kind of person who carries three Tesco 'bags for life' in my backpack every day and always says no to carrier bags. I take home plastic bottles from work because we haven't got a recycling bin there! I'm not boasting or feeling particularly virtuous, I just think it would be stupid not to do so.

And still, it apparently is just a drop in the ocean. Very motivating :-/

Lx