Dogboxdriver's Duty Blog

Hello world! I'm in Vienna now. Flights were as punctual as they always are (i.e. both either side of half-an-hour late), with the usual lack of apologies. Fodder in business on the Swiss flight from Heathrow to Zuerich wasn't up to much - a bit of salmon with some tasteless mousse (which is probably something they charge huge amounts for in posh restaurants, but I wasn't impressed) and on the Austrian flight from Zuerich to Vienna they weren't serving hot drinks "because turbulence has been forecast". Ho hum. And to add to the day's weirdness, I got pulled at security in Zuerich because I had a sandwich in my bag. No, I don't understand that one either! OK, time for a quick shower and then to bed.... See y'all tomorrow.

I'm on leave for a week-and-a-half. :) I'm happy about this. Can you tell? ;o) So the reason I'm up at such a God-awful time of day (05.45? That's sleeping time for definite) is that I've just finished packing my suitcase and I'll be away to the station soon for a ride on the train to London and thence to Heathrow for those nice people at Swiss to take me to Zürich where I'll transfer to their colleagues at Austrian who'll pop me across the border to Vienna. And in Vienna is where I shall be for the next week or so. :) I'm planning on doing some train-type things, but also hopefully some normal touristy-type things as well.  If I can get online I'll let you know what I've been up to as and when I can. Might even post a few photos...

It's been a fair while since I last posted anything to this 'ere blog.  Partly that's been because, if I'm honest, my life is so boring that there's been nothing much happening to post about, and the other reason is sheer, old-fashioned laziness: even when there was something to talk about, I couldn't be bothered. Perhaps I can make myself turn over a new leaf.  I'm going to have another go at blogging here. Whether I'll find anything worth blogging about will be another thing, of course, but it's gotta be worth a try.

Yesterday I got taken to hospital. I was working my train through the countryside as normal when I started to suffer a really bad pain in my back, sweating and also vomiting - none of which are things you really want to be doing when you are driving a train at 75mph! Anyway, after a rather foolish attempt to carry on after the first attack I saw sense and called for an ambulance, and ended up being rushed to hospital by the paramedic, being topped up with painkillers every so often in a failed attempt to deaden the pain... Interesting element #1: Out here we don't tend to have so many ambulances; what we have are "community support vehicles", which translate into English as a large van full of ambulance kit and a single paramedic; I suppose they can staff twice as many of these as they can ambulances. If you're walking wounded, as I was, you also get to have a front seat ride on blues-and-twos through the countryside, along main roads and through the nearest large tow...

I know we're getting close to Christmas, which seems to bring out the worst in everyone, but I wonder why there are so many ignorant people walking our streets nowadays? I'll explain.... At work, like many other railwaymen, I wear a bright orange Hi-Vis jacket. In the right light they can be seen for, ooh, about two miles. And yet on Wednesday whilst walking through the city centre wearing my nice bright-orange-highly-visible coat I must have had half-a-dozen people have to take last second avoiding action so they didn't walk into me. Most of them had been walking straight at me, and looking straight at me, for a hundred yards or so, walking past other people and so could clearly see that I had nowhere to go; they'd have to walk around me... The other stunt I've noticed more and more of recently is people who look at you but then pointedly look away, and keep looking away, as they walk directly at you - as if they think that if they look away from you, if they ignor...

Wombling through the English countryside today, I found myself watching the wildlife, as a rural train driver often does. The wildlife we see during the daytime tends to be rabbits, hares, foxes, more pheasants and partridges than a legion of shotgun-wielding hunters could ever catch, and occasionally the afore-mentioned shotgun-wielding, wax-jacket-and-flat-cap wearing hunters too. But mostly what I watch are the birds. Out here in the sticks I'm privileged to see buzzards and kestrels on a daily basis, as well as the better known fluttery birdies and occasional unexpectedness such as the odd cormorant. And it is kestrels who led me to the thought today's random witterings are about - or, at least, the little critters the kestrels hunt... Driving through the Fens this morning I saw a kestrel hovering, presumably waiting for a chance to swoop down and grab some little critter which was quaking in the grass. And then the train turns up, the ground shakes, the little critter doub...