Well the good news is, the strike’s off. Hooray, the tube shall run and God (Bob Crow) saw that it was a good thing and it came to pass.

Though what I reckon actually happened was the they all bottled out and wimped off like a bunch of (Milwall-supporting) little girls.

This current argument is about closing ticket offices in stations. And I speak to a lot of people each day and whilst its maybe not the first words to be discussed, its kind’a in there somewhere and virtually everyone I speak to is against closing ticket offices. Women because it would make the stations less safe, particularly at night. And men because they won’t be able to find the trains without someone to point them in the right direction. Maybe that’s just men from South London, I don’t check addresses.

Turning up to a station and finding no-one to answer a question, or sort out a dodgy barrier or a failing Oyster card, is an effin pain.
And I reckon that the strike last week, although also a right effin pain in its own right, was accepted by a majority of Londoners who really support this cause.
But if they went out again, I think that support would start to wane. It would get lost in the mess that strikes cause. And thus the union would lose sympathy and the backing of the public. So they cancelled the strike and agreed to ‘talk’. Or ‘shout’, as Bob Crow usually does. Particulary when he is at Milwall.

The bad news is the rain. Its horrible. Its dark. Its really wind-driven and cold and yeuchy and vile and I don’t like it one little bit. I know, I know, there are people in this very country having to sail round their own lounges in little dinghies and need a canoe to take them to the toilet. Half the countryside is awash, afloat or a-fucked-up totally by rain and floodwater. But to be honest, I can only be so concerned for those people. They chose to live in flood plains, they bought homes ‘on the river’, which is a fine sentiment in 1527 when you need to sail along to see the hangings at the Tower every week, and fab for the Henley Regatta, but the rest of the time being on the river holds very few merits. And being visited by that same river for a month or two in a rainy January/February is awful. Almost tragic.

So here, on the high ground (in every respect, I’d like to add… but won’t, out of decency to the sufferers), I just want the rain to stop and it to get 20 or 30 degrees warmer. Is that too much to ask??

And tonight its a BIG night in football. I don’t know who decided that February 12th must be special, and keep it holy, but that’s how its worked out.

Spurs go to the frozen and arctic wasteland that is Newcastle. Can we win? Can we draw? Can we keep warm even?

Arsenal host Manchester United. And that should be big. It would normally be big. It would often be massive and crucial. But Manchester United have lost the plot of late. And face an Arsenal team humiliated on the weekend by Liverpool. Oddly, following that one, poxy, (ok, a bit humiliating in magnitude) loss, there were questions being asked about Wenger. The man who’s had them top of the league for months. And also, quite suddenly, the latest incarnation of Jesus Christ Our Lord Who Walketh on Water, the ‘best transfer the premiership has ever known’, the Second Coming of Mezut Ozil, is being slated as a mistake, an error, he’s a waste of space and time and certainly 42 million quid and can’t keep up with life in Our League, so should piss off back to… back to… back to wherever they welcome people who look like he does. I have no idea where that might be. I can think of certain institutions, but not a specific geographical location on planet Earth.

How fickle. Ozil’s brilliant. Has an off day and he’s a tosser. I despair at fans and pundits.

But I only despair really when Chelsea are winning, and last night they managed to fail to do that, having been leading for all the match.

So maybe there is a God.

If so, DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS SODDING RAIN, PER-LEASE!!!!!

Happy wet wednesday

A xxxx