public transport – Page 2

Days Like Weeks

You know how when your life is busy time seems to creep by so slowly… you look back and say “do you remember the time… oh, that was just last week!” Well that’s what my life’s been like, of late.

Enjoying a beer at the launch of Milestone: Jethrik, the latest release of Three Rings.

There was Milestone: Jethrik and the Three Rings Conference, of course, which ate up a lot of my time but then paid off wonderfully – the conference was a wonderful success, and our announcements about formalising our non-profit nature and our plans for the future were well-received by the delegates. A slightly lower-than-anticipated turnout (not least because of this winter ‘flu that’s going around) didn’t prevent the delegates (who’d come from far and wide: Samaritans branches, Nightlines, and even a representative from a Community Library that uses the software) from saying wonderful things about the event. We’re hoping for some great feedback to the satisfaction surveys we’ve just sent out, too.

The Three Rings Birthday Cake. It boggles my mind how they've managed to make the icing look so much like plastic, on the phone part. — The Three Rings Birthday Cake. It boggles my mind how they’ve managed to make the icing look so much like plastic, on the phone part.

Hot on the heels of those volunteering activities came my latest taped assessment for my counselling course at Aylesbury College. Given the brief that I was “a volunteer counseller at a school, when the parent of a bullied child comes in, in tears”, I took part in an observed, recorded role-play scenario, which now I’m tasked with dissecting and writing an essay about. Which isn’t so bad, except that the whole thing went really well, so I can’t take my usual approach of picking holes in it and saying what I learned from it. Instead I’ll have to have a go at talking about what I did right and trying to apply elements of counselling theory to justify the way I worked. That’ll be fun, too, but it does of course mean that the busy lifestyle isn’t quite over yet.

My sister Sarah, with TAS managing director Adrian Grant, prepare to announce the winner of the Peter Huntley Memorial Award for Making Buses A Better Choice.

And then on Tuesday I was a guest at the UK Bus Awards, an annual event which my dad co-pioneered back in the mid-1990s. I’d been invited along by Transaid, the charity that my dad was supporting with his planned expedition to the North Pole before he was killed during an accident while training. I was there first and foremost to receive (posthumously, on his behalf) the first Peter Huntley Fundraising Award, which will be given each year to the person who – through a physical activity – raises the most money for Transaid. The award was first announced at my father’s funeral, by Gary Forster, the charity’s chief executive. Before he worked for the charity he volunteered with them for some time, including a significant amount of work in sub-Saharan Africa, so he and I spent a little while at the event discussing the quirks of the local cuisine, which I’d experienced some years earlier during my sponsored cycle around the country (with my dad).

So it’s all been “go, go, go,” again, and I apologise to those whose emails and texts I’ve neglected. Or maybe I haven’t neglected them so much as I think: after all – if you emailed me last week, right now that feels like months ago.

A Bus Called Peter

Before he died earlier this year, one of the last pieces of work my dad had done in his career as a transport consultant was to visit Trent Barton bus company and make some suggestions about how the new “The Threes” service should be branded and launched. Following his death, Trent Barton decided to honour my father’s memory by naming one of their brand new vehicles after him, and my sister Sarah and I went up to Nottingham to attend the naming ceremony.

My sister and I with the bus named Peter Huntley. — My sister Sarah and I at the christening of a bus named after my dad. Click the picture for the full story.

I’m not sure that they expected me to attend. I’m certain that they didn’t expect me to bring a bottle of Guinness Original with me. But I had a plan: when the moment seemed right, I got everybody’s attention and – explaining that my dad was never really a wine drinker but enjoyed a good stout – christened the vehicle with a spray of beer.

I hold a bottle of Guinness in preparation of "breaking" it over the front of the bus. — In spite of how this photograph is staged, I decided that smashing the bottle against the front of the bus, as one might a ship, would probably make me unpopular amongst the staff, and I opted to “shake-and-spray” it instead.

I think that this is a wonderfully fitting tribute to a man who did so much for the transport industry, and – based on the mutterings I heard at the naming ceremony – I wouldn’t be the only one to think that perhaps other bus companies ought to have done the same! In any rate, as I joked to my sister: “My dad would have been delighted to know that now all of the young ladies of Nottingham can ride on Peter Huntley all day.”

If you find yourself in the vicinity of Nottingham, keep an eye out for a big orange Optare Versa, registration YJ12 PKU. That’s Peter Huntley you’re riding, too.

Further reading: another take, including a photo of the new bus driving around.

Things That Have Been Happening

I’ve had a couple of moderately hectic days, and somehow haven’t found time to tell you all about them yet. Let’s see what I can remember:

The Tale Of Troma Night 50
Troma Night 50 was a success: a chance to re-watch some of the films that made Troma Night’s 1 and 2 so… bizarre. And it was great to see folks like JTA, Andy, and Liz returning once more to the enlightened watchers of awful films (Liz reports favourably on Troma Night 50).

The Tale In Which Geek Night Returns
And just to make the weekend that little bit more fun, we had a (long-missed) Geek Night on Sunday night: two games of Chez Geek and one of Carcassonne. Sadly, my copy of Munchkin hasn’t arrived yet. The idiots who were supposed to be sending it to me addressed the package as follows:

Daniel Huntley
The Flat
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 XYZ

…completely missing the address line. And then they were surprised when the package was returned to them by the post office. Grr.

The Tale Of Kit And The “Awwww” Chain
It’s kind of sweet that Kit’s posted a declaration of love onto his blog. And now everybody’s posting a whole chain of “Awwww” responses. Looks like I’m not the only one who found this a happy little uplifting post. It’s the little things, really.

The Tale Of The Students Who Couldn’t Use A Bus
Yesterday, riding my usual bus to work (the 526 to Penryncoch) we stopped, as usual, as the bus stop on North Parade. At this time of year, all the students have returned and a lot of them can be seen at this bus stop waiting for the morning ‘university service’ bus to take them up the hill. Obviously these particular students are unable to read, because events unfolded a little like this:

First Student: Up to the university, please.
Bus Driver: This bus doesn’t go to the university.
<university service bus pulls up behind>
First Student: Oh. Can I just go up the hill then?
Bus Driver: No; this bus isn’t going up the hill. This bus is going to Penryncoch.
First Student: Oh.
<first student gets off bus again, making room for second student – stood behind first student – to step up to the driver. meanwhile, students are getting on the double-decker parked behind, which has the words “University Service” on the front. second student puts a ten pound note in the cash tray and stares at the driver>
Bus Driver: Where are you going?
<second student spends two or three seconds staring at the driver with a look on her face that implies that she’s never heard of buses going anywhere other than to her destination>
Second Student: To the university!
<the university service bus pulls out and overtakes us, and starts going up the hill>
Bus Driver: No. This bus does not go to the university. This bus does not go up Penglais Hill at all. This bus is going to Penryncoch. That’s why the large luminescent letters on the front of the bus say… Penryncoch.

How difficult can it be? You’re probably a second year or above, now (by the fact that you’re presumably living in town) – pull your finger out.

The Tale Of Claire Getting A Job
I found myself in Game a couple of days ago, where a student was applying for a position working for them in the run-up to Christmas. They turned him down flat, of course, because he was planning to leave town as soon as term finished – 18th December, or thereabouts – which kind-of defeats of the object of Christmas staff. But “a-ha”, I thought, and grabbed an application form for Claire, who applied and was subsequently snapped-up. So Claire’s got a job again, which is nice.

The major side effect of this is that it’s very liklely that we’ll both be spending Christmas in Aberystwyth. Which is unusual and kind-of scary. Still; we’ve agreed that we’ll try and zip around the country and visit our respective families the following week, if we can’t manage to do so otherwise (Claire will be working on both Christmas Eve and Boxing Day). Hmm… Nothing more to add to that at the moment, so “Hmm” will do.

In other news, she’ll probably get a staff discount. Yay. =o)

The Tale That Involves The Technium
SmartData is moving by instalments. By this time week-after-next, we ought to be in our shiny new WDA-sponsored office in the newly-built Aber Technium, on the harbour’s edge. This is a win for several reasons:

I can walk to work. I mean – I can meaningfully walk to work. A one-hour walk, like where we are not, isn’t “meaningful”.
We’ll have a 2Mbit dedicated line, with no contention. I smell DVD downloads.
We have a bigger office, shiny new desks, a proper server room, a meeting room of our own, and a balcony.
We’ll have a new 0845 phone number, which looks all shiny and professional.
If I get my way <big grin>, we’ll also have a digital whiteboard and projector. Toy.

Will keep you posted.

I’m wasting time and I have plenty to get on with, so that’s enough of an update for now. Kittens.

Train Girl Fantasy

Take a look at the thread on Train Girl Fantasies that Andy has accidentally started. Participate! Tell us all about your Train Girl Fantasies. We all know you’ve had them.

Last night I fixed eight or so of the bugs that Paul and Kit found in my software project the night before. They’ve promised not to find any more before I’ve had a chance to fix these ones.