Breaking the law
Breaking the law
Breaking the law…
Or so the immortal rock song goes. Yes, dear reader. I have joined the ranks of the lawbreaker. I am not happy with my wayward ways, but I have decided to come clean and tell you about my brief foray into criminality. So today, I go the chance to be a proper journo again. Whooppeeee! Normally, I do all my interviews via the telephone or the old electronic mail. In fact, email is very popular with lots of the people i have to interview. Anyhoo, I suggested a commission idea of profiling this CD/DVD packaging company and originally I was to just do my regular telephone interview thing. But the editor insisted I travel to deepest, darkest Dartford for the scoop.
I don’t mind a bit of travel, but the thought of a four-hour round trip did make me wince with pain, but I softened the perceived travel agony by upping my fee to make up for it. So I am using this Oyster card thing to pay for my journeys and it is working out well for me. So I travel to Stratford, then head up on the DLR to Greenwich. It was interesting going through the Docklands area again and it seemed ages since my last visit.
In the good old days, me and my schoolmates, Ian and Fahim, used to head up to Canary Wharf and travel on the newly-installed Docklands Light Railway. Back then, there wasn’t much there and the London Development Agency was just regenerating the area and the mighty Canary Wharf building was almost finished. Seeing the old empty redbrick warehouses there was kind of sad, but they have all been replaced by gleaming chrome and smoked glass. Change is inevitable. But I hadn’t been that way in a few years and the dark rain clouds gave the area an air of foreboding.
When I got off at Greenwich to catch my connection to Dartford, it was raining lightly, so I quickened my pace and made my way to the mainline train platform. As I entered, the train to Dartford pulled in and this is where I committed my crime. However, it wasn’t until I actually reached Dartford and presented my Oyster card that I realised I had broken the law, broken the law, broken the law…
You see, the Oyster card isn’t accepted at Dartford. Except it is if you put a pre-pay ticket on it (or something) and despite my apologies of a mistake made and offering to pay the fair, I was presented with a £20 fine. Being a law-abiding citizen, I duly paid, but was upset that there’s never any lee-way for an honest mistake. Anyway, I will try appealing against the fine, if only to ask that the powers that be put effing big signs at mainline stations warning innocent scrotes like me that the Oyster card is nigh-on useless at certain stations. However, some mainline stations accept the card. Of course, I blame Ken Livingstone! 🙂

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