I travel a lot and not simply to avoid capture. My corporate overlords see to it that I spend as little time in our London office as possible. I believe it is their way of keeping the more cranky members of staff out of sight so that we don’t crush the spirit of the new hires.
The upshot of being a moving target in this part of the world is that I get to enjoy the services of Eurostar trains as they plough the corridor between London, Paris and Brussels.
It would be easy to discount the shabby trains, non-functional toilets and 1970s chic Business Lounge as a result of years of neglect and under funding. The truth however is that the entire Eurotunnel endeavour has, seemingly by design, been a planet sized rat-hole where governments and hapless investors have poured untold billions of pounds over the years. That’s right folks billions of pounds and the price tag keeps expanding like a waistline at a buffet counter.
Just this week the British Stock Exchange halted trading of Eurotunnel stocks. The French boldly declared that they would keep them on the market even though by the close of play they were hovering right at the 38 cent mark. 38 Euro Cents per share- such a deal! If you were a contrarian investor or had a large chunk of steel protruding from your head, you might think that now would be the time to buy. You’d be wrong of course but it’s that kind of bold thinking that keeps the global economy strong.
Eurotunnel somehow managed give enough hand jobs to get their creditors to extend their loan through Jan 2007 but man, I’ll bet their arms are sore. Come Q1 of next year though they had best start limbering up their jaw muscles because there is going to be a line of dicks to suck from London to Paris if they want to keep those trains running. Hell, it will cost them half of the £6.8 billion they owe just to buy mouthwash to get rid of the taste.
Given the mutual loathing and contempt that simmers so amusingly between the British and French, one wonders just who invented the idea of linking the two counties via an underwater tunnel. The fact that most of the English consider the French to be, in the words of Groundskeeper Willy, “Cheese eating surrender monkeys” and the French, quite accurately as it turns out, believe the Brits to be a nation of booze crazed football thugs there would seem to be little common ground on which to cement a partnership.
These things aside, most of the problems, apart from the laughable marriage of British efficiency and French precision engineering, boil down to bad timing.
Just as the last wheelbarrow of dirt was being carted out of the newly dug tunnel, budget airlines were taking to the skies. If Ryanair or easyJet could take you to Paris in 40 minutes for a quid (£1) why spend three and a half hours and 199 times the price going by train? Why indeed.
Probably the reason that the Chtunnel has not yet been back-filled and abandoned is its usefulness as a conduit for commercial rail and truck traffic. Also, for those families who have an alarming number of children, packing them all into the car and hauling the entire brood to France for holiday is still cheaper than taking to the air. Not that you can actually drive under the water: you load up your estate car (British for Station Wagon), kids, dogs, enormous beach umbrellas and wheel the lot onto a flat-bed train carriage. Once you reach France and come to grips with driving on the opposite side of the road, you can proceed to EuroDisney where you’ll be able to relax in un-crowded surroundings.
A reliable source of income for Eurostar which doesn’t appear on any of their literature is the alcohol filled day tripper. Much to my unceasing misery each train carriage sports at least one, if not a dozen, drunken louts from Liverpool or Barking off to, or returning from, rekindling the traditional Anglo English animosity by spending a weekend fighting in and being ejected from, Paris bars.
Anyone who has ever spent time in the cheap seats at a London West End theatre will feel perfectly at home in the upholstered concrete slabs that pass for seating on a Eurostar. If you are under 4’ 11” and twig-like, you may wonder what all the fuss is about. However if you fall into that pesky category of “normal height and weight” you will find that better legroom can be had in the overhead luggage rack.
I would like to publicly ask the designers of these seats why, in the name of all that’s holy, did you install footrests on them? They may be useful to someone who’s feet when seated don’t actually touch the ground but for the rest of us, 99% of humanity, they take away two inches of valuable space and scrape our shins.
What the seats lack in comfort, the toilets make up for in squalor. In the past 45 days I have been on Eurostar trains 12 times and on only ONE occasion has there actually been soap in the soap dispenser of any of the loos. Sometimes I get lucky and the water works but it’s no sure bet. Door locks don’t latch, the smell is, well, imagine a public out-house at a Phoenix Arizona rock concert in August. Least attractive of all is the carpeting of sticky pink toilet paper that covers the floors: it glues itself to the soles of your shoes when you walk in and there is no way in hell you are going to pick it off with your hands so you are left with a little souvenir of your time in the can for the rest of your journey.
One of the best things about being a guy is standing up to pee. However, Eurostar has seen fit to remove whatever evolutionary advantage vertical urination might once have had by installing toilet seats that refuse to stay up. Less cost-conscience rail companies have seen fit to provide clips that hold the seats security in place: Eurostar, opted for refrigerator magnets which grip about as well as a Post-it note in a hurricane.
So there you are, trying to aim and suddenly the toilet seat slams down through the stream piss and you become a human sprinkler system. It is then you realize exactly why all that pink toilet paper is on the floor: people have been trying to sop up the mess. Yuck.
It should be clear by now that I have no qualms gleefully ridiculing objects of my scorn. Let it not be said however that I do not give credit where it is due; I am obliged to point out that the Eurostar staff, both on and off the trains have been uniformly brilliant. Maybe the company has spent the missing billions on staff training and nude hot-oil massages for the crew but whatever they have done, they have done it well because to the last those folks are cheerful and a pleasure to deal with.
What the big bosses at Eurostar fail to see is that they almost have a good product. If properly managed they could give sleazyJet and the other cut-throat air-busses a scare. Spiff up the trains, put actual padding on the seats, a bit more leg-room; clean fucking loos and the extra money you charge might actually seem like a decent value.
I keep getting back aboard Eurostar because honestly, it beats flying. Whoever planted Charles de Gaul airport so far away from Paris with no decent public transport links should have to pickup all our cab fares. At the end of the day, counting travel to and from the airports and leaving enough time to check in and pass through security, I can get from the center of London to the center of Paris (or Brussels) faster by train than air. Until that changes (not likely), or Eurotunel goes bust (very likely), I’ll keep squeezing myself into those grey and orange seats and praying my bladder holds.
Sunday, 25 November 2007
Euro Tunnel Trash
I travel a lot and not simply to avoid capture. My corporate overlords see to it that I spend as little time in our London office as possible. I believe it is their way of keeping the more cranky members of staff out of sight so that we don’t crush the spirit of the new hires.
The upshot of being a moving target in this part of the world is that I get to enjoy the services of Eurostar trains as they plough the corridor between London, Paris and Brussels.
It would be easy to discount the shabby trains, non-functional toilets and 1970s chic Business Lounge as a result of years of neglect and under funding. The truth however is that the entire Eurotunnel endeavour has, seemingly by design, been a planet sized rat-hole where governments and hapless investors have poured untold billions of pounds over the years. That’s right folks billions of pounds and the price tag keeps expanding like a waistline at a buffet counter.
Just this week the British Stock Exchange halted trading of Eurotunnel stocks. The French boldly declared that they would keep them on the market even though by the close of play they were hovering right at the 38 cent mark. 38 Euro Cents per share- such a deal! If you were a contrarian investor or had a large chunk of steel protruding from your head, you might think that now would be the time to buy. You’d be wrong of course but it’s that kind of bold thinking that keeps the global economy strong.
Eurotunnel somehow managed give enough hand jobs to get their creditors to extend their loan through Jan 2007 but man, I’ll bet their arms are sore. Come Q1 of next year though they had best start limbering up their jaw muscles because there is going to be a line of dicks to suck from London to Paris if they want to keep those trains running. Hell, it will cost them half of the £6.8 billion they owe just to buy mouthwash to get rid of the taste.
Given the mutual loathing and contempt that simmers so amusingly between the British and French, one wonders just who invented the idea of linking the two counties via an underwater tunnel. The fact that most of the English consider the French to be, in the words of Groundskeeper Willy, “Cheese eating surrender monkeys” and the French, quite accurately as it turns out, believe the Brits to be a nation of booze crazed football thugs there would seem to be little common ground on which to cement a partnership.
These things aside, most of the problems, apart from the laughable marriage of British efficiency and French precision engineering, boil down to bad timing.
Just as the last wheelbarrow of dirt was being carted out of the newly dug tunnel, budget airlines were taking to the skies. If Ryanair or easyJet could take you to Paris in 40 minutes for a quid (£1) why spend three and a half hours and 199 times the price going by train? Why indeed.
Probably the reason that the Chtunnel has not yet been back-filled and abandoned is its usefulness as a conduit for commercial rail and truck traffic. Also, for those families who have an alarming number of children, packing them all into the car and hauling the entire brood to France for holiday is still cheaper than taking to the air. Not that you can actually drive under the water: you load up your estate car (British for Station Wagon), kids, dogs, enormous beach umbrellas and wheel the lot onto a flat-bed train carriage. Once you reach France and come to grips with driving on the opposite side of the road, you can proceed to EuroDisney where you’ll be able to relax in un-crowded surroundings.
A reliable source of income for Eurostar which doesn’t appear on any of their literature is the alcohol filled day tripper. Much to my unceasing misery each train carriage sports at least one, if not a dozen, drunken louts from Liverpool or Barking off to, or returning from, rekindling the traditional Anglo English animosity by spending a weekend fighting in and being ejected from, Paris bars.
Anyone who has ever spent time in the cheap seats at a London West End theatre will feel perfectly at home in the upholstered concrete slabs that pass for seating on a Eurostar. If you are under 4’ 11” and twig-like, you may wonder what all the fuss is about. However if you fall into that pesky category of “normal height and weight” you will find that better legroom can be had in the overhead luggage rack.
I would like to publicly ask the designers of these seats why, in the name of all that’s holy, did you install footrests on them? They may be useful to someone who’s feet when seated don’t actually touch the ground but for the rest of us, 99% of humanity, they take away two inches of valuable space and scrape our shins.
What the seats lack in comfort, the toilets make up for in squalor. In the past 45 days I have been on Eurostar trains 12 times and on only ONE occasion has there actually been soap in the soap dispenser of any of the loos. Sometimes I get lucky and the water works but it’s no sure bet. Door locks don’t latch, the smell is, well, imagine a public out-house at a Phoenix Arizona rock concert in August. Least attractive of all is the carpeting of sticky pink toilet paper that covers the floors: it glues itself to the soles of your shoes when you walk in and there is no way in hell you are going to pick it off with your hands so you are left with a little souvenir of your time in the can for the rest of your journey.
One of the best things about being a guy is standing up to pee. However, Eurostar has seen fit to remove whatever evolutionary advantage vertical urination might once have had by installing toilet seats that refuse to stay up. Less cost-conscience rail companies have seen fit to provide clips that hold the seats security in place: Eurostar, opted for refrigerator magnets which grip about as well as a Post-it note in a hurricane.
So there you are, trying to aim and suddenly the toilet seat slams down through the stream piss and you become a human sprinkler system. It is then you realize exactly why all that pink toilet paper is on the floor: people have been trying to sop up the mess. Yuck.
It should be clear by now that I have no qualms gleefully ridiculing objects of my scorn. Let it not be said however that I do not give credit where it is due; I am obliged to point out that the Eurostar staff, both on and off the trains have been uniformly brilliant. Maybe the company has spent the missing billions on staff training and nude hot-oil massages for the crew but whatever they have done, they have done it well because to the last those folks are cheerful and a pleasure to deal with.
What the big bosses at Eurostar fail to see is that they almost have a good product. If properly managed they could give sleazyJet and the other cut-throat air-busses a scare. Spiff up the trains, put actual padding on the seats, a bit more leg-room; clean fucking loos and the extra money you charge might actually seem like a decent value.
I keep getting back aboard Eurostar because honestly, it beats flying. Whoever planted Charles de Gaul airport so far away from Paris with no decent public transport links should have to pickup all our cab fares. At the end of the day, counting travel to and from the airports and leaving enough time to check in and pass through security, I can get from the center of London to the center of Paris (or Brussels) faster by train than air. Until that changes (not likely), or Eurotunel goes bust (very likely), I’ll keep squeezing myself into those grey and orange seats and praying my bladder holds.
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