Stationary

Thanks to Cambridge City Council's visionary decision to work on both Hill's Road Bridge and its counterpart on Mill Road, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get to Cambridge railway station in the mornings and nearly impossible to escape from it in the evenings. Doing this work at the same time clearly shows that their understanding of transport economics is drawn from a static building far away from reality - probably interrupted frequently by screensavers showing exotic coastal locations in Norfolk or Suffolk.

To compound matters even further, 'essential work' is being done around the station itself. The distinction between essential and remedial is obviously lost on the workmen who have been sinking long trenches, adjacent to the car park, in order to increase the probability of pedestrians getting run over quite considerably. Cambridge taxis have also decided that the main station car park is actually now their 'holding area.' They hold long and intimate conversations, they hold sponges and make imaginary sweeps across clean windscreens and they hold everybody up when those fortunate enough to not need lifts, are looking forward to becoming stationary anway.

Trouble at Mill

So, not content with reducing Hills Road to a virtual standstill, while the bridge is reconstructed, I arrived back in Cambridge this evening to find that the Council had decided to simultaneously reduce much of Mill Road bridge to a single lane. The road was already busier than normal - because of the Hills Road work - and this caused chaos and much backing up of traffic. Brilliant strategy, superbly executed.

Let's do this again and work on all the road bridges at once. Better still, let's remove them all and put people back on the railways they cross.

From Bedford to March

I was travelling back to Ely yesterday by train from Leicester. At one point, just past Stamford, I heard a can being crushed - seemingly in soneone's teeth - in the seat behind me. Peeping through the gap in the seats I spotted a shaven-headed, heavily-tattoed muscleman with teeth like rivets and bruises in his eyes.

It transpired that he had 'been away' in Bedford and was travelling to meet his mother who had moved up from London's East End and who now lived in Wisbech. To the horror of my fellow passengers, we shared a conversation about the local area, buses he would need to take etc. We shook hands as he disembarked amid much eye raising and body shuffles from suits and executive skirts all around us. He told me nobody had been prepared to offer him any travel advice. It reminded me of the series of Guardian ads featuring a young skinhead who, quite apart from looking to attack a besuited gentleman was actually seeking to protect them.

So many times, especially when travelling, my and others' perception has been proven to be quite wrong about other people - yet still we default to it.

Fat chance

David Cameron has come out in the press today, saying that politicians need to be bolder in their statements about health issues such as fat and fitness. Obviously 'bold' in this context is a word substituted by 'effectiveness' or 'opportunist' or 'expedient' depending upon the prevailing political climate. David Cameron, like all politicians, will only remain consistent on any theme if it leads to his personal (far more than any party-political) longevity in public life, and financial security in his private.

Having said this, my mother-in-law is staying with us at the moment and, like her mother before here, is grossly overweight. There does seem to be some genetic influence at work here but neither of them heeded the warnings earlier in their lives that they were eating too much and took too little exercise. It isn't just about young people and their parents who need 'support' but taking control of your life and tapping into that willpower that all of us have, however hidden it might appear to be. It isn't about making massive life changes all at once, just small changes that will make big differences later on.

Metro reported two other 'support' stories today: the hold-up in removing a bush in Avon because homosexual men use it as cover and clearly it would be disastrous if they were discriminated against on sex grounds; and families needing support because, shock horror, it is this kind of support that young people aren't receiving and thus seek out in gang culture.

Is it surprising that eating the right things or less of the bad, and looking at your own fitness levels are arguments lost in the 'support' culture? David Cameron's support may be helpful if it proves to be real rather politically correct.