The trams are no more!!!

The Man in his White Ivory Towers has decided to shut down the trams for a few months to replace the track. Although the decision claims to have been made because the old track was causing the trams to breakdown and get poorly, it is much more likely that this decision has purely been made to spite me.

For the next two months I will be using a mixture of the Bus and the Car. I don’t so much mind the bus, I used to ride the bus to school every day. (Listen to me “ride the bus” it’s almost like I’ve been hanging around with a Canadian, eh?). I even had a chewed up Clippercard which never worked and gave me numerous free journeys. But the bus does allow me to have a relaxing journey into work so it is kind of like the tram but just for a lower social class. Or if I was setting an IQ test, I would put it:
Bus is to Tram as MySpace is to?
And the answer would be Facebook.

Harry the Yaris isn’t going to know what hit him. He’s used to driving to Football on a Wednesday and Sainsburys on a Saturday and then sitting around all week reading the paper. In fact I can already feel the stress of having to drive in every day and I’m sure the car must be picking up on it. One of the reasons I get the tram was to avoid the stress of driving. I hate having people cut you up, sitting in traffic jams, not being able to read, having to remember to stop at red traffic lights and having to recollect that if you hit a cyclist it’s likely to cause damage to the car.

And what will become of the ginger haired man in the trench coat? He has almost become family. I see him more often than I see my parents and the few words I spoke to him to ascertain if the seat next to him was free is more than I have spoken to my older sister in the last 12 months. I will miss his stoic glare and unswerving ability to get the front seat on the station side of the tram.

I will also be missing out my once a week treat of getting a Starbucks on the way in to work. I hope they don’t go bankrupt because of this loss of trade. It’s always tough for these small local retailers. Although I suppose this could be a blessing in disguise, the once a week treat was becoming slightly unmanagable on every day of the week. This will give me the chance to get some blood back into the coffee stream.

There has to be at least one advantage to me of the trams not running. I suppose it could be the refund I’ll get from my ticket. But they sent me a form to fill in so there’s no chance of getting a refund. I wonder if they’ve just sent the form out betting on the fact that 97.35% of people won’t complete it because they can’t be arsed.

And then it dawned on me, I know one thing I won’t miss about getting the tram. I won’t be getting a lift home off my Dad on a Friday evening anymore, so no more pretending to be interested in hearing about the new pill he’s had to start taking this week, no more faking interest in the latest goings on at the Church, no need to feign interest in his latest business deals and no need to make-up things that I’ll be doing on the weekend when the only thing I’ll be doing is picking up a little Canadian.