Out-takes 7: Day Eight (a) - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

And one from the Crystal Palace Station car park. Can you tell I had time to kill before my train on Day Eight (a)? If you're wondering what it is, it's a Nissan Figaro, a retro-look car that was actually made in 1991 and only sold in Japan. If you fancy what Quentin Willson called "a suburban Noddymobile", these people might be able to help you. Or your local mental health specialist.

Out-takes 3: Day Three - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

Back to the doctor's, more antibiotics, signed off work for a week. Time for more out-takes, then.

This was taken hanging over a walkway at Crystal Palace station on the way to work on Day Three of this blog. I like how nature takes over man-made structures, slowly but surely.

Day One Hundred and Fifty-Two - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

Day One Hundred and Fifty - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

Basic Skills in literacy not required to work for Network Rail, obviously.

Day One Hundred and Thirty-Six - just outside Crystal Palace Station, SE19

Self Portrait III.

Day One Hundred and Thirty-Five - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

It's Valentine's Day. I have more important things to do than craft a beautiful picture for a blog.

Day One Hundred and Thirty-Three - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

Misty this morning.

Day One Hundred and Twenty-Two - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

Self Portrait II.

(I was ill Thursday and Friday last week, hence no commuting and no pictures)

Day One Hundred and Eleven - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

The cheap alternative to actually having staff on the station.

Day Eighty-Nine - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

The way Southern are "making London safer" is by putting more CCTV cameras on trains and stations. Just when you think they can't put more CCTV cameras in public places they go and put some more...

On the discman today: AM - My Bloody Valentine You Made Me Realise EP, Feed Me With Your Kiss EP, Glider EP PM - My Bloody Valentine Tremolo EP, Glider (remix) 12" Seefeel Time To Find Me Afx remix 12"

Day Eighty-Five - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

The wind and rain which put the kibosh on my trip to Brighton yesterday has covered platform one with leaves and stems (insert drug joke here). Everywhere had a slightly bedraggled look today, but by lunchtime the sun was out and it was a lovely autumnal day. Why couldn't it have been like that yesterday? Grr.

On the discman today: AM and PM - Various Monterey International Pop Festival 1967 Discs 3 & 4

Day Eighty-Two - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

Today's hexagram was 50, The Vessel, with transforming lines at 2 and 4. Today's picture sees the ghosts of Crystal Palace's Victorian past ascending the stairs from platform 4.

On the discman today: AM and PM - Van Der Graaf Generator The Box Disc 2

Day Sixty-Six - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

Moody and misty morning at the station. Autumn is here.

The floodlight you can see is from the athletics stadium.

On the discman today: AM and PM - The Moles Untune The Sky

Day Fifty-Nine - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

In a week where the EU has given up on making the UK go fully metric I noticed this sign on the wall of Platform 2 of Crystal Palace Station that tell us that the station is 8 miles and 52 chains from the Victoria terminus.

I'd be quite happy if the UK went totally metric - the reason it's not worked here is that it was done in a half-arsed fashion. One of Thatcher's greatest mistakes (and there were so many) was to abolish the Metrication Board in 1980 to save costs. This meant that food continued to be sold in pounds and ounces, liquids to be sold in fluid ounces, pints and gallons, and distance to be measured in yards and miles all through the seventies and eighties, when my generation was at school being taught nothing but kilograms, litres and kilometres. The pick and mix approach causes all sorts of confusion - to this day I have no idea what it means when I'm told my weight in kilos. Is 90kg ok for a man who is, erm, 6 feet tall? Hang on, let me convert that into metres, that conversion I pretty much understand.

I think the supposed inflation of decimalisation counted against further metrication here - my mum still goes on about how old ladies were diddled out of their pension by unscrupulous greengrocers during the early months of 1971. But (if you'll excuse the metaphor) it's apples and oranges - standardising our measurements of distance with the rest of the world (except the yanks, and they can please themselves) won't affect the pound in your purse. And we buy petrol in litres now...

They made a much better fist of it in the Commonwealth, going fully metric by 1980. How well this was done is shown by how Louise, seventies Sydney born and bred, didn't (and still doesn't really) understand pounds, stone or yards when she moved over here. She picked up what a pint was very quickly, but that's a different issue.

Oh, and if you were wondering, 52 chains is 520 links, or 208 rods, poles, or perches, or 1144 yards - the length of 52 cricket pitches laid end-to-end. I'm glad that's cleared up.

On the discman today: AM - This Heat Deceit PM - This Heat Made Available

Day Fifty-Two - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

Looks like they're starting the tube link then...

On the discman today: AM - Jack Bruce Things We Like (ugh) PM - Tony Oxley 4 Compositions For Sextet

Day Forty-Three - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

This week is I Hate Free Newspapers Week here at Commuted to Life.

I was buying a cup of tea from the chap in the kiosk at Crystal Palace station this morning, and I asked him why his usual table of newspapers wasn't there. After telling me that actually they'd been missing for a few weeks (I thought doing this blog would make me more observant...) he said that the installation of the bins for the free Metro paper earlier this year had caused his newspaper sales to go down from £125 a day to £35 a day, and that what with the small profit he made out of that anyway and the £30 a week he had to pay to get them delivered in the first place, it was no longer worth his while to offer newspapers for sale. "People coming through here in the morning are in a hurry, " he said, "and they just want to grab something. If it's free they'll just take it. Same thing's happened at Streatham Hill and Penge East".

This incensed me. Metro, part of the Daily Mail/Associated Newpapers stable, let's not forget, is a forgettable, trite newspaper, chewing-gum for the eyes if you will. And because of their ability to get their bins into every railway station in London (thanks, yet again, John Major for privatising the railways in the pursuit of mammon over integrated infrastructure) it leads to more than one negative consequence:

a) the livelihood of the independent kiosk owner is threatened, leading to the possibility of him closing down. Apart from the effect on him, that would mean that the users of the station would be denied his other services, such as a cup of tea for 70p and a friendly chat of a morning. No doubt if/when he goes, Southern Railway will offer his pitch to one of the coffee chains, leading to sullen service and the two-quid latte being the only options.

b) making quality papers less available, dumbing down the entire populace. From the last few years of commuting I know that it was actually the quality papers that sold out most quickly at the kiosk. Convenience leads to no choice but to read people-hating trivia tripe.

Yes, I know people can buy proper papers from newsagents near the station. Yes, I know they can bring a book. But as the kiosk guy said, most people are in a hurry in the morning. By usurping the choice of papers at the station with the monolithic moronity of Metro, the only winners are the odious Associated Newspapers and those that take their shilling.

And I shall be ranting about the evening freebies over the next few days too, don't you worry.

On the discman today: AM and PM - Kevin Drumm Sheer Hellish Miasma

Day Thirty-Four - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

Crystal Palace station is closed all weekend. I assume this must have something to do with it.

On the discman today: AM - Peter Brotzmann/Bill Laswell Low Life PM - rockin' into the weekend with The Upper Crust Entitled (examples of the best and worst of allmusic reviews, btw)

Day Nineteen - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

Clearing the gutters - and not before time, if the vegetation behind the chaps is anything to go by. However, when I came home this evening they'd not bothered to clear all the detritus on the right, so the next time it rains heavily it'll all clog up the gutters again. Sigh. If you're going to do a job, do it properly.

On the discman today: AM - Ground Zero Live 1992+ PM - Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus

Day Thirteen - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

(been away for a week on holiday in Scotland - had a lovely time)

Today was the first working day of the smoking ban. As a non-smoker, I'm quite happy about this. When I first worked in the LCD in the early nineties you could smoke in the office before ten and after four and they'd not long got rid of smoking carriages on the Tube. Times change.

On the discman today: AM - The Skull Defekts Polonium (twice - it's only 20 minutes long) PM - Ry-om Ry-om

Day Ten - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

I was a bit late this morning, so I took the train from platform 3 instead of my usual platform 1. This is much the nicer bit of Crystal Palace Station , built in 1854 when there was much more traffic coming to the area. As you can see, there used to be more lines, at least two of which will be restored when the East London line of the London Underground is extended to here in 2010 (as the East London Railway. Hmm. So North Londoners will still go on about it "not being a tube". Sigh).

Most services go through the newer part of the station, which is far less grand. I'll take some pictures from there at some point, but it's pretty uninspiring compared to the faded grandeur hinted at here.

On the discman today: AM and PM John Zorn The Big Gundown