Because you’re really missing the boat here.
On Wednesday evening I had a two hour outcall to Heathrow Airport. It took me two hours to get there and two hours to get back. I didn’t want to take the car because anybody living in London knows what the M25 is like during rush hour. At any other time it takes approx. 90mins to get there anyway, so I thought I’d let the train take the strain and just read my Kindle on the journey.
But living on the other side of London, it can and it turned out to be a monumental journey. I emailed the client just before I left at 5.30. “I’m aiming to get there around 7pm”, I says. Who knew I was being optomistic? Somebody Up There must’ve been laughing at me and thinking, “that’s what she thinks.” The first hurdle was when I disembarked at Victoria to jump on the Victoria line, only to forget that between 4pm and 8pm the main entrance to the underground is closed due to the ongoing refurb of the underground system, so the staff had the rush hour foot traffic squeeze through another entrance that’s mainly used to exit the underground. That was fun, it was like squeezing marshmallows through a straw. Then the escalators to the Victoria line was shut, so the herd of foot-traffic was re-routed to another entrance. I decided instead to jump on the District line and change for the Piccadilly line at South Kensington. Then came (after a 10min wait for the tube) the near 40min journey on said Picadilly line to Terminal 5. I got to Heathrow at just on 7.30pm. Thank goodness I was able to keep in touch with my client to let him know that it would more likely be 7.30pm before I saw him and thank goodness he was cool about it and flexible with his schedule.
I know I keep saying this about my clients but he turned out to be a lovely (and gorgeous) gentleman and it was well worth the journey. But somebody out there’s missing the boat on building some sort of (direct) link between South London and Heathrow. Or at least Gatwick (my nearest airport, and Heathrow). On my recent jaunt to Vienna, the only flights were out of Heathrow, so sometimes I don’t have a choice. I don’t know if there are any plans, but if so, please build a line chaps. I reckon you’d make your money back in no time.