Bloody trains!

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My kids get the train to school every day unless I know in advance there’s a problem, in which case I will give them a lift. I always keep an eye on what’s going on with the couple of trains before theirs, and I’d noted that the one immediately before my boys’ train was running 25 minutes late. As that train leaves our station fifty minutes before their train, it’s very difficult to know whether the next one, theirs, will be affected. It doesn’t help that the website gives NO INFORMATION WHATSOEVER about a train until after it’s supposed to have left.

So when I needed to drop them round at the station because we were all running a few minutes late this morning, I stayed to make sure the train actually left on time. When it didn’t leave at the appointed minute I parked and went onto the platform to check the screens, which told me it would be leaving three minutes late. So when the train duly pulled out of the station three minutes late, I drove home and got some washing sorted.

I’ve just checked the website again and it’s now telling me the train left our station twelve minutes late. Which gives the kids only a minute or two in hand before they start getting an “Unauthorised Absence” marked on their record. So I phoned the oldest and apparently the train pulled out of the platform and promptly sat ten yards outside the station for a long time. I’d told them to ring me if they were going to be ten minutes late leaving and I’m come and pick them up, but obviously I can’t pick them up once they’re outside the station, so now they’re in danger of being late for school.

Which shouldn’t much of a big deal, but their school has started giving “Unauthorised Absence” markers for even one minute late. And that applies for the whole morning. Yep - arrive one minute late because the train company fucked up, and on paper you’re just as bad as someone who couldn’t be arsed to go to school at all.

So there’s a brilliant start to the week - it’s not 8:30 yet and already I hate the world.

So they're quite well-known then?

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Because I’m largely out of touch with the current "pop" world (or whatever it’s called nowadays) it’s always been difficult for me to appreciate where Green Day fit into the world. I mean, I know they must be big, because I see phrases like "one of the biggest bands on the planet", and they play places like Wembley Stadium, but to me they’re just my favourite band, a bunch of guys I've grown to love very much, who happen to be successful and quite well-known.

So it’s rather weird and sad that it’s taken a bad-news story to make me understand how big this band really are. Billie Joe "had a meltdown", or as I would put it, "seems to have cracked under the strain" on stage the other night; the story has been put out that he's going into rehab and obviously we’ve been anxiously discussing things on fan sites, as you would. But this morning, googling to see if there’s any updates, I find that everyone - the BBC, the Daily Mail ffs - everyone’s got the story.

See, to me, it’s not "news", if that makes sense - it’s information about people I love. So I’m finding it really strange that to the rest of the world what’s happening to Billie is big news. And that’s how I’ve finally come to realise how big Green Day really are - because the fucking Daily Mail has the story.