Kids in London - Trains stopped play

I am SCREAMING with frustration at the public transport system. Yesterday I had planned to take my daughter into central London to see the Lord Mayor's Show and fireworks.

I had spent a lot of time telling her about the Lord Mayor (and the story of Dick Whittington) and about how the City of London is the financial centre of the country and so on and so forth. I had even planned how we would spend the time between the parade and the 5pm fireworks (choice of one of the escorted walks around the City or a visit to the Museum of London). There's a great web site all about the parade and the City.

Anyway. I had no warning about engineering works at my local station which meant that I had to get a train to Twickenham and then take a transfer bus to Richmond before I could take the tube to central London. So we took a bus to Richmond instead - a lot of time in traffic. I was panicking about the time as we had seen the start of the parade on the TV and knew we had only a short window to see the return trip at Blackfriars.

Finally we got to Richmond. And guess what. No tubes. Some ******** vandels had broken the signals so there were no tubes. And of course the engineering works meant no trains into London (had to get the train out to Twickenham...pretty much where we started from)...GGGGRRRrrrrrr....

The crap service is one thing. The inability to prevent a couple of vandels bringing the system to a grinding halt is another. But the complete failure to communicate this stuff is what really galls. Mr Livingston - would you care to comment on the completely crap weekend public transport system we have now? It seems every weekend is a reduced service for engineering works - which might be good for future commuters but what about us folks with young families NOW? Would you care to do something about car parking charges in Central London at the weekend if the public transport is always going to be reduced at weekends?

Anyway. My daughter was really disappointed that London and the Lord Mayor were inaccessible to us. You try explaining to a kid why a City as great as London can't make a few trains run OK. So we went with friends to Madjeski Stadium in Reading and watched London Irish beat Benneton Treviso at rugby. Not what I had planned at all but good fun nevertheless. But I'm NOT happy.