Traffic, Traffic, Traffic

I’m training in Croydon this week. I also had an assessment to do in Swindon this morning, so we had a cunning plan. My wife would drive me to the station on her way to work and I would catch the 09:01 train or, at the latest, the 09:29. Bearing in mind that traffic is fairly heavy at that time in the morning, we set out at 08:00. Allowing plenty of time (one hour) should have been plenty.

Ah, well, you can plan your day but you can’t plan the result, it seems. At first things seemed to be okay. Until, that was, we hit the ring road. Gridlock personified. A trip that would normally take between 10 and 20 minutes took close to an hour and a half. After dropping me off to catch the 09:29 by the skin of my teeth, it took my wife another hour and a quarter to get to work – a journey of close to three hours to cover a journey that normally takes 20 minutes or so.

The cause? A traffic accident on the ring road causing the whole road to be blocked in the middle of the rush hour. Given the density of traffic at that time in the morning meant that gridlock backed up miles in each direction. I admit to being somewhat stressed. I had a meeting to keep and even despite phoning ahead to both my candidate and my wife’s manager (thank goodness for mobile phones) I could see my appointment slipping away. That I made it was as a result of getting out of the car and walking the last few metres into the station.

The Roman philosopher Seneca had an approach to this sort of situation. His philosophy was that we should expect problems and not be surprised when they happen. Or, to put it in modern parlance; shit happens.