My least favourite kind of jam

Although to be honest, I'm more of a marmalade sort of chap.

No, what I mean is traffic jams, because lord knows I've found myself in a few over the last week or so. 

First of all, last Thursday a broken water main near the Chiswick roundabout caused chaos as I tried to get into work, leading to a journey time of about an hour and a half. I left early on Friday in an attempt to circumnavigate any continuing problems, only to find that things were even worse because the Police had knocked the three-lane roundabout down to one, and had coned off the exit I needed - unless you were driving a bus, in which case they moved a couple of cones and waved you through. 

The rest of us mere mortals had to drive several miles down the A4, so I was basically heading home, then do a u-turn, just to get back to the roundabout on the other side of the cones. Such shenanigans meant that I ended up running perilously low on petrol, a journey time of one hour and  50 minutes, and the use of several colourfully creative swears from yours truly.

Monday morning I was relieved to find that everything was back to normal, and I swooped into the office in just 40 minutes. 

And then there was today.

My journey into work is almost exactly 12 miles long. At the four mile mark I hit traffic, and crawled all the way from Whitton to Kew; this part of the journey usually takes about 15 minutes, but today it took well over an hour, and only occasionally did I get to hit the giddy and exciting heights of second gear. At Kew Green I learnt why there was so much congestion:

Transport for London were doing a traffic census, undoubtedly to find out why London's roads are congested.

A severe looking Policewoman waved me down the side of the green, when in fact I actually just wanted to get to work; I was already late and needed to get away on time in the afternoon. 

With no other option, I pulled up beside some woman with a handheld computer-thingy, who explained to me that they were doing a census and they just needed to ask me a few questions. Those questions were:

• Where are you coming from? (exact address)

• Where are you going to? (exact address)

• Will you be entering the congestion charge zone?

What instantly became apparent was that the woman asking the questions wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders. Upon telling her that I lived in Shepperton she said "where?! I never 'eard of that!" before cutting me off while I spelt it out to her so it was now called 'Sheppert.' As for the last question, if these dunces had looked at a map they would've noticed that no, I would not be entering the congestion charge zone - unless, of course, they sent me on some massive loop around London then back through the centre, which based on the farcical way the survey was conducted wouldn't really have surprised me…

Two minutes later I was on my way. Total journey time? Two hours.

So thanks, TfL, for f**king up my entire day. Because of you I was over an hour late for work, had to take a short lunch so I could get away at something approaching normal time, and instead of getting home, having a nice relaxed dinner then heading over for a cuppa with my Nan, I've now got to rush around like a blue-arsed fly.

I hope you got all the information you needed, you tits.