Getting to know you…
In London there are two conversations people have when they first meet, and these then become the two conversations they have whenever they meet, up to the point where by they have them on auto-pilot and can easily forget that they ever had them. These are 1. the weather, which I’ll spare you and 2. the Tube, which if you read any further you’ll have to endure…
I’m not going to complain about the upcoming strike, because that�s all it is yet upcoming…
What I am going to complain about is my tube journey…Leaving work, running late to meet a friend for a drink, I got down to the platform and there was a train waiting, I thanked my lucky stars and did the comedy running for the tube that only commuters, who can’t bear to wait another 3 minutes for the next train, do. Jump on the last carriage expecting, any second, to hear the doors close behind me, fight my way through the tourists crowded round the door to the space in the middle of the carriage, still waiting for the train to move.
And we wait, more people complete the comedy run and jump on the tube, as they reach the platform and feel, briefly, lucky that they’ve managed to catch a train…and still we wait…the carriages fill up, the space in the middle decreases, the levels of stress palatably rise…and still we wait…
“Ladies and gentleman I have just found out what the problem is. A train driver has reached the end of his legal driving limit and we are waiting for a replacement. This line is now effectively suspended until further notice.”
Now it’s not like the tube is some sort of new development, not something where you would expect there to be teething trouble; drivers reach the end of their shift all the time and yet the tube keeps on running, so why not now? It surely can’t be that difficult to co-ordinate…?
Ok, that�s the obligatory tube conversation over and done with, now to forget it ever happened and to move on to other more entertaining, irrelevant but probably equally mundane topics…