Love train.
I visited my MP’s constituency yesterday, it was great fun. When I got back to London I had to negotiate the Underground and then fight my way through London Bridge railway station. I live in Forest Hill, which isn’t particularly foresty but it does have trees - I can see several from my bedroom window, which I certainly wasn’t expecting when I moved to the Big Smog. I would have been happy with a seedy alleyway that wasn’t full of nappies, I don’t have big expectations. When I got to London Bridge it appeared there hadn’t been a Forest Hill train in approximately three weeks, which meant that seven thousand people were stood by the timetable board waiting for the platform number to appear for a train that was imminently departing. It was particularly gruesome - I think I saw some old women get trampled in the melee, people were running along the platform and diving into the train to make room. Even normally it’s not a proper commute unless you’ve left a nose mark on the window and have newsprint from some obnoxious pillock’s Telegraph running down the other side of your face.
This was particularly bad - the trains always remind me of a really old kids’ programme I used to watch on channel 4 on a Sunday morning that had little red chaps going round with oxygen bubbles on their backs, they were blood cells. It was all about how the body works, but it was always pretty busy near the heart. The other thing that came to mind was a stark simile of convulsion - like John Prescott eating packets of biscuits, we’re forcibly imbibed and then ejected from our vessel. I’m surprised there aren’t any more incidences of people getting severely injured on the way into work. I feel for all those people in the City, I really do, but if 5000 jobs going means I get a seat on the train then I think we have to maturely consider the fact that the economy has to reset itself and there is natural collateral as part of that.
Sigh - quarter past seven, means I have to get my packed lunch sorted. I love it really, but that kicks in around 10am.