Commuters under pressure

Why can such a simple thing as catching a train, give so many people so much stress. Mild mannered Janitors become rampaging Hong Kong Phooeys if they stand on a platform edge for more than 5 minutes. I’m not a massive fan of my daily commute to be fair, I already spend a total of 3 hours a day getting to and from work, for a significant chunk of my pay, and it doesn’t take much to go wrong before that time can increase to 4 hours or more. To me this journey is inconvenient, I don’t really like it - the time or the crowds – but I know that a lot of people have it worse and at least I am working, so I can keep it in perspective. To an awful lot of people though, my commute would be their living hell. Daily, I see people losing their grip on reality as their wait on the platform increases due to a piece of track in Bristol being the wrong shade of steel. When the train finally arrives they have lost their identity and become the animal that is the British Commuter, pushing, shoving, moaning and swearing. Respectable looking men in smart suits forcing their way past you, pushing you back off the step in a desperate attempt to be first on the train. Well dressed women stamping on your toes and using Pepper Spray, cursing like Dockies to ensure they get sat by a window. The whole journey is spent tutting and moaning every time the train slows, tension blowing up over the slightest things, people using tape measures to prove that your elbow is on their side of the armrest.

Arriving at London causes the tension to rise tenfold, there seems to be something about the fact that there isn’t a specific timetable to follow that creates stress out of thin air. Without a fixed schedule to blame when a train is not on the platform the second that you arrive causes people to flap around un-focused, looking for something else to be angry at.

Today my line was already severely delayed as I arrived at Paddington, which I could tell straight away due to the large crowds of miserable people milling around the bottom of the stairs by the screens. I managed to squeeze and bribe my way to a semi-decent spot and got comfy for the wait. As we waited I noticed the guy to my left, Pinstripes and Telegraph, getting more and more irate. It started with his paper being ruffled over and over again with an ever increasing vigour, slowly I witnessed him spiral downwards, like Michael Douglass in the excellent Falling Down, but with considerably less cool and guns (thankfully). You could see that his eyes were disconnected from his brain, his head orbiting a different world to the rest of us, the force of yet another delay to his journey, pushing his perspective over the edge of reality. As the announcements began, describing the single puddle of water through which no train could pass, my friend started with the stalwart of the British under pressure, he tutted in every 2nd pause of breath, and huffed in the other. You could see people around us starting to look at him, the entertainment taking their minds off their own situation, some nodded in approval at his daring display of emotion, others condemning him for it. Fearing that things could get hairy I inched slightly away. As the announcement continued Pinstripe had moved right past tutting and had started quietly muttering “Ucksake” which is the last rung of the ladder before full blown swearing begins.

As time went by, Muttering Mike passed the point of no return. We had been stood for 20 minutes by now and he was broken. He began to rock back and forth chanting “come on, come on” the volume and frequency of the chants rising with each rotation. I felt an urge to show him some Brotherly support in order to try and help him out of his deep thoughts, I was on the brink of joining in the chant, waving my arms about to try and get the crowd involved, and hoping this show of solidarity would bring his perspective back from the brink of despair. Just as I was drawing the face on an effigy of Boris Johnson I’d knocked up out of my gym kit and a mop that I’d noticed next to a puddle leaked from the roof, he moved up another gear, which had me reaching for my note pad instead. A woman to my right picked up her mobile and phoned work, oddly loud against the hushed crowd of people excitedly trying to hear the fun. As Telephone Girl finished informing work that she would be half an hour late, he jerked rigid, clearly shouted “BIT*H”, then dug in his pocket to fetch out his Blackberry. I think the whole crowd had agreed that the woman was a bit behind the times; actually calling people to say you’re late is quite old hat in London, for the last 5 years a simple text reading “tubes v bad will B L8” sent to Personnel has been more than sufficient, surpassed recently by being able to craft a full email from your Blackberry straight onto the laptop of your Boss. Pinstripe was about to make the mistake that many of us have made over the years, sending an email whilst absolutely furious, without stopping to re-read it later on first – type the email yes, but never send it until you have calmed down. As he punched in each keystroke he loudly spoke the words that he typed, wrapped up in so many swear words that it was impossible to know if he was actually typing them or just saying them, as he finished the email he sent it with an exuberant shout of “FU**!”.
As far as I could work out, his smiling Boss arrived at work this morning, flipped open his Dell, opened up Microsoft Outlook and spat his Starbucks all over his finely pressed trousers to the following message from his employee.

“The fu**ing tubes fu**ing sh*t, 20 fu**sake fu**ing minutes late bas**rds FU**!”

The train pulled in, rammed solid with people, the doors opened and the crowds surged. Pinstripe was behind me barely able to breathe, I saw that the last gap on the carriage was mine, ½ an inch of valuable tube train real estate waiting to be taken, but I also knew that if this guy failed to get on this train then he was going to start swinging the mop about, so I did the only thing that I could do, I stepped aside, the look of sheer joy on his face as the doors slid to a close, crushing his nose, his bag straps flapping in the wind as the train pulled away, will stay with me forever. Just 2 minutes later the next train came into the station practically empty, I stepped on board and sat myself down smugly taking the lid off my pen to write this all down – good old Karma!