Steal This Third Book*

 Fans of the short story form and the Disgruntled Commuter prose style have a double treat in store for them this week. This book combines some excellent, prize winning stories, illustrated with apposite and evocative photographs, and – through some bureaucratic error – one of mine. Don’t bother looking up one D. Commuter in the list of authors, though, as it’s been published under my real name, so you’ll have to guess which one is me.

Usual rules apply. If you buy the book and guess which one I wrote, send me an email and let me know. I’ll sign your book, thereby halving its value. And if you’re too cheap to steal the book, you may want to steal a radio instead, tune it to Radio 4 and switch it on at 7:45pm this Sunday. You never know what you might hear.

*No, not really. Please buy it instead.

A Cruel Trick to Play

No, not the announcement of above-inflation fare rises in the middle of this week of generalised train chaos (District, Picadilly and Silverlink today). Nor even the implication (by Virgin among others) that we passengers should somehow be grateful that they’re putting on all these extra trains to carry all the extra fare paying passengers they’re getting – haven’t these people heard of economies of scale? No, I’m talking about the disabled seats on the Northern Line.

These flip up (with some force) to make space for a wheelchair, which is handy if you’re in a wheelchair and are lucky enough to be making a journey between two of the three wheelchair accessible stations on the Northern Line*. But I only realised the downside of this last night when a blind guy got on with his dog at London Bridge. The man in the disabled spot promptly offered his seat and got up – the seat flipped up automatically, the blind man tried to sit down and much hilarity ensued…

No, no, no, no, of course that didn’t happen. At least not this time. The seat offering chap saw the problem and held it down, and the blind guy seemed to be wise to it anyway. I wonder if he ever had to find out the hard way though? And who – if anyone – actually designs these things? 
 
*London Bridge, West Finchley and Woodside Park, since you ask

Now There’s a Thing

As a commuter I’m pretty used to being apologised to. Usually by a computer that’s been programmed to do so, which doesn’t really count, or a pre-recorded announcement grudgingly regretting any inconvenience which may have been caused. Getting apologised to is better than not getting apologised to, as SouthWest Trains demonstrated this morning by silently cancelling one train and then running the next one late, but it’s still fairly routine. But when were you last actually thanked, as a commuter, and not by your fellow passengers but by the staff?

I was heading for the wilds of zone 5 – Sidcup, as it happens – and on what turned out to be a short formation train. By London Bridge the passengers getting on were being forced to play sardines to an Olympic standard and things were getting uncomfortably packed. At this point, the train driver started chiming in: ‘If you’ve got a bag on the seat, take it off and ask the nice stranger to sit next to you,’ he suggested, then, ‘come on, I know there’s some room in there, just squeeze up and let two or three more people on,’  and, finally, as the pips went, ‘Breathe in everybody!’ so the doors could close. Something told me he wasn’t following the train-company approved official announcement script. As we trundled away he apologised for the short train and announced he was switching the heating off – which was thoughtful, but not out of the ordinary. But then at Hither Green when the crowding began to ease and we all breathed out again he came on the tannoy again to say goodbye to the departing passengers and thank us all for our efforts in getting everyone on board. ‘You’re the best bunch of passengers I’ve had all day,’ he said. ‘And I mean that.’ Everyone grinned.

And do you know, as though to live up to his words, everyone started arguing over the remaining seats: ‘There’s a seat free here, do you want it?’ – ‘No, you sit down, I’m only going one stop.’ – ‘no, please, sit down, I’ll just get out of your way’… Amazing what a heartfelt thank you can do to a train full of commuters.

Or maybe it was just Sidcup. Sidcup was very strange. Sidcup was stranger than Erith. There may well be more tales from Sidcup as space and time permit. Watch this space.

And How was YOUR Morning?

I was walking to Vauxhall this morning at 7:40 worrying that I might have cut it a bit fine to get the 7:41 Hounslow train. In fact, this turned out to be the least of my problems. For the weekend’s engineering festivities had overrun and I realised that my journey to work this morning was going to be prolonged when I saw that not only had the entrance to my platform been taped off but there was a helpful man giving instructions to commuters on how to get to their destination. As it happened, the helpful man was a little redundant as the only advice he was giving was ‘go to platform 8 and change at Clapham Junction’ and not (as might have been more useful in the circumstances) ‘give up now and go home’. I forced my way up to platform 8 along with the entire contents of the rest of the station (think not so much migrating wildebeestes this time as the bit where the wildebeests all try to force themselves across the same bit of river at the same time while the crocodiles are occupied eating all the zebras) and the rest of my journey (for brevity’s sake) went like this:

7:44 – get train to Clapham Junction.
7:49 – discover that the train to Barnes I was promised is now the oxymoronic ‘replacement bus service’
7:50 – squeeze myself back onto train back to Vauxhall (life’s too short for replacement bus services)
8:00 – Vauxhall tube gates ask me to ’seek assistance’ on my oyster. All assistance is safely hiding in the ticket office. Try again and card lets me through. Hope this doesn’t count as an incomplete journey costing me 400 million quid or whatever the maximum cash fare is these days.
8:10 – Victoria station. As I interchange to the District Line, a station assistant is busy chalking up ’severe delays’ for the District line. Laugh a bitter laugh
8:30 – Realise that the only slower forms of transport than the District line are replacement bus services and continental drift. Possibly not in that order.
8:35 – Arrive Kew Gardens. Overhear an announcement to the effect that the Silverlink service is running ‘approximately 71 minutes late.’ Realise that I am in fact one of the lucky ones.

I was only 45 minutes late in the end, and as I got to work and surveyed the rows of empty desks I realised that the engineering carnage was general. As colleagues rang and trickled in the full horror emerged. One colleague wasn’t allowed onto the tube with her southWest train ticket and had to go via Richmond. One got dumped off a train at Willesden Junction, and then again at Gunnersbury and had to get a District line train for the final stop. And one colleague rang from Clapham to find out how to get to work and decided to risk the replacment bus service. He never showed up at all.

So, did anyone else catch that news item this morning about National Rail’s massive profits and how train services were better than ever? And was it the only thing you managed to catch all day?

Just a Quick…

…word of advice to the girls sitting on the steps on the way down from the platforms at Vauxhall: don’t. Not in rush hour, anyway. Thundering herds of wildebeeste have nothing to the contents of the 18:23 Weybridge train. Getting between commuters and their destination is like getting between hippos and the water, or bears and their cubs: not recommended. Fortunately these two heard the advancing horde and got away before too much damage was done. Otherwise they would simply have have been steamrollered flat and left for dead.

Autumn: What is it Good For?

In my opinion there’s far too much rubbish talked about the joys of autumn. Anybody who has ever banged on about the crisp clear days and falling leaves and anything of that ilk clearly wasn’t out as I was at 7:30 this morning on a bike on a drizzly, grey, cloud-hung day where the fallen leaves had formed a treacherous rotting slick surface on the road and Vauxhall was, if possible, made more sordid than ever by a grey mulch of abandoned free newspapers strewn across the pavement.

Nor is it likely that they were in the tunnel at Vauxhall this evening, long after dark, discovering – but only after they had unlocked their bike and put away the lock and struggled into their cycling jacket and gloves and fitted their back light and switched it on – that some bastard had stolen their front light bracket.

Again.

Meaning they weren’t the ones who had to relock their bike and take off their jacket and switch off and remove their rear light and leave their bike to the tender mercies of the Vauxhall toerag night-shift and walk home in the all-too-seasonal cold windy soggy weather.

Grrr. Bah. Mumble. Curse. Swear.

(Oh, and a very Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers. As long as none of you was repsonsible for pinching my light bracket.)

The Platform Time Forgot

What is it about the good people of Elephant & Castle that nobody wants to sell them anything? Some time ago – and we’re talking months here, if not a year – all of the adverts were stripped off the northbound Northern Line platform leaving the passengers staring at something that looked like a piece of not-very-successful collage. A sign was put up indicating that renovation was in progress and that was that. I don’t use the station that often – and can you blame me? – but I was there again recently and it was still the same. Torn paper, dirt, and a sign saying watch this space. It’s beginning to look a little odd, possibly even a bit pointed.

I can’t help but feel that even as I type somewhere in the offices of either Transport for London or Viacom Outdoors a manager is slapping his forehead and going ‘Elephant and Castle. That was what I was supposed to remember…’

What’s on your Wallet?

The guard was checking tickets the other night and, as he waited for his little oyster-reading machine to read my oyster he remarked ‘Oh look it’s an Oyster card called disgruntled’ (only of course he used my real name instead of disgruntled, I don’t have ‘disgruntled’ written on my oyster wallet, that would be silly). So I explained that we had four of the things at home and I needed a way to distinguish mine. We did have some of the Guardian’s fancy picture wallets for a while, but the in-laws took them back to the US as a souvenir, so things were getting confusing. ‘I suppose there’s no harm in customising them,’ he said, which was a relief because you never know these days what isn’t allowed (no doubt even now somebody somewhere is considering a law against scrawling your name in biro on your oyster card wallet). But he did seem a bit surprised. Surely I’m not the only person who’s written on my oyster to mark it out from the oyster herd*. What about you? How have you customised yours?

* Er, possibly not the right collective noun here. Flock? School? Bed?

Caffeine Anonymous

My Monday got off to a bad start when I woke up and remembered that the thing we were supposed to have done over the weekend and had forgotten was buy more coffee, and got worse from there – cancelled train, late and crowded replacement, you can fill in the details for yourself (only don’t forget the bit about the three fractious kicking children across the aisle because they certainly added to the experience).

All I hoped for for the evening commute was that it not be worse, so I was pleasantly surprised to not only get a seat in the quiet coach but to witness the following exchange:

Fellow Passenger 1 (to her companion): Can we get David on the phone now?

Fellow Passenger 2: No we can’t because this is the quiet coach and I’ve switched my phone off. You’ll just have to wait.

I believe this may be a first. But then on the same journey I also encountered a car that bided its time patiently behind me and my bike until it was safe to pass, a rush-hour train with enough seats for all its passengers to fit on and a cyclist (not me) who stopped at a pedestrian crossing red light even though there were no pedestrians to stop for and waited until it changed. So I think it may prove have been hallucinations brought on by caffeine withdrawal. Fortunately the other half has come home bearing the all important supplies and normal service will resume tomorrow.

Horn Concerto

Yesterday I was listening to an interview on Front Row with a composer who has written music for, among other things, an orchestra of car horns and car alarms. Today I think I may have caught one of his works being performed. The venue was a large yellow-box junction (in this case Kew Bridge), and a Friday evening rush hour made more frantic by the rain. They had gathered the soloists (two bass buses, three tenor vans and a minibus and a handful of alto and soprano cars) into the yellow box and arranged them into a position of total gridlock. A chorus of other cars, buses, bicycle bells, pedestrians and the odd lorry were assembled on the feeder roads. The lights changed, and the music began:

Beep honk honk BEEP honk toot toot vrmm vrmm Beep HONK HONK toot pip-pip Beep honk honk BEEP honk toot vrmm vrmm BEEP BEEP BEEP Honk BEEEEEEEP …

Or maybe it was just a traffic jam – but the effect was strangely rhythmic and musical all the same. It certainly made me feel a whole lot better about being on foot despite the rain – I may be wet but at least I’m now home, whereas some of the performers from this evening are probably still out there, tooting away.