(…as in the thing you lose after you’ve been commuting for too long, and your soul has shrivelled up until it resembles a fossilised walnut)
Suppose you were on a Thameslink Train on the morning of the worst storm this winter / since 1987 / in the history of the entire planet since records began (depending on which of the more excitable news coverage you believed this this morning). And suppose your train failed to stop at West Hampstead, where you were planning to get off, because a woman had just been knocked unconscious by an advertising hoarding, closing the station. Suppose, indeed, that as your train passed you could still see the woman trapped under the billboard, being rescued.
Do you (as my colleague did) think, oh my God that poor woman, I hope she’s okay – that’s the platform I use, it could have been me, there but for the Grace of God etc?
Or do you (as the man sitting next to her did) say, ‘Well, I don’t see why they have to close the whole station’?
Here’s hoping all of you made it to work and back unscathed. And, indeed, without having to give any of your fellow passengers a slapping for being insensitive poltroons.
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5 responses so far ↓
Howard Cain // March 10, 2008 at 9:08 pm |
Well, I can be a bit smug here and say that I worked from home, today.
So, no slappings here…
I left the “smoke” some 27 years ago, and don’t envy you one jot.
rivergirlie // March 10, 2008 at 9:43 pm |
oh dear – i have occasionally found myself sighing (and not in a sympathetic way) when the tube is delayed because of a ‘person under a train’.
i’m horrid
disgruntled // March 10, 2008 at 10:11 pm |
Howard – I’m supposed to work from home too, most of the time these days, but of course today I had a meeting…
RG – when it was a person under the train, I used to sigh too because it seemed a bit selfish, but then I read in one of the ambulance blogs that it’s as often an epileptic fit as suicide, (t’internet is an enlightenment, I tell you) so I’m more sympathetic. And hardly anyone tries to kill themselves by standing under a billboard and hoping it falls on them, so in this case it should have been fairly obvious that this was a terrible accident and by comparison, not being able to get off at West Hampstead was a minor inconvenience…
disgruntled // March 10, 2008 at 10:18 pm |
In fact, thinking about it, not being able to get off at West Hampstead would probably improve most people’s days.
SciFi25 // March 17, 2008 at 12:09 pm |
I don’t get it, Why did they have to close the whole station? Surely there would have been more than one platfom to use?? Its like closing the M25 just because someone gets a flat! Complete overkill.