Hymn

Normal Service

"There are currently severe delays on the Victoria, District and Circle, Bakerloo and Piccadilly  lines.  The Hammersmith and City line is operating a reduced service.  The Central line is suspended between Ealing Broadway and Woodford.  There are minor delays on the Jubilee, Metropolitan and Northern lines.

"There is a good service on all other lines."

Another day down the tube.

Brush

I don’t travel on the Tube as much these days.  New job.  New travel nightmares.  I’ve quickly become the Reginald Perrin of the office with my daily complaints about the 8.19 from Stratford being delayed by engineering works at Hackney Wick.  Still, at least it has confirmed their worst fears about ‘The-idiot-with-a-photograph-of-him-sucking-a-pipe-plastered-all-over-the-Internet’ as I was fondly known before I joined.

Today the even the late train from Stratford was unachievable dream.  The Bastards so delayed my first one that the only way of reaching my desk before tea time on Friday, was the Tube followed by a six mile hike.

Of course it was rush hour and ten times the capacity of the trains wanted to get on.

Entirely out of keeping, I found myself squeezed, rather intimately, behind not a sweaty fat man but a striking olive-skinned girl with almond eyes and long, loosely curled hair. She had reversed, quite delicately and as far as I could tell, deliberately into me.  She was so close I couldn’t just smell her shampoo, I could tell you the brand.

Now, I have a certain charm, at least I’ve always been able to attract gnarled old gypsies, and a magnetism that could lift HMS Belfast from the water (if only I was interested in dating rusty old battleships), but attention from women, real women, in the flesh, and not paid for, is something of a novelty.  In the same way that walking into a room where the wallpaper is made of dog bark and gravity doesn’t exist is a bit a novelty.

We stood holding the same bar.  Just as I was wondering how not to embarrass myself, something still more surprising happened: she rested her head against my hand.  Unmistakably, laid her cheek against my fingers. 

I wondered if she’s fainted and only not fallen because of the crush holding her up.  But no, I could see space between her and the people in front.  I tried not to breathe on her ear.

I have to say, I was at a bit of a loss.  She was resting against me.  Resting.  Against me.  Not in a Public Leaning Post sort of way, but in a comfortably lazy, post-Sunday lunch, sort of way.  I can’t say that I felt as comfortable as she did though.  Perplexed, wrong-footed, flattered, slightly thrilled even.  But comfortable? No.

This was not the first time some stranger had decided I looked like an available pillow - a girl I’d never spoken to flagrantly put her head on my shoulder and fell asleep on a flight from Athens once.  I ended up marrying her.  I am delighted by that but I wasn’t sure I wanted that to happen again.  Besides, I couldn’t be entirely confident T would be pleased.

Now, I don’t want you misunderstand me - I’m as happy as the next man to have an attractive young woman pressing herself against me but I rather expect a little social intercourse beforehand.  A meal at least.  Preferably a decent courtship, some common interests, a meaningful conversation or two, a shared Knickerbocker Glory.  Now I know I’d dozed a little on the train getting in, but as far as I could tell none of that had happened.

And I didn’t know what to do.  Thankfully, as always, fate took matters out of my hands.  The trained stopped.  Sharply. 

I hadn’t seen him before.  The weasel man.  The man with the little pointy nose and tiny black eyes.  No more than five feet tall.  With a black briefcase in each hand.  He wasn’t holding on to anything or anyone.  When the train stopped, he didn’t.  The man kindly demonstrated a handful of Newton’s Laws and the Cranker technique of Ten Pin bowling.  He knocked over most of the occupants like skittles.  It felt a little like the time I played Sardines with a coach-load of ladies from the Women’s Institute in a barrel at Niagara.

As we stood up, equilibrium had been restored.  She was gone.  I was next to a sweaty fat man.  For the next nine stops.

Hell and Weenies

I hate Halloween.  Hate it.  Hate it.  Especially the increasingly common, infuriating and silly American-import of Trick or Treat.  If I understand it, and quite honestly, I can’t really believe anyone could think this is a good idea, any Tom, Dick or Harry Potter can, on the thirty-first of October,  hammer on your door and for no other reason that they’ve disturbed your peaceful evening expect to receive some sort of prize.   And, if they are not satisfied, pelt your house with eggs and flour.  If you’re particularly lucky they’ll add a wonky scratch to the side of your car too.  Marvellous.  Simply marvellous.  What fun.

Each year I dread it more.  As I slipped out of the railway station tonight, I could barely walk twenty paces without tripping over some ghoul or goblin.  I’ve never seen so many of the Undead in one place.  Not since a compulsory early morning seminar on “Health and Safety in the workplace: How paperclips can kill” at least.  In spite of the lanterns and ridiculous hats, no-one seemed to be having a fun time.  One particularly truculent girl, whose idea of a costume was an extra layer of eye-liner and a frighteningly short skirt, stormed past me cursing the people pretending to be out and kicking their doors for good measure. 

Thank Heavens, I thought to myself, that my beloved wife understands how I feel about tonight and will have prepared the house accordingly - curtains drawn, lights out and everyone remaining absolutely silent.  I hurried home.

I couldn’t drive into my street.  There seemed to a party going on.  I could see it all quite clearly because of the light streaming from my house.  All the curtains were open and every lamp on.  In pride of place, an enormous pumpkin, hollowed out and holding half a dozen candles.  The door was wide open and no-one seemed to be hiding at all.

I fought my way through the crowds.  It wasn’t so much of a line as a scrum, operating on the same principle as water boiling in a kettle.  After getting to the front, witches and wizards percolated away only to rejoin at the back.  More than a couple of times some little urchin wearing a sheet kicked my shins and told me to queue up like everyone else.  One or two wags said how good my costume was, if a bit old-fashioned.  In my day, imps like that would have been caned, if they weren’t Down the Mines already or in the trenches with a bugle, that is.  I don’t know what the world’s coming to, really I don’t.

Various members of my immediate and extended family stood outside my house like Lords of the Manor.  Little S, normally spooked by the photograph of a wrinkled politician in the newspaper, stood chuckling at the stream of Zombies confronting her.

‘Thank Heavens you’re home!’  Cried a slightly frazzled T.

‘We didn’t have any sweets,’ she said, ‘so I’m giving them money.  Have you got any?  We’re just about to run out and there’s some angry looking pixies over there.’

Apparently, I can do quite a good ghost-like  ‘White as a Sheet’ myself.

Down Under

‘This country’s shit.’ The girl from Down Under said as she and her two friends stumbled into the carriage. They collapsed in a jumble of arms and legs before promptly and consciously putting all six feet on the seat in front.

‘I’ve been here three years now and it’s so fucking dull.’ She bellowed, forgetting that she wasn’t in the empty wilderness of Western Australia, where presumably shouting is the only way to communicate between Outback farms.

‘It’s boring as shit. There’s nothing to do and the weather’s crap. It’s never sunny and it fucking rains all the time. It’s fucking shit.

‘And the people! My god, the people are boring. They don’t ever do anything. And they don’t know how to have a fucking good time.’ She continued. ‘They’re all boring fucking wankers.’ She was really getting into her stride and making friends all over the place.

We ‘boring fucking wankers’ on the train around her stayed mute, quietly wondering if she might dispense with sentences altogether and simply string together profanities in ever more complex combinations. But she surprised us.

‘Look, I’ll prove it. Does anyone want a shag? Does anyone want to shag me?’ she invited her hapless audience.

‘Come on, does anyone want a shag? A free shag.’ she repeated in case anyone had missed her the first time.

A queue immediately failed to materialise.

‘See?’ she turned to her companions as though vindicated and apparently delighted that no-one on the entire train wanted anything to do with her.

‘I don’t know why I stay in the fucking awful country’

Some of us were wondering exactly the same thing.

Training

I really don’t know why I bother.  I made a real effort to leave in good time for my train home tonight.  Usually, it’s a breakneck charge through the rush hour throngs having left work slightly later than I need to to make all the necessary connections.   Normally I collapse panting on the carriage floor having thrown myself over the unimpressed guard and through the closing doors.  This evening I’d given myself an extra fifteen minutes on the Underground but we stalled just outside Euston.  The train in front had broken, half-in, half-out of the platform.  We waited.  The temperature climbed to levels that would have made Satan himself hop from hoof to hoof shrieking, “Hot, hot, hot!”  Except, of course, this was the London Tube during Commuter Time and any form of movement was out of the question: it’s dangerous enough to exhale because of the risk of someone squeezing into your depleted lung space.  It was too hot and we were too close.  Let’s be honest, there’s a period during physical contact when a bit of sweat can be quite a pleasant addition.  This wasn’t one of those times.  If there was a moment when we were a bit slippery, it passed as quickly as an attempt to hold a toad with wet hands.  We were quickly mired in a thoroughly disagreeable stew where our communal perspiration took the consistency of treacle and glued us together like toffee-coated sardines in suits. 

After thirty minutes, just at the point when claustrophobia and BO threatened to burst into hysterical panic, we pulled, unannounced into the station.  I missed my train by two minutes so had the station concourse to enjoy for another fifty-eight.  Still, it did give me the best part of an hour to scrape off the residue of my fellow passengers.

Nail It

You don’t get to see much on the Tube.  Obviously being underground doesn’t help but often it’s so cramped you can’t even look down the carriage:  the best you can hope for is a relatively plain shirt or jacket in front of your nose.  If the pattern’s too busy your brain starts constructing one of those disturbing 3D images that eventually form out of apparently random dots. You end up travelling from one side of Town to the other staring at a black and white pineapple floating on a stranger’s back.  Once all I could see from Shepherds Bush to Baker Street was a close approximation of Janet Street Porter’s head bobbing gently off the sleeve of a short Polish man.  Today however, I looked up not down, at the hands wrapped with white knuckles onto overhead handles.  I could see seven or eight hands probably.  Every one had immaculate, I mean immaculate, nails.  Men’s as well as women’s.  Beautifully manicured and shaped, not chipped, not uneven, not a bitten one among them, not a shoddy cuticle in sight, no varnish, no tips, no dirt, nothing but perfection.  Forty-odd fingers and thumbs - all faultless.  Then five ragged, torn and filthy ones.  Mine.

Down the Tube

I hadn’t noticed it before - how the underground perfectly demonstrates motion.  Not in the obvious trains-moving way: no, in a curious fluid sort of way.  If you watch us poor commuters struggling on and off the carriages it’s rather like pushing an empty bottle underwater.  When you open it submerged, air escapes in great bubbles while liquid pours in in gulps and fills the void.  It just like that on the Tube and often just as wet.