Underground Overground Commuting Free ...

I have been commuting on the tube for nearly a year now and I am still continually amazed by the bizarre behaviour that riding the tube seems to bring out in people.

This morning for example I was waiting at Waterloo for an eastbound Jubilee train with a larger crowd than usual. (I had arrived on an earlier train and hit the tail end of the pre 9am rush). Now everyone who rides the tubes at all regularly knows that when the train pulls in you have less than a minute before the "stand clear..." announcement and the doors close. This morning the seconds ticked by with no announcement and I started to slow down aware that the doors must close soon, while the crowd around me continued to try to shove onto the tube. (Apparently the doors magically stay open if there is no announcement!) Suddenly, with no warning, the doors slammed closed and an Italian woman reeled back from the doors shrieking and clutching her head. The rest of us of course pretended not to see her, and generally acted in a typically British manner when faced with such a regrettably foreign lack of reserve about what was, quite frankly, only a minor decapitation.

The woman then stood mumbling to herself until the next train arrived, at which point she recovered remarkably and shoved her way on with the force of a charging rhino. This time it was the fate of some hapless chap to be squeezing onto the train when the doors closed, leaving half his coat outside. I was somewhat disconcerted that the doors couldn't tell they weren't closed properly and we whizzed off down the track with the chap tugging at his coat and eventually succeeding in pulling it through the slightly open doors.

On arrival at London Bridge we were met with another huge crowd, this time of passengers who were waiting to get through the barriers to the Northern line, which had been closed to prevent over crowding. The overhead announcements were repeating their apologies for the closure and suggesting that those people who were heading for Monument might possibly wish to set off across London Bridge thus preventing a delay to their journey. This needless to say had absolutely no effect on the bleating crowds who merely huddled closer to the barrier as if this would magically make them open, in a kind of "baaa, walk? Baaa London Bridge?" manner. The barriers remained closed and all they succeeded in doing was blocking the exit for those lucky souls who had made it to their destination.

The joys of cattle prods have never figured so largely in my thoughts.