8:05am - Leave the house in high spirits, full of Coco Pops and January optimism. Step on a dog-turd. My luck holds, it’s long since hardened.
8:10am – Through the use of colourful language and a sharpened stick, I battle my way to the 20 square centimetre area of the platform that I KNOW my usual set of train doors will pull up to. Proceed to hold/beat back the thronging, briefcased masses like a Spartan at Thermopylae. But with less beard.
8:20am – Train is late. And my spear arm is nearly spent.
8:22am – Watch in abject horror as the “whimsical” train driver decides to sail onwards an extra six feet today. Cue an almighty free-for-all for pole position by the time the doors open. All chances of finding one of the few remaining seats in the carriage rapidly evaporate. Utter, utter bastard.
8:30am – Silently curse the seated masses from my vantage point squashed face-first against the Perspex partition. A fat man in a polo shirt is simultaneously playing a game of Patience and watching an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” on his laptop. Make a mental note to hurt him grievously should the chance arise.
8:33am – Only at Herne Hill. Torturous. Through a Herculean effort, manage to extract my book from my coat pocket and elbow myself enough room to read “The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe”. Perks me up a bit.
8:35am – Imagine the fat Trekkie strapped down in the vault from “The Pit And The Pendulum”, awaiting his agonising doom. Chuckle evilly, and unexpectedly loudly. Some odd looks from nearby passengers.
8:40am – The Phantom Farter. As with every other day this week, someone lets fly a silent but devastating air-biscuit between Elephant & Castle and Loughborough Junction. At close quarters, there’s no escape. My fellow commuters look furtively around with a mixture of total horror and grudging admiration at the sheer audacity and pungentness of the deed, but once again the culprit isn’t apparent. I’m keeping a closer eye out tomorrow. This reign of terror cannot continue indefinitely.
8:50am – We pull into Farringdon station. The whole train collectively braces itself.
8:50am + 03 seconds – All-out carnage as over a hundred designers, suits and advertising creatives run hell-for-leather for the alcove leading to the staircase, fully 2.5 people wide. I grab a small elderly woman who was dithering fatally, and pick her up for use a makeshift shield and battering ram. With an improvised battle-cry of “Have some, chuckleheads!!” I ascend as quickly as the carnage will allow, stepping on as many toes, faces and groins as are necessary to proceed. A smug-looking designer with preposterously tight jeans and an “eccentric” haircut spots an opening and tries to beat me to it, but is quickly felled by a roundhouse blow with the old lady. The top of the stairs is in sight.
8:51am – As the smoke clears, I exit the station in a cheerful frame of mind, pausing only to set the old lady on her way and punch a Free Paper Provider in the face. Onwards to another busy day.
OK, so despite various harbingers of doom concerning climate change, global warming and the like (all serious issues of course), the weather in 2008 thus far has been pretty poor. It just hasn’t been making an effort - all the seasons seem to be melding into one unending, drab October afternoon.