As you may be aware I have spent the last few weeks commuting to work, after several years of… well it was more of an idle wander.
It's been an odd experience, I find the extra hour and a half either side of each day exhausting, but I am strangely serene about the actual journey. I look at the people who do this every day, maybe have done for years, and think, well I can understand why they have more reason to be irritable than me but then, surely if you know you are going to do it every day for years, you might as well try and enjoy it. Every day we all walk past numerous copies of the poster by Mark Titchner, which declares loudly, 'IF YOU DON'T LIKE YOUR LIFE, YOU CAN CHANGE IT'. It always makes me smile when I look at the grumpy people crammed like sardines in the carriage (I tried to think of a more original simile but I don't think there is one).
Mind you it is amazing how quickly one becomes institutionalised, the routine of getting on the same train every day, Metro on the way in, thelondonpaper and the Lite on the way home (always in that order). Standing opposite Gordon Ramsay's nose on the gin ad, knowing that not only will the tube doors open right in front of me but I will then get off the train right by the exit (this could be quite depressing but does have the advantage of meaning I gaze at Gordon's craggy visage every morning and there's nothing not to like about Gord, must be all that cooking and arrogance). I am still a bit overexcited about my Oyster card (how did I survive without one? I must save milliseconds of my life every day) and occasionally slap it down with far too much relish, not having perfected the nonchalant caress of the more experienced commuter.
So how do you stop yourself becoming miserable and dejected from this institutionalised, overcrowded lifestyle? An extraordinary woman pushed her way on to the tube the other day, whingeing about how she'd had to let two trains go past before she could get on one. I really wanted to say, but that's true for all of us, you were in a queue, it's rush hour, what did you expect? And more pertinently, there is a train once a minute. You have waited a maximum of three minutes for this train.
I didn't, of course; she would have punched me.
So how do I pass my time waiting these interminable three minuteses? There are the obvious tactics, those little games you can play – who out of the people sitting opposite me? Who out of the carriage? I read a good new one the other day where you have to pick someone off the opposite escalator to you, once you've picked you can't change your mind, but if you haven't picked anyone by the end you have to take the last person to get on. There's also tube surfing, seeing how many stations you can go without holding onto anything, but I haven't been brave enough for this yet.
Occasionally something unexpected will happen, the other day an American busker who I see most days playing anodyne rock suddenly stood up and yelled, 'Earlier a black man gave me five pounds! What does that say about all of you?'. This continues to puzzle me; what did he think it said about us all? Another day I was sitting on a train and three teenage boys got on in full chav gear, white tracksuits, baseball caps, the whole catastrophe, loudly talking about some girl who they deemed had 'no chance'. A moment later one of them added, 'Yeah, Hillary's never going to beat Obama'. I spent the rest of the day contemplating my sartorial prejudices with some contrition.
Of course, most days nothing exciting happens so you have to make your own entertainment inside your head. If all else fails, you can always write a blog in your head and try and think of a more original simile for commuters than sardines in a tin.
