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I made a couple of tactical mistakes coming in to work today and they just snowballed on me.
I anticipated being a couple of minutes late as I had to pick up a subscription from Boots and they don’t open until 9am.
So far, so good.
Getting down to the Tube Station, I fell into the old trap – which I should be well aware of – of letting a train go because the next one in a couple of minutes would be more convenient. Except that it was neither a couple of minutes later, nor more convenient. The Northern Line at its far extent on the High Barnet Branch likes to play tricks on passengers - or customers as we must now call them, because we should avoid any suggestion of movement in a mass-transit system. When the indicator suggests a 2 minute wait for a train to Kennington via Charing Cross, there is a reasonable probability that it will both take significantly longer than 2 minutes to arrive, and end up bimbling to Morden via Bank (assuming that it doesn’t peremptorily stop at East Finchley and decant us onto the platform to await a later, more crowded train).
Just to keep us guessing, the indicator will probably change its mind at least three times and we’ll be none the wiser when the train actually arrives because the driver will have forgotten to change the destination sign on the front of the train, so it will proudly display “High Barnet” whilst travelling south away from it.
The upshot is (and I fall for this nearly every time, experience teaching me nothing), that the indicators are useless and I should just get on the first bloody train and change as necessary.
It didn’t. Two minutes became ten and the destination flickered between Morden and Kennington with gay abandon.
My error was compounded (number two tactical error) by being at the wrong end of the train for an easy interchange – though in my defence, when you are not sure where the train is off to, getting in the most advantageous place to change is mere guesswork.
Tactical error number three was in assuming that the announced delays on the Victoria line would be over by the time I got to Euston as I was so late. The crowded platform was evidence to the contrary.
Hohum.
Finally, to compound it all and shred whatever nerves I had remaining, the queue in Sainsbury’s was held up by a woman disinterestedly talking on the mobile instead of packing her shopping or paying the cashier who was getting increasingly irate. The aisle was blocked by her pushchair and it took the less than benevolent glare of a security guard to prompt her to move.
How rude.
The moral of the story is that God hates commuters.
I anticipated being a couple of minutes late as I had to pick up a subscription from Boots and they don’t open until 9am.
So far, so good.
Getting down to the Tube Station, I fell into the old trap – which I should be well aware of – of letting a train go because the next one in a couple of minutes would be more convenient. Except that it was neither a couple of minutes later, nor more convenient. The Northern Line at its far extent on the High Barnet Branch likes to play tricks on passengers - or customers as we must now call them, because we should avoid any suggestion of movement in a mass-transit system. When the indicator suggests a 2 minute wait for a train to Kennington via Charing Cross, there is a reasonable probability that it will both take significantly longer than 2 minutes to arrive, and end up bimbling to Morden via Bank (assuming that it doesn’t peremptorily stop at East Finchley and decant us onto the platform to await a later, more crowded train).
Just to keep us guessing, the indicator will probably change its mind at least three times and we’ll be none the wiser when the train actually arrives because the driver will have forgotten to change the destination sign on the front of the train, so it will proudly display “High Barnet” whilst travelling south away from it.
The upshot is (and I fall for this nearly every time, experience teaching me nothing), that the indicators are useless and I should just get on the first bloody train and change as necessary.
It didn’t. Two minutes became ten and the destination flickered between Morden and Kennington with gay abandon.
My error was compounded (number two tactical error) by being at the wrong end of the train for an easy interchange – though in my defence, when you are not sure where the train is off to, getting in the most advantageous place to change is mere guesswork.
Tactical error number three was in assuming that the announced delays on the Victoria line would be over by the time I got to Euston as I was so late. The crowded platform was evidence to the contrary.
Hohum.
Finally, to compound it all and shred whatever nerves I had remaining, the queue in Sainsbury’s was held up by a woman disinterestedly talking on the mobile instead of packing her shopping or paying the cashier who was getting increasingly irate. The aisle was blocked by her pushchair and it took the less than benevolent glare of a security guard to prompt her to move.
How rude.
The moral of the story is that God hates commuters.
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