Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

Well the TFL website says there is a good service operating, but my journey in this morning was barely improved on the one home last night. Even Creepy Swedish Guy (yes, I was that late) looked perturbed as he barrelled troll-like along the platform at Euston.

Today promises to be a corker. We have to achieve a number of impossible tasks before lunchtime and everyone but me has been dragged off into meetings to discuss how horrible the situation is, instead of actually doing something about it. According to my watch there are two hours left, but then deadlines seem to mean very little these days.

I am trying to understand the logic of my office computer, which when I logged on this morning, told me that my password would expire in a month and would I like to change it now? A warning is useful, but a full month? I’ll change it then, if that’s OK. It will give me time to think of something that fits our security requirements, is memorable enough for me to remember but obscure enough for no-one to guess. We used to be given randomly generated passwords from a coupon book. No-one could remember them and kept them in their desk drawers making something of a mockery of it all.

I am still unsure as to whether I shall be required to attend the lunchtime meeting with the Monster. I am hoping not and in a little display of rebellion have failed to wear a tie (I never wear a tie these days unless I am meeting members of the great unwashed or someone who thinks they’re important). I used to keep a spare one in my desk drawer, but that seems to have gone AWOL – along with all the old password slips. Maybe I should reinstate the practice.

Oh the irony of it all.

For the first time in many a moon, I waltzed into the office before 10.00 to find that anyone and everyone that it would be useful to have see me in so comparatively early is either working from home today or has called in sick. Ah well, worse things happen at sea.

And I'm clearing off early as it is games night tonight, so snub.

Now, far be it from me to assign random personalities and back stories to complete strangers, but I believe that I travelled between Euston and Victoria with an enforcer for OdeSSa this morning.

I fancy his code name must be das Skalpell

Imagine a man in his mid thirties, short, thinning hair combed back and oiled. Thin, angular face and small, rectangular glasses. He was wearing a well tailored pinstripe suit with a blue shirt, but no tie, wearing it open collar instead. Generally too tidy and well groomed for such a display of deliberate casualness.

The dead give away of course, was the fact that he stared into the middle distance without acknowledging the presence of any other person on the train, standing unmoving, as if welded to the spot, unlike normal folks who grab a hold of anything they can to prevent themselves being barrelled around by the moving Tube train. That and the small medical bag he had with him.

He disappeared into the crowd at Victoria. I wonder what nefarious mission he might be on for his aging overlords?

There was a strange little woman on the tube home today. I've seen her before; she's rather striking, which I guess is a shame, since her demeanour suggests that she'd rather just shrink into the background. This is somewhat at odds with the fact that her entrance was guaranteed to have people spying on her over their papers and books. Having scuttled onto the train, she stood in front of her seat for a moment before trying it with her foot as if to check that it wasn't going to bite or run away. Then she sat down. Clearly nervous, each time I see her she sits on the very edge of the tube car seat clutching her bag and looking at the floor in the middle distance. Physically quite slight, she has moved past fragile to frail, and despite not being obviously poor or destitute, looks as though a good shower and new -or cleaner- clothes wouldn't hurt. That said, she's never been dressed the same way twice when I've seen her, so...

She looks to be at least part south east asian, maybe Malay, or somewhere like that, and has one of those faces that could be anywhere between 25 and 45. I guess maybe toward the older end of that spectrum as her hair is streaked grey. I fear that she has mental problems, which is why she stands out, despite shrinking back.

Never interacting with other passengers, she appears less distracted, more an oblivion unlike most people who simply try to avoid eye contact. It's definitely that, more as if she is oblivious than distracted. Again, given that she is clearly trying not to be there on some level, her behaviour marks her out, and it was clear that those sitting around her were maintaining that rather edgy level of observation that people do when they aren't quite sure how, or if to react.

And that's it. Just an observation of someone in the city. A sad little soul with an unknown story.