…of London commuting.

As usual I went to Knightsbridge Underground station yesterday evening to begin my journey home from the National Office. I touched my Oyster card onto the reader at the gate and went down the escalator onto the eastbound Piccadilly Line platform. Stood there for a while before a voice blares out over the loudspeakers telling us that the Piccadilly Line service had been suspended between Hammersmith and Hyde Park Corner because of someone under a train at Earls Court. We were advised to take the train in the other direction and change at South Kensington onto the Circle and District Lines.

Groan!

So I talk to a chap who, like me, is trying to get to Kings Cross. He’s not sure what to do. I’m not sure what to do. And then another announcement: the next westbound train is at least five minutes away. I decide to abandon Knightsbridge and walk up the road to Hyde Park Corner.

So, up the escalator to the barriers and the ticket office. Before leaving the station I need to cancel the journey that I’ve started on my Oyster card, otherwise the card will register that I’ve made an uncompleted journey and not let me into another station - and it will charge me the whole day’s outrageous Underground fares at full cash rate.

Brompton Road (famous for Harrods) is crowded with shoppers and tourists, all of whom are drifting along, gawping into shop windows, looking at street maps, stopping without warning and generally getting in my way. (I’m sure they do it deliberately!)

After I’ve crossed Sloane Street I get into my stride a bit. There’s an art to walking quickly on crowded city streets. You have to defocus your eyes, avoid looking at people - if you look into the eyes of pedestrians coming in the opposite direction, you end up doing the dance of death with them - and power along, dodging the slowcoaches, calculating can you get through that space in front before the guy with the suitcase in tow coming towards you fills the gap, oh and watch out for the mother with her baby in a pram and three small children strung out across the entire width of the pavement.

Into the Hyde Park Corner underpass, sharp left and left again into the Underground station. Touch my Oyster to the reader. Yes, the ticket clerk at Knightsbridge did actually cancel my aborted journey! Through the gate and down the escalator just as some earsplitting gargle over the tannoy system tells everyone that the next eastbound train is at platform 2 (usually used for westbound trains); there are no trains at platform 1; if people want to get an eastbound train they must go to platform 2. By it’s tone, the tannoy voice is really saying, “Stupid, stupid people, can’t you see where the train is?!”

But then the tannoy plays a prerecorded (more upmarket) voice that tells us that there’s no train service between Hammersmith and Green Park (which is the next station east from Hyde Park Corner).

What to do? Leave the station and get the journey on my Oyster card cancelled again? Try the train at platform 2?

I squeeze onto the train standing at platform 2. It’s hot. It’s jam packed. And it stays that way until I shoulder my way off at Kings Cross and step onto the platform with a sense of relief.

There are two opposing streams of people on the Kings Cross Underground platform. Some are trying to get to the Thameslink exit. Others, like me, are trying to get to the exit for the mainline station. Heels are trodden on. Underground staff make fatuous pleas over the loudspeakers for passengers to move down inside the cars - fat chance, the cars are stuffed! Tempers fray. A pregnant woman pushing a buggy shouts, “What am I supposed to do? Breathe in?!”

All the while, I ‘m thinking unkind thoughts about people who use Underground trains as a means of suicide. But it turns out that some youths were “play fighting” at Earls Court and two of them fell on the line. One died, and part of the Piccadilly Line was shut down for several hours.

Ah, the joys of the London commuter!

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