The London Underground is often quite frustrating, often quite smelly, often quite hot and sweaty, but nevertheless usually quite entertaining.
What interests me the most about the London Underground is the moment just before your tube departs the station platform. I usually position myself facing one of the doorways of the tube just to watch a moment like this happen. “This train is ready to depart. Stand clear of the closing doors.” Then the loud beep, beep, beep of the warning system. Then the moment I have been waiting for, through the window of the door, I see some idiot who thinks he can still make it onto the tube, yet he is a good 25 meters away up the platform.
Usually this is when everything goes into slow motion for me. I gaze up the platform and peer straight into the tubehopper’s eyes, I can see their sheer determination, they believe without a shadow of a doubt that they can make it onto my tube. Then they set off, like a greyhound after a hare, with their laptop bag, coat and shopping bag usually interferring with their aerodynamics. The doors start to close. The tubehopper is in full stride, but still 15 meters away. The doors are now half closed. I can now see the tubehopper’s beads of sweat dripping from their forehead. The doors are centimeters from shut. A hand creeps through the opening between the doors, then the finger tips of the other hand, both hands intensely gripping onto the inches of space between the closed doors. Now it is battle time. The Jaws of the London Underground vs. the Tubehopper’s arm strength.
Most of us usually know the outcome of this battle. The tubehopper usually puts up a good fight, and you usually see some amazing facial expressions worthy of a kodak moment, but the tubehopper comes off second best, with some cuts and bruises, to the notorious Underground Jaws.
“So long sucker” I quietly chuckle to myself as I watch the battered and beaten victim get left behind on the District Line Platform.
Moral of the Story: There is another tube coming in 4 minutes. Just relax.
3 responses
And then, if you’re lucky, you’ll hear the tube driver over the intercom bellowing “STOP F*CKING AROUND WITH THE DOORS YOU USELESS TOSSER!!” and with that, beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep and you’re off again. Gotta love the ones with the attitude.
Haha! So true! The ones with attitude are the best.
‘Ever noticed, how in London, the Metro staff, being unsure of how to handle the killer fucking heat down there, and generally at a loss for options, opt instead to put the heaters on.
This is no joke.
In all fairness, summer only really lasts for 2 maybe 3 weeks max, but you can be there in say July, taking the Northern Line to Bank or something and then as you get off the train, you are hit by this killer fucking heat wave. I actually asked them once why they did it and was so persistent, that they took me to a control room and the old bloke there said it was because at least that way, they get the air moving.