Disgressed

This year is turning out rather different from last year. No more leisurely hours perusing my DVDs before heading off to the train. I have a different job (within the same organisation) and I now have to go off in the middle of the rush hour. No more sitting down on the morning trip, and only limited amounts of breathing.

There is still a school of thought among my fellow computers which does not accept the concept of a full train, of course. Only last week there were severe mutterings on one platform when the doors opened to reveal a solid row of backs, bulging out slightly from the doors as soon as they opened. One woman refused to accept that she wasn’t going to get on.

“Look!” she exclaimed, “There’s a space there – there! Well, I’m going to go for it.”

Putting her head down she thrust herself under my arm, between me and a fat bloke in a greasy tweed jacket. It was only the give in the fat bloke’s stomach that made this possible, even with considerable force being applied, but she was aiming for a spot just in front of us. Looking somewhat bedraggled, she emerged successfully on the other side of the fat bloke’s abdominal folds.

“You see!” she exclaimed, “I knew it!”
“Ouuuch!” said the tearful voice of the small child she was now essentially standing on.

On the Tube, a new set of inane phrases has gradually come into play. We are repeatedly enjoined to ‘use all available doors’. If I have to use all of them, can I do them in sequence? We must also “use all available space”. I’m sorry, but I really have very limited control over my own physical volume. It makes me want to acquire a megaphone and shout back “Use all available rolling stock, please!”

I suppose what’s really annoying is not so much the peculiar turn of phrase, it’s the patronising implication that commuters are all morons who don’t deserve anything better than being hectored, and who create all the problems by unreasonably refusing to pack in as tightly as the the train requires – through all available doors. (Are there some doors which are in some mysterious way not available – and if they’re not available how could I use them anyway?)
One mitigating factor is that I have acquired a personal music system vastly superior to the old CD player and standard earphones I’ve used in the past. More of that anon.