Commuting on the London Tubes
I’ve travelled on many public transport systems all over the world from third class in South Africa to the wonderful Paris Metro, nothing however dangerous, rickety and smelly can prepare you for the London underground as a way to start your day.
From the ancient Indiana Jones thrill ride that is Met Line, a ride so jumpy in parts that you literally inadvertently leave the seat flying upwards sometimes up to the height of a small ewok, to the daily crush of the Northern Line, which I believe carries the highest rate of ignorant elbowing self centred self preservist commuters.
Survivalists, who would literally elbow a pregnant pensioner out of the way to get that seat so they can sit sweep their fingers all over their obligatory IPhone like an arthritic octopus, and the routine obsessed OCD types who will read their broadsheet and eat their over priced pastry and drink a scolding hot black coffee directly over your balls (if you are lucky enough to get a seat).
No matter what side of the bed you get out of, what your stars say, or how motivated you are for a day in the office, a tube commute will leave you feeling abused, angry and cheated, and can even be so packed that the crush will leave you questioning your sexual orientation, its never a good thing when you can happily draw a perfect genital recreation sketch of the guy who was recently squashed up against you like a hardcore version of Brokeback Mountain.

For anyone with the pleasure of living in Clapham, which I believe is the closest thing to heaven on earth, the wonderment ends in the morning, when the SW12 set become the poor relations of the Northern Line and it’s a struggle to even get on the train at all, let alone find a tiny space just large enough to enjoy a panic attack in peace. Thankfully, and given the organised manner of the people of Clapham, they have evolved into Tetris shapes, and as the train pulls in that funny Russian music starts and people adopt their shape and cascade towards the door ready to fill every nook and cranny, if four people manage to get on at the same time, everyone speeds up as the level increases, the women are usually the T shapes, men with big heads the large L, sadly, I manage to fuck things up by simply being an ill fitting blob shape and mess the whole sequence up. The looks confirm that I simply do not belong in Clapham.

If you were to describe the daily horror of the commute to work to a complete stranger, say one of those Amazon tribes who have never seen anyone outside of their tribe (apart from Bruce Parry, who no doubt has been there and gotten pissed with them on what ever they drink or inject) they would assume it was some sort of torture, the very fact that you have to pay the highest prices in Europe just to get to work and get hammered to spam on taxes, just adds to the whole degrading daily locomotive sodomy. The only alternative is to cycle, to dart your way through crazed buses, cement Lorries and School run mums like some lycra covered sperm trying to fight its way to the egg.

Something happens to people when they go underground, the caring emotions switch off, must be something to do with being closer to hell/Australia, even when somebody plucks up the courage to regain their dignity and wrap themselves around the front (and sometimes back) axels of a speeding tube train, the horror of the entire event is greeted with an irritated tut. Anyone unfortunate enough to faint, which happens lots because its generally 35 degrees c 365 days of the year, is stepped over with even less grace than a dog turd. We have all done terrible things on the tube, there should be a Hague tribunal for people to be tried for their crimes, I personally have elbowed a midget into the air and refused to get out of the way for someone with Muscular Dystrophy (I didn’t know until he told me, I thought he was trying to play chicken with me?) and been massively sick and cleared an entire packed carriage.

Help is at hand though and this hell will soon come to an end, a HUGE investment into the tube infrastructure is well underway, hundreds of millions of pounds of investment has resulted in years of 100% effectiveness, effectiveness being that most weekends, 100% of trains on some lines are not taking 100% of passengers to 100% of their destinations. A look at the tube upgrade programme brings hope (hope that death will come soon) http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/projectsandschemes/10138.aspx
For example, the completion of the Bakerloo line works is due in 2020 and will result in an increased capacity of 57%, and an increased journey time of two minutes? That would assume you commuted the entire length of the track, unlikely and surely it would be easier to increase capacity by putting some more trains in service? Anyway, what ever they are doing, by 2020, we will probably be transporting like in Star Trek so they will be able to stick their 2 minutes up their warp holes. Look for yourself, yes the work needs to be done, but the expense to London business from people not being able to get from A to B is incalculable. You need to be the England Football team, or Bon Jovi to get the Met Line to run most weekends. Anyway, I could go on, it’s just a sad reflection on people of today, real men and woman laid these lines in far less time than its taking these privatised profit orientated firms to fart arse about and bring them up to date.