I used to have the misfortune of relying on South West Trains to complete my daily commute. It was only supposed to be about 10 minutes out of a 50-minute trip, but it could easily add an extra 10-30 minutes through trains not running to schedule, followed by a stop-start journey to my destination (with no explanation as to the delay). I quickly concluded that the service they supply out of Waterloo is about as reliable as an Amish salesman in a shop that sells only sub-£30 printers.
Thankfully it is now a rarefied moment whence I must board this particular brand of train-based misery. One such moment occurred this week however, when I arrived at Waterloo to find a signal failure had struck just outside the station - meaning an entire ten platforms were at a standstill during the evening rush hour.
Now, this is not the first time that a signal failure outside of Waterloo has immediately halted all services in and out of the station. It is about the 1-millionth. I understand that these failures occur as part of a failsafe system designed to keep trains from crashing into each other - but I would like to see a happy medium. Somewhere betwixt hundreds of deaths and no service at all. They do it elsewhere and it works well.
I was expecting a 15-minute journey to deepest darkest zone 6 but the train that achieved such a remarkable feat was nowhere to be seen, so I opted for a slower train that was at least listed on the departures board with a platform. As we sat there going nowhere, it gradually filled up with people to the point where they were actually talking to each other in order to achieve more efficient use of the space. Can you even imagine.
So, by the time the problem was fixed and the backlog started to leave the station, it was pretty rammed on my carriage. As a result I couldn't really help but have a nosey into the texts that my fellow passengers were sending to their loved ones. Most were incredibly boring and didn't help me at all in passing the time.
"I'm at Vauxhall."
"I'm at Clapham Junction."
And so on.
At one point, at Clapham Junction, a remarkably optimistic yet desperate commuter hollered down the carriage in a sort of primary school teacher's voice, that we should all move down so that everyone could get on.
"We've been waiting AAGGGGGGGGEEEEEESSSSSSSS!" She pleaded.
This brought out a unanimous, House of Commons-esque sarcastic laugh as if our journey thus far had been a well-oiled paragon of efficiency.
Anyway, these texts. They did get better thank god. This lad in his 20s was texting a girl who I assumed to be his girlfriend. I couldn't see the previous ones but the context of her replies indicated that he'd been calmly lamenting his current predicament.
"How long is your presentation tomorrow?" She asked.
"Only ten minutes so should be okay," he replied, "I can't believe it. Since I've started this job I've got four trains and everyone [sic] of them has been really late...."
Then a pause as he considers his next phrase.
"What a bunch of..."
PLEASE WRITE CUNTS PLEASE WRITE CUNTS PLEASE WRITE CUNTS - this is what I was willing his fingers to do.
..."cunts."
THAT'S A BINGO! I had to turn away and conceal my laughter. His tone had been really quite calm and considered so the thought of him writing The Worst Swear Word™ at the end of it pleased me greatly. I genuinely didn't think he had it in him. What a guy.
Anyway, I eventually got where I needed to go and promptly ordered a pint. When I left the pub several hours later the trains were still bloody delayed.