Saving The Tube!

I'm not sure whether these adverts are meant to be taken seriously or not, but there seems to be a new way of saving the tube. It is a strategy of preaching peace, love and understanding to all tube users. And it is communicating the message through patronising posters with trite little trade offs, like "If you won't listen to loud music... then I won't eat my smelly food."

It is a bold strategy, particularly when you consider that the real problems of the tube are overcrowding, escalating prices, irregular services and generally terrible standards. Perhaps a more accurate appraisal of the strategy might be "shit". It certainly isn't as great as my plan for tube recovery, in my humble opinion. Which is basically to rip out all the tube trains, remove the rails, and then push herds of donkeys into the tube. When a passenger wants to go somewhere, they get strapped onto a donkey. You then give that donkey a shot of adrenaline, and hit it on the hind quarters with a stick. It races off into the darkness of the tube tunnel. Sure, they might be teething problems, and it is not really taking into account the welfare of the donkeys involved. Some people might not make their correct tube stops. But it sounds a lot more humane for the tube passengers than the frankly dreadful experience I had this morning. And pretty much every time I step into the Tunnels Of Doom (TM).

The adverts (you'll know them if you've seen them - sorry, can't source a link) are going to do precisely nothing to help with the situation on the tube. Let's have a look at three of them:

"...you don't eat your smelly food..."

Frankly, I couldn't give two fucks about what you are eating. In fact, if you can force you way through the masses of tube users to actually find some space to eat, then you've earned your meal.

The smell that really worries me is that guy. That fat guy over there. You know, the obese oaf who looks like a brick shit house. If that brick shit house has let itself go. A lot. The guy who fills the air with a radius of about 100 metres around him with dank BO. The guy with the sweat stains on his T-shirt - not just under his pits but also under his sweaty bitch-tits. The guy who looks like he is going to create a sweat monsoon, and wipe out the carriage in a flash flood. The smell of him worries me more than the smell of your food.

So feel free to eat your smelly grub. Go for it. All I ask is that you occasionally waft it under my nose, to help me drown out the smell of Fatty McFat Fat Fat Fat over in the corner.

"...I won't talk on my mobile..."

Again, feel free to. If you can. If you can actually find a signal on the tube, then you've won the right to talk on your mobile. You can even have sordid phone sex with your lover for all I care. At least it reminds us all that there is life - and therefore hope - outside of this rattling tin sarcophagus.

"...I'll say thank you if you give me your seat..."

Well, I would give you my seat, but unfortunately I don't have a seat. In fact, I barely have standing room, what with Fatty McFat Fat Fat Fat taking up half the carriage. The only time when I am actually on the tube and have space to sit is after closing time in the pubs. When no-one will sit near me anyway because of the twitching - twitching because I'm dying for a piss at the same time as wishing I had been to the toilet before I left the last pub.

"...I won't play my loud music..."

Actually, I will play my loud music. For two reasons. First of all, it drowns at that terrible shrieking of the chavs on the carriage. Get them to shut up, then I'll think about turning down my music. Although I probably won't. On the grounds my music is just about the only thing that is keeping me sane on the hellish, claustrophobic tube. It is the only one thing that stops me from beating the next person who jostles me to death with my shoe. Or strangle them with the strap of my man bag (my one concession to metro sexuality). See, it is actually in every one's best interest if I listen to loud music on the tube.

In fact, it would be in every one's best interest to follow the same strategy as the one I use on the tube. It can be summarised as follows: get on only when you really have to, and get off again as soon as you possibly can. Anything else, on an out of date mass transport system in a hopelessly over crowded city, is a mad - and money wasting - dream.

Go Boris!

Boris Johnson is being considered for London Mayor. Frankly I think he is an awesome choice. If people aren't going to follow my advice and make him party leader. Can you imagine anyone better to represent the varied metropolis of London than the larger than life, charismatic, erratic MP for Henley? He could become a London landmark - I mean, let's face it, he is already pretty much a British Institution!

Go go Boris! You'd get my vote.

Walking to work...

…is really nice most days. I don’t have to worry about public transport (which seems to have come to a grinding halt in the absolutely unprecedented event of a smattering of snow in February) and let’s be honest about it, walking around Central London is pretty much the only exercise I get. Plus I get to see the sights of London on the way to work, such as the ongoing standoff between the Houses of Parliament and Brian Haw (I do wonder when he will give it up but also have a grudging admiration for the fact that he hasn’t).

However this morning it wasn’t so nice. I managed to both forget that we were expecting snow overnight and to look out the window before setting out on my walk to work. Consequently, I had no idea that it was still snowing. Which meant I forgot my umbrella and coat, and which also meant by the time I got to work I looked a little like a cat someone had tried to drown in a canal.

Part of the problem is my stubbornness, I suppose. I could have jumped into a taxi or a bus or onto the tube but I refuse to do any of those. The taxi option is just too expensive (when I can’t expense it through work of course). The tube is too crowded and it seems pointless to pay for a tube ticket for just two stops. And I am just too snobby to use a bus*.

Quite what this proves is a little beyond me, but I did feel my stubbornness waning slightly when I got to work this morning and had to dry my hair using the hand dryer in the gents. But look at it this way – I don’t use any transport other than my feet, so at least my carbon footprint is fine.

Jesus. I am unintentionally green…

*To some extent I am vindicated by the last time I tried to use a bus. Stood at a bus stop in the depths of South London, we were accosted by a Polish (?) gentleman who proceeded to talk at us manically in spite of the fact that he was speaking Polish (or some other Eastern European language) and therefore we could not understand a word of it. We tried to explain this to him, but I don't think he spoke a word of English. Normally I would find this entertaining and surreal. However at 1am in the depths of the SE postcode, and given the slight look of insanity in the guy's eye, it became a little uncomfortable to say the least.

So we got a taxi.

An Epidemic of Free Newspapers

Now, I have a bit of an ambivalent relationship to free stuff. On the one hand, I love a free drink. At work occasions, where the wine or the beer (or both) are free, I will stay to the bitter end. Even when I lose the power of speech, even when I lose the ability to stand upright, I will stay. In fact, the only thing that will get me to leave the work party is when the free alcohol runs out.

So, on some levels, I love free stuff. But generally speaking anything given away free is crap, and I don’t want it.

The other day I was in a shop, buying a newspaper, and the shop assistant – who seemed to be a smiley, if over-earnest, fella – offered me a free poster. I asked him what the poster was of. He told me Battlestar Galactica. I grimaced slightly, and said no. He looked at me incredulously, and asked me whether I was sure. I said I was, and he spluttered “but it is free!”

Yes. Very true. But the fact it is free does not make it any good. In fact, if someone is giving something away free, generally speaking it is utter crap and they can’t get rid of it any other way.

There is a plague in London at the moment. A plague of free stuff; an epidemic of free newspapers.

The Metro is bad enough, but at least it attempts, on some level, to be a newspaper. The pretenders to the crown, thelondonpaper and The London Lite, are so reprehensibly bad that they make The Sunday Sport look like the work of Woodward and Bernstein.

Plus The Metro at least has the common decency to restrict itself to being handed out at stations, and being found dumped in buses and tubes. Not so the new London rags. They are literally everywhere. Like bubonic sores on the already pock marked face of London.

Seriously, I will walk out of the office onto the street and someone – a person paid to hand out a free newspaper – will thrust a newspaper that you wouldn’t use to wipe a dog’s arse (if, indeed, wiping canine anuses is your thing) at me. Even though I am wearing my “whatever you do, don’t get in my way” scowl, even though I am listening to music on my headphones and have my hands thrust in my pockets and therefore I am unable to hear them offer me the newspaper and unable to take the newspaper even if I could hear them, they still feel the need to thrust this worthless waste of a tree at me.

Which is bad enough, but part and parcel of living in London. What really pisses me off is the fact that there is someone, 100 metres down the street, to thrust another free piece of crap at me. They are everywhere, literally everywhere, I go - always looking to palm their terrible, rancid, gossip rag on me. And the worst thing is they never, ever notice the fact that I have refused a free newspaper 100 metres – and a few seconds – ago. They see me ignore the newspaper, but still think that, less than a minute later, I will be looking to take the same free piece of shite away with me. I mean, what do they think? That I regret turning down the free newspaper? That I have spent the past few seconds beating myself up about the fact that I have down the rag? That I am waiting for some, brave, heroic newspaper distributor to give my life meaning again and give me the chance to take the retard version of The Metro? Or perhaps they just don’t think, which may explain why they are doing a job that makes toilet cleaning look glamorous.

The other day I saw a free newspaper distributor pack a bin bag full of his free crap and dump it into a public bin. And that made me smile, in spite of myself. I sense he wasn’t making a comment about the content of the newspaper, but rather his inability to get rid of his copies, even though the cost to the punter was nil. And I think that distributor deserves a big hand. If all of his peers followed his example, and dumped their wares in the nearest bin before pissing off the pub, London would be a much better place.