I’ll start by admitting a personal weakness of mine: I have a pathological, nut-shrinking phobia of lateness.
Some might say that I’m a pessimist, but I am a firm believer in the old adage that anything that can go wrong, will. It’s not that I’m a glass-half-empty kind of man, it’s just that I am convinced that life, society, shoelaces and embarrassing splashes on your crotch from over-zealous taps are all lurking in the wings, waiting to strike me down and delay me in my mission to arrive at any given destination at any given time. It’s sod’s law – you’re running slightly behind time, and bang, you can’t find your keys. Oversleep and the Jubilee Line is almost guaranteed to be out of service due to an exploding rat or some selfish loon throwing themselves in front of the 7.59 to Stanmore.
I’m not even sure where this fear comes from, since I am in the unenviable position of being in a social circle with people whose idea of punctuality is remembering to turn up at all. My closest friends are all habitually late to everything, and despite being aware of this fact, I am utterly, unbreakably obsessed with arriving exactly on time.
So it will come as no surprise to you that I am no good when it comes to travelling. Actually, more accurately, I am probably the world’s worst traveller. When it comes to wandering, I am a pro; I can meander with the best of them, and strolling, well, what I don’t know about strolling doesn’t need knowing. But travelling, actually journeying to a given destination and, more worryingly, a given time, transmogrifies me from a reasonably level headed man to Lewis Carroll’s White Rabbit on speed.
My obsession with tardiness frequently puts me in a negative, neurotic light. I remember a particularly awful, blue-faced screaming row I had in Central Park, terrified of missing a flight that wasn’t leaving for eight hours with the same discomfort that comes with recalling my six hour ‘power nap’ on the floor of Birmingham station, thanks to my conviction I’d miss my connecting train, and thus a job interview that was so chronologically distant that it had a different zodiac sign. Lateness brings me out in a cold, panicked sweat, and the fact that so frequently my arriving on time is placed outside my own control is something of a bone of contention for me. Not to put to fine a point on it, boys and girls, but I’m a terrible, terrible traveller.
So as a Londoner, and a commuter, ‘rush hour’ is some kind of Kafka-esque nightmare; some kind of perverse torture, geared entirely to my personal terror of lateness; the sort of sick game Jigsaw might think up for one of his victims in Saw. But it’s a necessary evil; as much as I hate getting from A to B via some as-yet-unnamed circle of hell, I happen to love money, and the myriad joys it can bring. So if all that stands between me and a margarita or a spangly new top is the relentless indignity of a London rush hour, then so be it. What really, really troubles me about rush hour is that no one appears to be in anything even resembling a rush.
The poster for Simon Pegg’s critically acclaimed Shaun of the Dead depicts loveable anti-hero Shaun on a tube, surrounded by the teeming undead. Beyond the obvious nod to the relentless mindless shambling of the commuting masses, I think Pegg has something of a point. There’s plenty of shambling to be seen; there’s even a great deal of shuffling, creeping and trundling, but rushing? Don’t bet your life on it.
Most of us have had the misfortune of taking a packed bus or tube to work, so it would be self-indulgent of me to describe it… actually, sod it, I’m going to. It’s just one soul-crushing indignity after another: if you’re not spending the journey avoiding the eye of some old soak screaming at his own sleeve and stinking of vomit, you’re crushed, crotch to sweaty crotch and face to armpit with someone whose idea of personal hygiene is to turn their pants inside out and clean their teeth with a dead rat. In short, it’s grim. So very, very grim. The daily commute is madness, and I, for one, don't want to go among mad people.
So why aren’t we in more of a hurry to get away? Why are we constantly stopping? Why can’t we stand to the right on escalators? Why can’t we walk in a bloody straight line? Why, London, why? Why are you all always in my bloody way?
I could continue to rant forever, but because I like to think I’m something of a well-rounded individual, I’ll put it into perspective: removing the need to work, to earn money, to survive and to shop – were we faced with the offence-to-all-five-senses that is rush hour outside of the daily grind, wouldn’t we be in some sort of hurry to escape it? Of course we would. So take that logic, and apply it to rush hour; stop pausing and looking around as if the scenery is suddenly going to stop being a beige seventies nightmare and somehow transform into that scene from end of Who Framed Roger Rabbit when the wall collapses and all the cartoon animals run in – it’s not going to. Stop standing to chat on the escalators; there are dozens of beautiful parks and a hundred million Starbucks, go to one, and chat beyond the smell of stale air and hostile aggression.
What we need to do is stop stopping, and start bloody rushing. Get your skates on, Londoners, and discover your inner White Rabbit. Trust me, you’ll get to Wonderland far quicker that way.
Some might say that I’m a pessimist, but I am a firm believer in the old adage that anything that can go wrong, will. It’s not that I’m a glass-half-empty kind of man, it’s just that I am convinced that life, society, shoelaces and embarrassing splashes on your crotch from over-zealous taps are all lurking in the wings, waiting to strike me down and delay me in my mission to arrive at any given destination at any given time. It’s sod’s law – you’re running slightly behind time, and bang, you can’t find your keys. Oversleep and the Jubilee Line is almost guaranteed to be out of service due to an exploding rat or some selfish loon throwing themselves in front of the 7.59 to Stanmore.
I’m not even sure where this fear comes from, since I am in the unenviable position of being in a social circle with people whose idea of punctuality is remembering to turn up at all. My closest friends are all habitually late to everything, and despite being aware of this fact, I am utterly, unbreakably obsessed with arriving exactly on time.
So it will come as no surprise to you that I am no good when it comes to travelling. Actually, more accurately, I am probably the world’s worst traveller. When it comes to wandering, I am a pro; I can meander with the best of them, and strolling, well, what I don’t know about strolling doesn’t need knowing. But travelling, actually journeying to a given destination and, more worryingly, a given time, transmogrifies me from a reasonably level headed man to Lewis Carroll’s White Rabbit on speed.
My obsession with tardiness frequently puts me in a negative, neurotic light. I remember a particularly awful, blue-faced screaming row I had in Central Park, terrified of missing a flight that wasn’t leaving for eight hours with the same discomfort that comes with recalling my six hour ‘power nap’ on the floor of Birmingham station, thanks to my conviction I’d miss my connecting train, and thus a job interview that was so chronologically distant that it had a different zodiac sign. Lateness brings me out in a cold, panicked sweat, and the fact that so frequently my arriving on time is placed outside my own control is something of a bone of contention for me. Not to put to fine a point on it, boys and girls, but I’m a terrible, terrible traveller.
So as a Londoner, and a commuter, ‘rush hour’ is some kind of Kafka-esque nightmare; some kind of perverse torture, geared entirely to my personal terror of lateness; the sort of sick game Jigsaw might think up for one of his victims in Saw. But it’s a necessary evil; as much as I hate getting from A to B via some as-yet-unnamed circle of hell, I happen to love money, and the myriad joys it can bring. So if all that stands between me and a margarita or a spangly new top is the relentless indignity of a London rush hour, then so be it. What really, really troubles me about rush hour is that no one appears to be in anything even resembling a rush.
The poster for Simon Pegg’s critically acclaimed Shaun of the Dead depicts loveable anti-hero Shaun on a tube, surrounded by the teeming undead. Beyond the obvious nod to the relentless mindless shambling of the commuting masses, I think Pegg has something of a point. There’s plenty of shambling to be seen; there’s even a great deal of shuffling, creeping and trundling, but rushing? Don’t bet your life on it.
Most of us have had the misfortune of taking a packed bus or tube to work, so it would be self-indulgent of me to describe it… actually, sod it, I’m going to. It’s just one soul-crushing indignity after another: if you’re not spending the journey avoiding the eye of some old soak screaming at his own sleeve and stinking of vomit, you’re crushed, crotch to sweaty crotch and face to armpit with someone whose idea of personal hygiene is to turn their pants inside out and clean their teeth with a dead rat. In short, it’s grim. So very, very grim. The daily commute is madness, and I, for one, don't want to go among mad people.
So why aren’t we in more of a hurry to get away? Why are we constantly stopping? Why can’t we stand to the right on escalators? Why can’t we walk in a bloody straight line? Why, London, why? Why are you all always in my bloody way?
I could continue to rant forever, but because I like to think I’m something of a well-rounded individual, I’ll put it into perspective: removing the need to work, to earn money, to survive and to shop – were we faced with the offence-to-all-five-senses that is rush hour outside of the daily grind, wouldn’t we be in some sort of hurry to escape it? Of course we would. So take that logic, and apply it to rush hour; stop pausing and looking around as if the scenery is suddenly going to stop being a beige seventies nightmare and somehow transform into that scene from end of Who Framed Roger Rabbit when the wall collapses and all the cartoon animals run in – it’s not going to. Stop standing to chat on the escalators; there are dozens of beautiful parks and a hundred million Starbucks, go to one, and chat beyond the smell of stale air and hostile aggression.
What we need to do is stop stopping, and start bloody rushing. Get your skates on, Londoners, and discover your inner White Rabbit. Trust me, you’ll get to Wonderland far quicker that way.
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