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The pleasures of commuting

September 9th, 2006 · Posted by Skuds in Work · 1 Comment · Work

As someone who views commuting as something to be endured rather than enjoyed, I found this opinion piece in G2 a bit hard to swallow, even allowing for the fact that the writer is blind and therefore will have a different experience to me.

I will admit that he does have a point that commuting offers a very set routine, a safe haven from the unpredictability of life where you know exactly what you will be doing for an hour.

Taking my own journey as an example, I know where to stand on the platform at Crawley station so that when the 06:49 turns up I will be right in front of the front door of the rear carriage – where the seats are wider than most of the other carriages and more of them are empty than in the other similarly-furnished carriages. (Usually the first and last carriage in a set)

Of the occupants I can expect to see the same two ladies at the corner table, the black fireman by the window nearest the door, and a few others. 

Somewhere between Three Bridges and Gatwick I will doze off and then wake just outside London Bridge station, always slightly surprised to find that the train is now full with lots of people standing. The train pulls in at platform 13 and I go up the stairs and cross over to platform 6 where another train will arrive within 4 minutes to take me one stop to Waterloo East.

When everything goes well it is a good journey for me: I will find a free seat next to the window at Crawley, which does not have a table, and at London Bridge I just miss a connecting train, but the next one arrives immediately so there are few people waiting to get on. 

The problem is that it is not as predictable as that, and those perfect journeys only happen once every fortnight on average.  With such a routine, small variations can be disproportionately disturbing. 

For example there might be no window seats empty without a table and you have to choose between sitting next to someone who might want to get off at East Croydon and disturb your sleep and sitting at a table so that some who gets on at Redhill will tread on your feet when they take the seat opposite. Or the train arrives with fewer carriages, or stops somewhere for ages, throwing out your schedule, or one gets cancelled or delayed.

If train journeys really were 100% predictable I might agree with Peter White, but until that happens I will have to take issue with him. 

However, the first part of the story rang very true. The SWT strike would not have greatly affected me but a lot of colleagues cannot get to work on an alternative route and they all either took a day off or 'worked from home' on the previous strike day.

This time around they were looking forward to the Friday and Monday strikes giving them a 4-day weekend.  While they were telling their bosses they would have to work from home you could almost see the thought bubble above their heads reading "must get a crate in".  And the next week the Evening Standard would describe the strike days as causing misery for commuters.

Which reminds me… 

During train strikes or after an incident which causes lots of cancellations the more hysterical newspapers (Evening Standard for example) are almost guaranteed to use the phrase 'misery for commuters'.  This always seems like an example of hyperbole which devalues the concept of misery. If I end up waiting on the platform at Clapham Junction for 30 minutes instead of 10 it is not ideal, but is it misery?  The death of a child,  having to leave home and flee the country because of civil war, contracting a chronic debilitating disease – thats misery. Train chaos (another favourite Standard word) is inconvenience, not misery.

When a small thing like having one more person than usual in the train when it arrives it disconcerts the regular, long-term commuter more than major changes for some strange reason.

And another thing…

Even as a smoker I have to admit that trains are much more pleasant now that smoking carriages have been done away with. Non-smokers are happy that they are not exposed to secondary smoke, but there is still a health risk and nuisance remaining – newspapers.

If someone is reading the tiny G2 part of the Guardian, or are expert paper-folders it is not too bad, but most readers like to spread the paper, elbowing their neighbours or letting it drape over someone's head if they are standing. This was not too bad in the old smoking carriages where it was acceptable to just set fire to the newspaper in such circumstances, but now the only solution would be to actually make eye contact or (gasp) talk to the offender, which are still offences punishable by lynching under railway bylaws.

But that is not my real issue with the papers.  Other commuters will know that it is almost impossible to  resist reading over fellow commuters' shoulders. Some of these fellow commuters will be reading the Daily Mail and so I am therefore exposed to secondary hate.

Fortunately I am escaping from the clutches of Southern railways before the secondary hate affects me too much. 

Jayne is ecstatic about the transfer too. She says she will be spared my daily rants about the railways. She has a point as once on the topic of trains I can find it hard to stop.

Which reminds me…

When did the trainborne PA start referring to "the next station stop" instead of "the next station" or "the next stop"?  Is this to prevent pedants suing if they announce on a fast train that the next station is East Croydon and teh train then passes through Merstham, Coulsdon and the rest without stopping?  Or that if they announce that the next stop is London Bridge and the trains gets stopped at signals  befoerhand everyone will try to pile out onto the tracks? 

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One Comment so far ↓

  • Andrew

    “This was not too bad in the old smoking carriages where it was acceptable to just set fire to the newspaper in such circumstances”

    I love this image 🙂