Train home from Brighton

22.10.23

It’s hard to feel that the universe isn’t against you when things like this happen. I’ve just had a text from my colleague to say that’s she’s lost her voice so she will “hopefully be back on Tuesday!” It’s currently Sunday night. This wouldn’t be welcome news to 1/2 of the reception team at an overworked, understaffed mental health charity at the best of times. But on this particular weekend I am feeling rather under the weather myself. This ailment is currently made up of symptoms that indicate a common cold, mixed in with some weird stomach thing that has me running to the nearest bathroom at any chance I get. Piss poor timing.

To add to what had been a very mood dampening 40 minutes, I am currently stood on a tube that is positively sweltering. This particular train has been stuck at Edgeware Road station for good while now and my next train for Cardiff leaves Paddington in exactly 16 minutes. I am excruciatingly close to my destination.

For the entire 4 station journey so far this train had been stopping and starting like a car choking on its last drop of gas. Or perhaps like a receptionist whose Will to do her job is quickly slipping away. We’re both just bunny hopping along. I still have 2 hours worth of train left if I actually make it to Paddington in time, which is a stretch that at present I am not too chuffed to be taking, can you tell?

Then again perhaps it will be nice to make this journey on my own. I realised as my previous train pulled into Victoria that I was alone for the first time in a while, well at least since the last Brighton pilgrimage I made. Today, much like me of the past, I have to make all my connections and glean directions off my own back. It was initially rather nerve wracking, as it was something I hadn’t had to do in recent years thanks to having a google maps savvy travel companion. With that said as my scuffed shoes hit the polished floor of Victoria, a floor I had crossed so many times before, I shook those lonely feelings of doubt from my head and pushed onwards.

Presently, locked in this vast metal tube, I can feel the sweat drip, drip, dripping down my back. There is no respite in sight. The air in this carriage is stagnant, and I know that even when we manage to exit it I will still have 3 flights of stairs to ascend before we hit London air. Why don’t I sit down you ask? No thank you. Aside from the thought of how many sweaty arses have sat on these faded seats over the years I’ve got images of Parisian bed bugs scuttling through my mind. While the reports of them crossing the channel and descending upon the London Underground may be unfounded,  catching bed bugs today would be just my luck so I’m not taking any chances.

We are still stationary, my tinny earphones are working hard to distract my jumble sale of a brain, but unfortunately I’m far too focused on my over functional bodily fluids to notice their efforts. Much like my spine, my nose has also decided to masquerade as a leaky tap. I suddenly regret my choice to wear a kilt and a pvc raincoat today, as I now feel like a very gothic jacket potato. On top of this I can’t work out if the fuzzy headache wracking my brain is due to the tropical heat in this carriage or the minor illness I seem to have developed. Elsewhere in my quickly melting body I can literally feel the lump in my throat rising, and can’t help but hear the chorus of “what did you say love, speak up,” that will echo down the phone lines tomorrow. They can’t send me home ill if my fellow receptionist is already off, as there would be nobody to deal with the day to day chaos of the building. What’s more I cannot afford to take a dip in pay, and after my 6 weeks off due to a broken arm, I’m on half pay sick days until next April. And besides, with any luck I wont be in this job long enough to see the replenished sick day pay, here’s hoping!

In a feat that shocks everyone the tube has finally made the last hop to Paddington. The doors shudder open and a mass of anoraks and suitcases tumble onto the concrete floor. As you would expect in the underbelly of such a hub as Paddington Station, the platform is absolutely stuffed. I find myself stuck behind a family of umpteen roller bags and a brigade of children, I’m going nowhere fast. This hoard of relations decide, with what i can only imagine is a hive mind, to stop dead, all at once, in the centre of a busy platform. It’s all I can do not to careen into the smallest brigade member. My heavy hold-all acts as a counterweight as I sling it into my left hand and skid through the quickly closing gap between the family and the tiled curvature of the wall. I launch myself through the archway to my left, away from one madding crowd, and into a new corridor. Seconds after avoiding one collision I wrench my counter weight over to the right again to avoid hitting a new wall of bodies jostling for the escalator. Narrowly avoiding disastrous embarrassment I slalom through the last the stragglers and head for the stairs. I am of course wearing a fully woollen get-up complete with cobalt blue tights, so this ascent does nothing to calm my overworked furnace of a body. As I step upwards to freedom I thank my past self for my gym sessions wherein I used that infernal stair machine. Clearly those two whole visits made a difference as my knees haven’t ached nearly as much as usual.

After a sweaty, but not altogether breathless, clamber I make the summit and re-join the crowd as we are funnelled into yet another tunnel, inching ever closer to the surface. A familiar set of ticket barriers greet me as I round the corner, and in the near distance I spot a set of stairs. Finally, at their end, I feel cold air on my sticky forehead.

Skipping forward a few hectic minutes I finally make my train, after initially going to the wrong platform of course, with a whole 4 minutes to spare. I smell like a damp sheep but I made it, I even have a seat! What else could possibly go wrong?

A playlist to accompany the peril:

'Ain't no friend of mine' by Public Access TV

'Stay young' by Oasis

'Bring on the Night' by The Police

'Fire' by Crazy World of Arthur Brown