Rushing my way
again to my tube station, I checked before hand the status of the underground
network. As usual, Jubilee Line had delays (surprised anybody?) and my friend
misery, I mean Northern was disrupted too. Must admit I did not make it to my
usual 0701 Victoria Line, but waited for the rest, as I still have plenty of
time to make it anyways.
0705 and Vicky
was still on its way. By the time we got in, I rushed inside the carriage and
occupied the only seat left available. However, as a H1N1 virus, faulty trains
at Green Park in Jubilee Line spreaded vigorously until making Victoria Line
fall ill. The sky blue tube line run coughing on each station until painfully
reaching Oxford Circus 12 minutes late. By the time I boarded Bakerloo, I was
timing carefully the time into each station and mentally writing the warning
text to my boss about me not making it into my usual train and subsequently,
being late.
Arriving at
Waterloo, I engineered the perfect way to hold my ever-opening handbag and
secure by lunch bag to have a consistent and safe grip of my belonging before
running the 100 m final. Tickets for everybody on the station! There I was,
painfully breathless climbing the escalator to win the gold medal to reach 1
minute before the departure but missing the Wednesday freebie (some sort of
wholegrain hypercaloric biscuit).
Running like
there is no tomorrow, made it in to the barriers and queue behind the 3 or 4,
also delayed, fellow passengers, the last fellow let me in first with
unexpected chivalry, but I just managed to say a quiet 'thanks' with out even
looking back.
Like a bull
running after the red cape, the closest available seat was on a table seat,
already semi occupied by the belongings of a semi regular to the train.
Semi-agreeing, and not fully content, he displaced his suitcase to the floor
leaving space for me. After taking a few minutes to regulate my heart-rate and
lower the panting, I sat down and made sure I was all in one peace. Packed
between the bloke, a suitcase in front and the train, I barely had space to
take my jacket off and recover a healthy body temperature. To give me a bit
more space, I temporarily placed my bag under by seat, on the side, while I was
cluttered having me breakfast. Two seconds after, the guy behind was poking me
on the back: 'Excuse me, would you mind taking youe bag from there? I don't
have space for my legs'. Eyes wide open, as the guy was not even tall, I
resigned myself and followed his instructions to put the bag again on my lap
for again, restricting any kind of movement due to the lack of space.
Still sort of
grumpy, the guy on my side kept working in his laptop, famously protected by a
privacy screen that did not allow me to sneak into what kind of business was he
working in. Nevertheless, he didn't miss the opportunity to sneak into my phone
or my little notebook at each opportunity he had. Oh well.
The lady
sitting in front of me, that was wearing a jacket matching my shoes and who's
suitcase also did not leave me any room for my legs (but I did not complaint
about it), had one of those chunky files with at least 500 hundred pages full
of information and notes. At first glance, by the format of the text, my first
thought was that she was film-related. She was making notes in something that
looked like a script, a dialogue with different characters, printed in recycled
paper. But it was that specific detail, the recycled paper what gave me the
clue to realise that THAT was not a film script and she was not the director,
the translator nor the adaptor. That was office paper. Paper from somewhere
that uses humongous amounts of paper. What it really was: an interrogatory
transcription.
And she turned
the page.
CONFIDENTIAL.
And I read a
couple of names.
And identified
some famour emblems.
And then it
was when I stopped reading as for the fear of knowing some information would
involve me in some sort of dodgy case of those who appear on front pages.
I went back to
my morning tweets and by the time I was self-erasing all the info that I had just
read, I managed to eat my breakfast, get out of the cluttered space to chuck
the rubbish in the bin. While coming back, my fellow commuter Subject I offers
me a seat besides him as he witnessed my discomfort in my actual seat. 'No,
thanks! I'm alright' I replied politely.
By the time I
returned to my seat, without realising, forty minutes had gone by and I made it
into my station.
Today I did
not have to run.
Now I get why
City workers wear sneakers with the suit.
But that's
another story.
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