Spreading a little commuter cheer

Whilst I’m not try­ing to deny the ser­i­ous­ness of the vari­ous attacks tak­ing place around Lon­don at the moment, my nat­ural cyn­icism makes me think that I’ve already detec­ted a hint of ‘near miss’ exag­ger­ated bravado from cer­tain people. Oh, come on, if you’ve over­heard any con­ver­sa­tions in the cap­ital recently, you’ll know the kind of exchange I’m talk­ing about:

“Oh, it was such a close thing. I was very nearly at the scene of that attemp­ted bomb­ing at War­ren Street yesterday.”

“Really? Where were you?”

“Trav­el­ling out of town on the East Lon­don Line towards New Cross Gate. But, y’know, I could have been there only an hour or so before.”

And yet, I can’t help but men­tion that I was on the tube train just ahead of the Stock­well shoot­ing this morn­ing. Our train was about to pull out of Ken­ning­ton sta­tion, but no sooner had it star­ted than it shuddered to a halt only a couple of feet into the tun­nel. A mem­ber of tube staff, accom­pan­ied by two police­men who seemed to have mater­i­al­ised out of nowhere, rushed up to the driver’s cab, and then a woman’s pan­icked voice shouted up the plat­form from the rear of the train, plead­ing with the driver: “Can you close the doors? Please. Please”.

We sat there nervously for two or three minutes, while more police officers arrived and rushed up and down the plat­form look­ing for some­thing. Or more likely someone. It was only when the police finally entered our car­riage and asked us to evac­u­ate the train and the sta­tion in an orderly fash­ion that we were told the reason for the alert — a ‘sus­pect per­son’ on a train — although at that stage we didn’t know whether it was right there at Ken­ning­ton or fur­ther up or down the line.

In the car­riage where I was sit­ting, four people burst into tears when the incid­ent began. One woman a few seats down could clearly be heard cry­ing: “But I’m preg­nant”. It was a very long two or three minutes — even by the stand­ards of the typ­ical ‘Lon­don Under­ground minute’ that we’re so used to the plat­form dis­plays using when the next train is due — so one middle-aged man in build­ers’ over­alls decided to try and lighten the mood (in a per­fect example of this neb­u­lous ‘Blitz spirit’ I keep hear­ing about) by ask­ing people what they were plan­ning to do at the weekend.

Now, con­ver­sa­tions with com­plete strangers aren’t my strongest point, as many read­ers will know. But this was an extraordin­ary situ­ation, and I prob­ably wasn’t in quite the right frame of mind to quickly employ my usual impen­et­rable bar­ri­ers of shy­ness. Besides, my thoughts were already racing ahead with what I have to con­fess was a ridicu­lously car­toon­ish vis­ion of a sup­posedly typ­ical sui­cide bomber — wires, dynam­ite and a large digital clock count­ing down to zero all strapped to his chest, stand­ing spread-eagled across the con­nect­ing door at the end of a tube carriage.

So I answered my fel­low passenger’s ques­tion without think­ing. Indeed, I answered him without one single coher­ent thought about what the bloody hell I was say­ing. Oh, the shame.

“Well, it’s my birth­day tomor­row, and I’m going to see my new baby niece; she was born just over a week ago.”

“That’s nice,” he replied. “Happy birth­day, mate.”

I hate people who call me “mate”. Even at moments when I might be star­ing death in the face whilst sit­ting in a metal tube deep below the streets of Lon­don, I still hate people who call me “mate”.

He was about to ask the same ques­tion of a women sit­ting diag­on­ally oppos­ite him, who had been dab­bing frightened tears from the corners of her eyes since the moment the police appeared on the plat­form, when the doors opened and we filed out of the sta­tion in a calm, dig­ni­fied and typ­ic­ally Brit­ish fash­ion — mean­ing that there were lots of mur­mured apo­lo­gies for acci­dent­ally knock­ing elbows. We were prob­ably very defi­ant too, accord­ing to the adject­ives that we’re sup­posed to use at such moments to describe the mood of Londoners.

I wasn’t feel­ing par­tic­u­larly defi­ant, though. More scared. Scared and, well, bloody stu­pid. I don’t make a habit of announ­cing my birth­day in pub­lic. Des­per­ate for atten­tion? Yes, of course. Des­per­ate for so much incred­u­lous atten­tion? No, not really.

“See ya, mate,” the man in over­alls called to me, through the throng of dis­placed com­muters spill­ing out onto the cordoned-off streets of Kennington.

“Er, see ya,” I answered self-consciously, as I sud­denly (but sens­ibly) returned to my usual war­i­ness of talk­ing to com­plete strangers on pub­lic transport.

So yes, I’m 34 tomor­row, but don’t bother to wish me happy birth­day, because some bloke on a tube train caught in the middle of a secur­ity alert has already done that, prob­ably to the vague aston­ish­ment of a couple of dozen silently ter­ri­fied passengers.

Some­times my beha­viour is woe­fully inappropriate.