.... for many months now I've found exiting a tube station almost akin to battle. I've personally never been in battle, but I have watched 'Predator' more than once (willingly) and I think there were enough tips in that to get me from Walthamstow to Warren Street without being killed by an alien. However, the escalator is something else altogether. I don't mind entering the tube station, travelling on the train, getting off the train, but when it comes to heading for the escalator, then my commando training (a la Arnold Schwarzenegger) just isn't enough. It never used to be like this, but in recent years a new breed of commuter has evolved. A commuter who sees the escalator and whose brain says 'me want escalator, me want escalator NOW'.
I disembark every weekday at Warren Street. I sit myself in the carriage that stops directly at the 'Way Out' sign. Doors open and I head straight for the right-hand side of the escalator to signify I'm relaxed and happy to let the moving stairway do the job it was built for. But, to the 'me want escalator now' brigade, this renders me invisible. As I go to step on to the escalator, the mob bear down on me and their leader walks right across me without a single acknowledgement that I'm there. In these moments, all life beyond Warren Street ceases to exist for me and I become Arnold. Sadly, the Arnold from Kindergarten Cop, which is why I reach the top of the escalator feeling inadequate, unloved and very very dissed. Inside I'm channelling Kindergarten Cop with Terminator and getting Nanny McPhee, and this manifests itself in a couple of 'tuts' - a coward's cry of disapproval. What would Arnold do in these circumstances? He'd travel back in time and make that mother****** regret the morning they ever disembarked at Warren Street. Sadly, until there's a breakthrough in science, all that's left to me is the hope that their oyster card stalls at the ticket barrier. When this does, I tut, the commuters behind me tut; a symphony of tuts in fact. Music to my ears.
In the winter, I use my long umbrella as a weapon to bar the mob and only an Olympic hurdler would be able to get in front of me (note to self: revise this strategy during London 2012). But in summer, what am I to do to defend myself? What can I carry with me that is normal for summer and could do the job just as well? Perhaps a garden hoe, but I don't want people to think I'm off to the allotment and ask me for some rhubarb. Or for anyone to say 'have you seen Junebug and her hoe?'. This isn't the image I want to cultivate. I think the only thing available to me is to wear a sign around my neck that says: "Beware, mother******, this commuter is channelling the Terminator". I'm packing my dark shades, my leather gloves (don't have a jacket) and losing the ability to enunciate ready for tomorrow's battle.
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