Mike Richards
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Down the Drain
posted Wednesday, 1 July 2009
This morning I had to walk to my office (in the roof at St Paul’s, from Waterloo). Not because I was feeling particularly virtuous, not because I feel I should get fitter and therefore an invigorating walk to start the day would be the order of the day, but because the bleedin’ Waterloo & City Line (or Drain as we wearers of bowler hats and rolled-up umbrellas call it) was not working. There was a reason given, but sadly the final two words of the reason were so inarticulate, they could have announced Martians had taken Bank Station with them and the trains were being diverted via Neptune. I thought I would get a bus, but the bus stop for the 666 Bus, which drives like a scene from Stanley Baker and Sean Connery’s 1957 (great year for babies) epic film “Hell Drivers”, would have been rammed and if we’d been cattle would have had the Greenpeace boat pulling alongside trying to get on board to release us. So, I decided to mentally put on my trainers and walk. So, I-touch charged and ready to blare out a Mahler Symphony or two, I started my walk. All was well until I got to Blackfriars Bridge Road. I had drunk my carton of pineapple juice too early in the journey (which is why I’d never been any good in the SAS - unable to pad out provisions, although I wouldn’t be very good at the fighting bit, either, not to mention the myopia). After I’d crossed Blackfriars Bridge Road and descended onto the pavement which goes along the river, it was like I’d entered a scene of Tour de France meets Pamplona Bull Run. Everyone’s riding a bloody bike or running (too fast for me to nick their drink, sadly). You cannot stop and admire the splendour which is the building housing Tate Modern as the chances of having the words “Raleigh” imprinted on your arse are quite high. Why does everyone wear a vest when running or some old T-shirt which has the name of a former Merchant Bank emblazoned on it and their charity run before the regulators closed them down for misappropriating funds in the Cayman Islands? Does it say “I work in the City and I do my bit for charity”? – to me it just says they might have got a good O-Level Maths pass and still have the use of their legs. It was so hot this morning at times crossing the wobbly bridge it seemed the man sitting down selling Big Issues was going faster than I was. And why are Japanese tourists all out so early in the morning taking photographs. I told a group that the new Blackfriars Bridge is actually Glastonbury Tor and if they hang about they might catch Bruce Springsteen. Today was not the day to be wearing a suit. Certainly not a Hugo Boss suit. He might have designed the uniforms for the SS, but he designed them with a winter on the Bavarian Alps in mind. Bloody baking and fast dehydrating. I felt I was about to become another St John’s Ambulance client. And so, with hair-shirt on (that’s a range in TM Lewin they fail to pint out to you and seems like a good idea in the winter) and two-piece suit with oak leaves removed and stitches where an arm band you go, I arrived in the Whispering Gallery near where I work. I quietly whispered to myself, “Sodding Drain” and two-minutes later got hauled out by two people who were gorillas in this life and sent on my merry way. All of this was not helped by the fact that I carry (unnecessarily so) a bag, which, when I looked at in the Fossil shop, looked spot on and almost trendy. However, it now looks like it should be full of shower heads, duct tape and a spirit level. It isn’t, it has a Tupperware box, a copy of the Daily Jang and a spare set of teeth. Tomorrow, if the same thing happens, I shall just scream and shout on the station concourse banging the floor and shouting for my mum. I might have a long wait unless God decides to work in scarily mysterious ways tomorrow morning.
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