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2004-11-20 - 10:01 a.m.
rains
ok, so a couple of days ago it was really wet here in london - there was water falling from the sky and everything. if you have not been to england before then you might think that it rains here every day but it is not true. sometimes it is not too bad.
anyway, it was the first day of properly nasty weather this autumn and it turned everyone into some sort of idiot, i think. it is maybe not too hard to realise that water and wind and cold is not worth losing your marbles over but that did not stop people from blocking up the roads and everything with bad weather driving. it should not have been so bad on the trains but i could not use the underground because of fishes on the line or something - i had to go to waterloo station (maybe you have heard of it) to catch a topside train home from work.
ok, when i got to the station there were no trains there. at first i thought that i might be stranded in the centre of london with no way to get home. it is a good job that i have seen survival programs on tv or i would have been scared of starving to death or something because of not knowing how to drink my own wee, but that was not a problem. anyway, i was soon distracted when i realised that there were over a thousand people crammed into the main station building around the arrivals board. at first glance they appeared to be looking to see when their train would come in to the station but on closer inspection it became clear that they too had succumbed to the bad weather.
the rain zombies (it is a technical term, i think) were so numerous that they had completely filled the building from wall to wall and they were bumping into each other in confusion. they needed a leader and i was not about to shirk that responsibility so i pulled my bag up to my chest for maximum battering power and ploughed a human furrow into the crowd. there was method behind this action as i was the only one who seemed to understand that it was probably best to wait somewhere else where there would be less people. as soon as i reached my platform i looked back and saw that a group of pilgrims had followed in my wake and suddenly the whole mass was starting to move into the gaps and free itself up. it is a beautiful moment when you can free people's minds with only a small amount of violence.
anyway, eventually a train came and i could go home. maybe it is sort of reinforcing a stereotype for me to be writing about the weather since i am english but there is an important lesson to be learned from this whole thing. i think it is that if you cannot handle a bit of rain and wind every now and again then you should probably either move to a drier country or maybe expect to get hit in the neck by some hand luggage at london stations.
paul.
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