glennji{.tweet}: I still hate the Met: Northern Line canned at 8:50am this morning; took me another 40min on the bus to get here. It’s 45min walk from home!
Yep, I’m blogging tweets now. So I slept in this morning; Danielle got up at 6am, and whilst I could’ve followed her I found it far easier to roll over and bury my head in my pillow. Easier at the time, but I suspect the Universe was trying to tell me something.
So I got up at 7:30, which is plenty of time really. However, I thought I’d take the train because I was running perhaps 10mins late – I put it down to an extra 10 minutes trying to find all my rarely-used gym gear and pack it. I walked up to King’s Cross and crammed onto the third south-bound Northern Line train; the first two trains were too full to do more than shuffle closer to the doors.
So, finally crammed in, sweating like anything but a pig (they don’t sweat you know), counting the stations left ’til Bank/Monument. And at 10 to 9, Old Street, plenty of time left to get to work, the bad news – signal failure (which I’m sure is a euphemism for, I don’t know, “Charlie in Control is drunk again”. Or something).
We sat for 5 minutes, waiting, hoping. The driver announced that we were stationary “until further notice” but still we held on. Then the station-manager announced that they were hoping to “turn some south-bound trains into north-bound trains” and the ensuing despair caused a mass exodus. I was lucky enough to be one of the first out the door, and raced ahead of the human tide through the ticket/flood-gates and out onto the street.
Now, those of you who know me know I don’t have a good sense of direction, and so I was feeling a bit scared that I would walk off in completely the wrong direction. Then, unable to find either a) a taxi or b) an ATM so I could pay for a taxi, I would eventually end up in Slough. Or Hogwarts. Luckily for me, the exits were signposted, and I could have a reasonably good chance that “City Road South” probably headed south through the city. I walked to the nearest bus stop and hopped on the next appropriate bus.
The whole trip took over an hour; It’s only a 40 minute walk.