Playing sardines
It's that heartsink moment: you arrive at the train station and your platform has twice the number of people waiting than usual. This can mean only one thing - a cancelled train.
For the last six months I have been getting up fifteen minutes earlier (that's six a.m.) in order to catch the theoretically less crowded 7:15. At first this meant a choice of seats. Then it came down to a choice of rubbish seats (you know the ones in the middle of the three by two seats? Not so much a seat as a lap, if both your neighbours are in any way wider than Kate Moss) Then it was standing until Highbury. But since I've been getting the earlier train I've never had to lever myself on the way I did this morning. And I have never before felt seriously worried about crushing - if not of myself, then of some of the shorter people on the train some of whom were looking decidedly unhappy.
What was striking was how polite everyone was. People getting on, people attempting to get off, people with their noses in your armpit, people with their armpits in your nose - all of them apologising like mad. It was 'excuse me' and 'sorry' all the way - apart from the Scottish bloke who shot out of the doors at Caledonian Road like a cork out of a bottle, shouting 'free at last!' I suppose when you are pressed so close to each other that you all have to breathe in unison, there's no point getting stroppy. It was only when the crush started to ease that normal service was resumed and people began elbowing each other out of the way again. Or maybe it was just that only then could they deploy their elbows effectively.
Actually I'm being unfair. Mostly passengers on the Silverlink are an amazingly polite, well ordered bunch. Even when you're sitting in their lap.
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