Remembering My Commute

We've all been furloughed or WFH for months now, but as a friend suggested he missed "the way things were", I felt compelled to punch him through his rose-tint glasses.

6am Ugh, get up. Instantly regrettable decision.

6:20 leave house for the station with canister dribbling coffee down my cold, dead hand.

6:35 carriages pull in, boom, jump aboard. I play South West Trains lottery. Am I going to get a seat for the hour’s journey? If I do, is the WiFi working? Will the train be cancelled today? Any weirdos? It’s a solid no on all fronts.

6:37 resign myself to sitting on the floor by the toilet. Funny. People scoff at the thought of a grown man sitting on his arse by a public bog. But firstly, there's no poo vapour because it’s “out of order” (already!? Someone must’ve really given it a hard time if their bowel movements rendered it fucked by half-6) and secondly, it’s clean AF. In reality, parking next to this shit-funnel is optimal seating. The smell of bleach permeates a musky air normally dominated by un-showered 57 year-old men. Each one trapped in an awkward no man’s land. Between “I’m very hot and I should take off my blazer” and “I don’t want people to see my sweat lakes”.

7:30 arrive at Waterloo. Powerlessly I am drawn to Pret. I need more caffeine. Some city workers analogise themselves like “I’m a bloody runaway train, Aid!” or “I'm a Combine-Harvester eating up deals! Nom nom nom!”.  I’m a knackered Father and Front End Developer. Analogically, more like a clapped out 2L Ford. At every possible juncture, I need refilling with fuel. 

7:35 order my latte. 

7:40 The staff in Pret are so friendly you could argue “consent”. 

8:10 at my desk, waiting for Junior Developer, busying myself with bits I hadn't finished on Friday. When she arrives, we work, we chat, we refill coffees (again). I sometimes say I’m like a little Nespresso machine myself, except instead of putting pods in that turn into coffee, you put coffee in me and I turn it into code, because I’m hilarious.

12pm Lunch, I order McDonalds. This isn't Trustpilot, but let's keep it honest: the staff are less friendly. They greet and serve me with the same eyebrows-up-and-ear-lean that *I* do when I open the door to a salesman. Listening, begrudgingly. I recognise this expression from many of my close friends and family, also.

12:07 There are no seats. In fact in order to “sit down and eat some food” I am relegated to the pigeon-shitted steps of Liverpool Street Station. A sad, 38 year-old man, on his arse, eating junk food, surrounded by poo; But at least the station wifi works. And no pigeons have yet broken the "poo steps" with their bowel movements. Perhaps Liverpool Street should advise South West Trains on this amazing, new indestructible toilet. It can really take a beating.

12:17 I finish my slovenly one-man banquet and look around for a bin. There are none in sight. What am I supposed to do? Throw my rubbish on the floor? I've always assumed (rightly or wrongly) that the absence of bins dates back to the IRA bombs of the 80s and 90s. But nowadays I wonder if it might *just* as easily be Outsource Sweepery or Crony Cleaning PLC or whoever is responsible for sweeping up the station - is a close, personal friend of Boris Johnson.

4pm leave the office

4:12pm still working from my phone(/laptop where there’s WiFi). Head to Waterloo. All the caffeine has burnt out, along with my goodwill. I am now tired and hungry. Fuck everyone and their ashamed ancestors.

4:17pm most of the men on trains at this time are... less than fresh. Myself included. But one of the few upsides of the London commute: there are a lot of beautiful women. Of course, none of them look at me. I wouldn't expect them to. I am but one of a thousand (statistically smelly) men on public transport who have appreciated their face that day. On the rare occasion a woman does meet my gaze, she immediately looks down and to the left. I could sell advertising space there. Two feet down, two feet across. Sandwich board with a Boots voucher. Successful promo. Boom, I'm a runaway train, Aid.

5pm I'm at Waterloo I have the option of (out-of-character) running for 'the fast train' (which is also 'the packed train') or waiting fifteen minutes for a slower but significantly less packed one. I opt for the slower. Partly because the shame of bad running outweighs the benefit of getting home early. But mostly because if I give myself twelve minutes to buy a beer in M&S, I can get a seat on the slow train on which to enjoy it.

5:17pm I am now one of 'those guys' who drinks alcohol on public transport. Don't get me wrong. Ordinarily I'm the first to judge people. If you get on a bus and twixt the little old lady with her shopping and the disabled man on crutches, school children and fed-up mothers, you pull out a can of Skoll? You deserve a look of bemusement. I'd be looking at your surroundings, then back at your face, like "this is your party venue? Really? This?". But in the context of City commuters it's near-universal acceptance. There are forty year-old PAs pulling out a plastic glass of rosé. There are UX Designers with Brewdog. Old boys with hip flasks. Recruiters with alco-pops. And me with my Beavertown.

All of us medicating our collective trauma.

6:10pm I'm leaving Aldershot Station, walking up the hill.

6:20pm I put my key in the door. It is now exactly twelve hours since I left this place.

6:50pm I've eaten my dinner and I have just enough time to read my son a story before I turn out his light.

8:30pm I am nodding off on the sofa, exhausted.

I will do this four further times this week.

From Monday to Friday, I'll see my son for a grand total of an hour and a quarter. And I'll pay £450 a month for the privilege.

In a weird way I miss it. The stress, the chaos, the pointless panic to "get to the office". Grabbing a sandwich. Buskers in the Underground. Beers in the street (another drinking venue that progresses from 'anti-social' in normal life to 'this is just what we do' for many commuters and our colleagues).

The Pandemic has a lot to answer for obvs. The collapse of a shit-tonne of industries, from hospitality to rail to comedy to airlines. There are long-term health issues. There's been an unforgivable explosion in shit podcasts. And errrr... well, it's obviously all a bit deathy. But it has clearly accelerated the work-from-home revolution - and the benefits that come with that. I was fortunate enough to move into a 90% remote role from November 2019 anyway. But Covid took my proof-of-concept and rolled it out everywhere. Not gonna lie: I was pretty pissed off. I felt like working from home, saving train money and seeing my family was 'my thing'. Now even GPs and Teachers are seeing their kids. It's disgusting.

And although I miss the hustle-and-bustle & separation of work/home environments to some extent - and I haven't been able to gig since the virus' lesser known symptom of "fucking Aid's comedy dreams" flared up - I have been able to watch my son become 'a little boy'.

So here I am, waiting for a vaccine. Yet honestly not wanting things to go back to how they were. Proud of my lockdown-honed vegetable-growing skills, yet nostalgic & jones'ing for a fucking Pret bloomer. Missing the chaos of commuterdom, yet £450-a-month better off.

If I reeeeeally start missing it, perhaps I could pay someone half that to punch me in the face five times-a-week?

- originally published on https://funk-27.co.uk/blog