LONDON AND BACK IN 12 HOURS

Towers of Power (using far too much energy)

On Tuesday, I had an early start for the annual London business trip and so, typically, I set out into the dark morning as the rain tippled down. I parked the car at the station and tried to dodge the raindrops as I went and bought my ticket, an expensive pastime when you want a weekday peak-time return and only buy one once in every blue moon. Still, after standing in the urine-soaked shelter, I caught a commuter train to town with all that it entails. I bid my farewells to the beloved as she continued on down the line without me, and waited for an hour and a half for my designated train (my fault - something to do with connections, car parking spaces and synchronising with other people’s schedules). So I went and bought a paper, despite all of the free papers that proliferate, as well as some water and some mints which caused the barcode reader no end of problems, and managed to eke out a “Pumpkin” coffee for half an hour, but really couldn’t stretch it out any longer. I stood for a while and watched trains and people come and go and thought many thoughts, the main one being that it wasn’t as cold on the platform as I thought it would be, but I imagine that few would have agreed with me on that...

And then I got on my designated train where one of m’colleagues was awaiting me, but not the other one who remained stuck in traffic somewhere… Later on, it transpired, they had dashed onto the station mere seconds too late to watch the train pulling away. This is a familiar experience as it has also happened to both of us on other years and seems to have become something of a company tradition. However, in the meantime, we wondered about whether there had been a “luck transfer” as I bored m’colleague to death for the journey down, 40 minutes ahead of the pursuing party. Soon (or perhaps not so soon for m’colleague...) we were hauling our sorry selves across the allegedly great metropolis. At least for once the TravelCard decided to work in the automatic ticket machines. One year it didn’t which was absolutely no fun at all. Commuters can be a surly bunch, especially if you delay them somehow. Still, incident free, we found our way to the Northern Line and had a journey with the additional extra of some begging from an Irishman who was “very sorry” (a lot) for taking up our time as the entire carriage managed to look slightly embarrassed but, thankfully for us, he had picked his moment in the spotlight to coincide with the one when we reached our stop, which connected us to the DLR and, against advice, I decided that we should pounce on the first train that happened to be present, only to swap it almost immediately at “Shadwell”… The voice of an old comic character rattling around in my memories made that place name inevitably sound slightly Welsh as I said it out loud...

A short time later, we arrived at the enormous ExCel exhibition centre, which is always huger than it feels it ought to be, and spent a few moments waiting for our passes to be printed after our overnight emails were waved in the general direction of the helpful assistants. Rather inevitably, mine seemed to cause the barcode reader no end of problems… Visited “our” stand, or rather the display of our company’s products, where a year of work can suddenly look like not very much at all if you’re not feeling resilient.  Naturally, everyone else’s work looks far more impressive than your own, and, despite what you initially think, and what everyone else might say, as ever, my own artwork appears far more disappointing to me. Then some of our contacts in the printing industry turned up to have a bit of a schmooze… and the fallout of recent events in faraway companies was the hot topic of debate: Faces lost, faces saved; the usual gossip and shock; news and discussion, and various people wondered whether a huge mistake had been made, this time, luckily by someone else, as one or two of my own seemed suddenly very visible. Happily we were all distracted from those by rather impressive one-armed bandits with “retro” styling which made for quite the diversion...

We traipsed around the stands but our orbits inevitably returned us to our “base” time and again like a tired comet, with each visit involving discussions about work, of course. My depression crept back into my soul when I realised what else is being achieved by younger, brighter minds, and I found that I had time on my hands to consider the very few familiar beans that sit in my “abilities” box. I think my questions and suggestions sometimes annoyed m’colleagues more than they inspired them, and my first meetings with one or two people who I hadn’t met before didn’t find me feeling all that impressive. Then we went off and sought out food and dithered over the choices on offer before inevitably returning to the usual outlet of previous years, although I eventually declared my meal to be somewhat “disappointing” which led to us discussing undercooked bacon. Afterwards we went back to the exhibition for more chat, more tours of the stands and I started to get twitchy about hurtling back across town in the rush hour and meeting that train - John Cleese in “Clockwise” was positively relaxed in comparison to me - but, in the end, and almost soon enough for my liking we found ourselves waiting - far too early of course (my fault) - for the DLR back to Tower Station. Naturally, one of our tickets turned out to be missing, but it all got sorted and, thankfully the train itself was not too busy, and it did turn up within five minutes of us parking ourselves upon the platform...

Soon we were once more passing by the towers of power, the cliffs of wealth, the caverns of cash. Those huge monoliths of glass and concrete standing there with all of their lights on, burning our money away again. We passed by the former Millennium Dome. It’s transformed into a concert venue now, I had confirmed to me as I spotted a billboard advertising “Paul McCartney On the Run”. “Perhaps more of a shuffle these days…” I waggishly suggested, but then it turns out that we’ve missed it anyway, because the concert was last December… “As we all pitched in to build the thing”, we mused, “why don’t we all qualify for at least one free ticket….?” but no-one was listening. It would cost you a fortune to use it though, far too far to travel for a freebie. We decided to switch trains for one that went to Bank station. That one, however, was suddenly unpleasantly heaving with commuters, but after another stop, then it equally suddenly wasn’t. “Do you think they know something we don’t?” we wondered...

At Bank itself, however, we were to be found sullenly trudging with the masses like the workers in “Metropolis” and I was reminded of that quote about the human race being ultimately led to its doom by “Civilization”. As we headed for the “NORTHERN Line”, an old sketch about northern playwrights popped into my mind: “MY Nooooorth!” but it wasn’t all that funny, I imagine, especially as minutes later I was being bent almost double by being crammed into a tube train with the other long-suffering hundreds and the muttered chat (which was probably very irritating for anyone else listening) turned to, of all things, Wembley Stadium: “So, we knocked down a football ground and built another football ground… No wonder we haven’t got any money left in this country...” Soon, but hardly soon enough for everyone else around me I’m sure, we were mercifully released from our tubular cage into the welcoming arms of Euston Station with the other thousands of travellers, and found ourselves accidentally in the commuter “fast lane” on the escalator so we had to start climbing. Animated posters for shows I probably will never see taunted us as we rose back towards the air, or rather the place where the maelstrom of people were waiting on the concourse and which found us us dividing up to head for toilets or magazine shops or burger outlets, and surprisingly the people going to each are not those you might think would be…

Far, far too late I am reminded of the golden rule of burger meals: “Make sure you have a third hand to hold the drink” otherwise the food will explode in the bag. Mine, naturally, explodes in the bag, and I wished that I’d bought a tuna sandwich instead. At the same time I ran into an old friend from the old job days, the one person I could be absolutely certain from conversations of old, would frown upon such food choices, but there you go. That’s fate’s timing for you. I never usually just run into people I know, but on a day when the whole industry is in town, maybe it’s less unlikely than I would expect. Still, I like to think it was a happy reunion…

Minutes later, but still far too many minutes than seemed strictly necessary to my fellow travellers, we were on the train home and I was boring m’other colleague to death for the full extent of the journey with tales of astronauts, and audiobooks, and the range of brutality in the various management styles I’ve witnessed. In no time at all, at least that is how it seemed to me, I can’t really imagine m’colleague would necessarily agree, I reached my interim destination and was just ringing the beloved to come and meet me when the train we could have been on pulled out of the station heading towards our home without us. Ten minutes later, we met up and had to wait for an hour for the next one, which we spent doing crosswords and trying to block out the sounds of all of the other potential passengers who spent their own waiting time screaming into their mobile phones. Then the local football match finished and the spectators started to fill up the platform, and later on the train too. Happily, as we reached our destination, the car was still waiting for us, despite being all alone in the car park, and shortly after that we were home with the milk still sitting on the doorstep advertising to the world of our absence on our adventures, but the house seemed secure despite that and, after a quick check on the internet it was time for some much needed sleeeeeeeep….