most by train, the rest by rain...

quick research online indicates that the London Underground handles around three and a half million passenger journeys every weekday. most of these people seemed to be at Victoria station this evening, standing in the covered main square trying to work out where the hell they had to be to catch their trains. it had the air of a place that's usually quite ordered and sane most days, if insanely busy. today, on the other hand, it was raining - the first serious rain i've seen since we got here. an "incident" at Herne Hill had delayed the train i was to catch. most of the rest of the lines were sporting delays and in a place where even the overlands come every 10-20 minutes at peak a 15 minute delay seems to cause madness, overcrowding and delays far greater than the root of the matter would suggest.

so it was somewhat eery getting to Victoria to find this in front of me. i had no idea where i needed to be, so i joined the crowd with the Gotye remix album playing in my right ear while my left listened for announcements and my eyes scanned the boards until i found the station i was headed to, and thereby the line i needed to catch. all good and sorted, now which platfor... oh... it doesn't say. hmm. watching the minutes ticking away, and getting sick of being pushed and jostled as people's trains arrived and they dove for the gates and eventually i saw the number 3 flick up on the appropriate line and i screamed off to find it.

3.5 million passenger journeys which would indicate, with appropriate averaging, 1.75 million people using the tubes. factor in buses and overlands and you have a scarily effective public transport system that can comfortably move the population of Melbourne in a day without getting particularly upset about it. throw in the statistic that at any given time somewhere there's a blockage on a tube, or some "incident" on the overland and you realise how amazingly robust the system is.

the ride in this morning took about 20-25 minutes, after a 12 minute walk and a few more standing on the platform trying not to look like a tourist. i'd have gotten to my job agency three quarters of an hour earlier if i hadn't been walking past Buckingham Palace just in time to see the Changing of the Guard and when it happens to be going on when you're passing... well, i figured i'd be a mug not to stop and watch.

i'm making progress on my job hunt. momentum, we'll call it. i was exhausted when i got there, and by the time i left somewhere past 5:30 i just wanted to be somewhere i could take my boots off. maintaining an enthusiastic phone voice is tiring. it's worse when you're wrecked to start with. tomorrow i plan on lying around the lovely house in Beckenham reading my book, watching movies on my laptop and pretending i'm on holiday.

still, getting out i lost all sense of direction and couldn't remember the way to Trafalgar Square (i had planned on saving myself a couple of stations on the tube by walking) so i figured sod it and hopped on the tube. a change at Embankment took me to Victoria and the literally hundreds of people in the atrium which looked like it could have hosted some of the concerts i've been to. eventually i was standing on the packed overland heading south reading one of the free tabloid newspapers that are given out everywhere i look while it dawdled on at half-speed on account of the wet tracks and after fuck-knows how long i was disgorged with a couple of hundred other people out into rainy Beckenham Junction.

so i'm walking the 12 minutes back to the house getting wet and loving it. i remembered by the first corner that i was wearing a hoodie so my hat went forwards for the first time in years , the hood went up and i was another bum with a baseball cap on under a hoodie with earphones in, dressed in black, walking down a rainy London street (and before you argue my geography, i'm INSIDE the M25 and fuck you). i was chastised when i got in for not calling from the train station, but what the hell? walking in the rain with Gotye playing was actually very pleasant, especially with the hood up and brim of my cap forward keeping the rain out of my face.

so i finally got to experience London's famous rain. i'm not complaining. the funniest moment had to be thinking to myself oh, this is good... we need the rai... wait a minute! i'm so used to looking at any rain as a blessing which may, if we're lucky, fall into the dams that it was my instant thought here.

right now i'm just looking forward to my first designated rest-day in nearly 4 weeks. i'll probably wind up doing SOMETHING, but at least i'm not planning to and for the time being that's the important thing...