Random Discourse

Yesterday something happened on my way home from work that I had never been a part of before: strangers spoke to each other on the train. Like, not in a 'can you move down' or 'that's my foot' sort of way. It was bizarre. Well, the whole commute was bizarre, so let's rewind.

There was a Chelsea home game last night, which I'd been bracing for all week and have been planning my weekly gym journeys around (no gym when Chelsea plays at home). I was a little worried when I walked past the gates at Notting Hill station to see that there were 'severe delays' on the district and circle lines and the announcer was advising people to seek alternate routes, when I reached the stairs down to the platform people were coming back towards me despite no train having just arrived. I was like, oh dear, maybe I should turn around and hop on the bus for my alternate journey which is slower than walking, but first I went to see if any trains were coming. A Wimbledon train was coming in two minutes. I was like, severe delays my, um, rear.

With the Chelsea game situation and the lack of future promised circle line trains, the whole world and their cousin were trying to get on this train. Luckily I've adapted my sneaky getting on trains skills and managed to find a nice located where my book was wedged into someone's back and my elbow (as my arm was grasping onto an overhead pole) only lightly poked someone in the back of the head. At this point it might be worth clarifying the whole game situation. I've mentioned before that in addition to just playing games to try and win the league, the football teams play in other tournaments, some involving all levels of UK teams and some involving European teams. This week we have apparently reached the quarter-finals or thereabouts of one of the big tournaments involving European clubs, as on Tuesday night both Manchester United and Arsenal (who play in north London) were playing big games, and Chelsea was playing some sort of Greek team. So when I say the entire world was on the train, I really just mean all Greek men between ages 20 and 40. There was minimal English being spoken on the train (although to be fair this is often the case).

At Earl's Court things went from bad to worse. Well, I fared okay as I managed to nab a seat, but given the delays on the rest of the line, there seemingly weren't that many Wimbledon trains, so after the three people got off the train destined for other destinations, 300 climbed on. A lady near me told some Spanish tourists that this train was indeed not going to Piccadilly Circus and they needed to get off, but they literally couldn't get out the doors (but that's how I got a seat), so were stuck until we got to West Brompton. At Fulham, not only did literally 95% of the people get off, but the platform there immediately was absolutely rammed and the air was filled with all those Greek men singing in unison, what I could only assume to be some sort of team song. Like, I don't know where the actual Chelsea fans were this singing and Greekness was so omniscient. Oh, and did I mention that the game didn't start for over two hours?

When the doors closed and we pulled away, everyone now sitting and over half the seats empty (which made me wonder where the rest of the commuters were!), there was an audible sigh of relief from those that had survived the onslaught. Myself included. This unifying sigh then brought forth the use of actual voices as we uniformed female types tried to make sense of it all, unsuccessfully I might add. The think the oddness of the situation wasn't really apparent until this point, as you know something quite major had to be afoot to get people to talk to people like that, instead of just burying their heads in their newspapers/headphones/books/their own little word as is the usual case. It was also not until this point that I realized that I had never participated in stranger banter on the tube before, despite having ridden it a consider number of times. Now that this door has been opened, do I foresee chatting with strangers anytime soon? Of course not, although Chelsea won so that means they're still in the tournament so another game may be looming on the horizon...