LET THE TRAIN ...leave without you.

Just returned from seeing a show in town, although we didn't get to see it coz the trains were delayed and cancelled as the notice boards noted, due to someone being hit by a train in Elmbridge, or between Elmbridge and Clapham Junction.    These things happen.   I remember when I commuted from Essex they happened at least once a month. There would be hour long delays while guards would apologise profusely for not knowing what was going on and apologise for having to apologise and they would understand how this may have (never must because there's a legal issue I'm sure with saying 'we have screwed up your day, not we may have screwed up your day), just may have caused us inconvenience. It made us late for work, more tired than we needed to be, more stressed, more anxious.  One lost the will to live not just the will to get up in the morning and make way to a job one invariably hated.    There were those who could read and get into a book and then click in and out of the delays treating it as two, three or even four more chapters they could read through. One woman I knew completed the book. Then she got as pissed off as the rest of us.  Of course now you have iPhones, iPads, mini iPads to keep you amused unless you've forgotten to charge it.  

At Clapham Junction the apologetic guard urged people to get off and take the Victoria Line to Waterloo and Vauxhall.     Point is the Victoria Line doesn't' stop at Clapham Junction, something I had forgotten and 100s of others didn't know either.   We were left stranded. The train went off and we decided having been given options to either get on a bus - no number given - or a train to Shepherds Bush or one via Willesden Junction, I'm not sure.   Neither was anyone else sure including the train guards we asked.  We didn't swear, we didn't shout because it wasn't their fault.   We just wanted them to stop apologising and tell us the options.  They couldn't. They didn't.     Shit happens.  People get hit by trains.     But tonight SW Trains just made a drama out of a crisis. Their service and the staff we encountered were misinformed - so they misinformed their customers. The service was utter crap.