On my first trip to London I had a lift to the station. It was only fifteen minutes, then I stayed on the platform waiting for the train. There was a train every fifteen minutes and after about ten minutes later one. The travel time was an hour so I sat down to read some tests. When the train was coming to London was filled to the presenter said that the train was full and now will not stop until they reached London.
I have since discovered that this is the normal routine, yet was encouraged to hear what I thought was a sensible decision being taken. The train was full but not uncomfortable in the same way that a full train is a tube. After another ten minutes, the announcer came back to tell us that the train was broken and instead of delivering our election season in London, now leave us outside where we should make our own way into town in the tube. It took a while, and a conversation with the man next to me, to decipher what the change meant to me in terms of connections, etc, but gave an upbeat 45-minute buffer for my talk, I gathered that could face the additional delay. Having settled my own mind I looked to my companions and I realized that when the announcement was made had been no reaction from the other passengers. There was no sign of indignation, no sigh of resignation and not to heaven cast eyes of despair.
