Escape from Kent

Trains from Kent are generally uncertain just how far they want to get into London. Some give up at London Bridge. That’s plenty far enough, they say, all change, I am not going any further. It’s dirty. Some bravely forge on and into London Cannon Street. They’ve crossed the mighty Thames and dirtied their wheels on the grim northern shore, dispensing commuters right into the maw of the Bank of England, and then sucking them each evening back to Tunbridge Wells.

Others take a braver turn, straining through the strangled knot of train lives over Borough Market as though they’re been passed by a man with an aversion to dietary fibre. Eventually, they reach Waterloo East or Charing Cross, the latter being the very heart of London, apparently.

Charing Cross, the heart of London, and better known as 'Angry Chas'.

There are two parts of Kent. The close bit which includes places like Sevenoaks which are filled with Pizza Express-fed commuters and the far bit that takes weeks to get to and has its own timezone. Something happens to time and space midway across Kent, and the distance between London Bridge and – for instance – Margate is thereafter measured in hours rather than miles. Margate is so far away it can be safely used as a dump illegal immigrants and spent nuclear waste. It’s quite possible that the Isle of Thanet has floated off to become a province of Belgium and no one recently checked Google Earth.

Why it takes so long to get to bits of Kent

There is a high-speed train line through Kent. Helpfully, it goes from St Pancras, and avoids any accusations of utility by not going anywhere useful in Kent other than France. Ebbsfleet anyone? Even people in Ebbsfleet don’t know where it is. They're lost.

Surviving Waterloo

Napoleon did it, so can you. So the saying ought to go.

Waterloo. Home of the commuter-complainers. These people come from Surrey and Hampshire, lands of green ink-gushing pens and county-sized Waitroses. The result is a green tsunami of complaint about the little things that other Londoners take for granted – like your train turning up on the correct day.

Trains approaching Waterloo appear to have been cleaned in the last decade. They have guards so they may indeed have travelled here from the last decade. It’s oddly civilised being able to sit on a seat without sticking to it in the exudate of someone who might have died and decomposed, or at least was suffering the advanced stages of bath-shyness. Waterloo is, in fact, so civilised that you can’t go there without expecting something really, really bad to happen in karmic recompense. The feeling of imminent doom flaps over you like a giant incontinent pigeon.

This is probably why the commuters who descend on Waterloo feel the need to complain.

Surviving Writing a Blog

Is apparently tougher than it seems.