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.