Having spent most of yesterday waiting in King's Cross station for some semblance of information as to when a train was going to travel North, I was struck by how little anybody seemed to care about the cold, the lack of anything to sit on or even how much of a wasted afternoon hundreds of people were having. What seemed to be the most irksome aspect of the experience was generally agreed to be the lack of information: the horrible waiting without knowing when it would end, certain only that when it did, there would be some sort of mad priority scramble where the winners got to be packed like erect sardines for the next 2 hours sweating & exchanging viruses, while the losers waited on the concourse for the next melee to take place.
Deep down, we were all aware that the next service wasn't going to sneak off without any of us noticing, but information, any kind of information, would've given us the illusion of control without having any effect at all on how long we were going to be stuck there. Is too much to ask that "damage to overhead lines at Huntington" had been accompanied by some sort of estimated repair time, even one possibly met ahead of schedule? This would not only have made those inconvenienced by the delays feel a little better, but the subsequent dispersal of the expectant throng (for what turned out to be 5 hours) would have made the station far less crowded, and therefore more comfortable for the non-East Coast Main Line travellers.
Or is that just madness on my part?
With a reverential nod to 1935's "A Night at the Opera"
Groucho: It's all right. That's, that's in every contract. That's, that's what they call a sanity clause.
Chico: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You can't fool me. There ain't no Sanity Clause!
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
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