*Clench*

People on the tube irritate me so much. Trains irritate me so much!

I'll admit there's a sweet nostalgia in the cross-London dash. It reminds me of sixth form when Phil and I would regularly go on our barrier-jumping way (often because we could rather than anything ticket-related) with suitcases full of food from our parents on the other side of the city - who apparently, having fairly well deserted us and left us to our own devices to do A-levels were more willing to give us something tangible than the money to buy it ourselves. Slightly ironic seeing as neither of us did drugs, he didn't drink and I barely did; and had we had the money to ourselves it would have gone a dang sight further!

But nostalgia aside, people on the tube really get under my skin. People who get on to the Circle Line at Paddington (for those not in the know, even in non-rush hour this means the train will get very full having been previously empty) and decide that - due to politeness or fear or whatever other excuse - that they will refuse to sit in adjacent seats to those already seated. Now this seems quite reasonable until you realise that:

* Those people who get onto the train first are those who are relatively mobile
* Those people who get on later are more likely to be those with big bags who actually want to sit down.
* That by leaving the only available seats as those between lots of people it means the only way to get a seat is to fight through them and annoy them all immensely.

What possibly annoys me slightly more is that people will then stand in the gaps between those seats and still not sit in them - both "wasting" seats as it were, and making anyone who's not feeling incredibly rude unable to get to the empty seat and sit in it.

I also get irritated at young teenagers, and young trying-to-look-pathetic women, who want the world to know that they are just unable to stay upright on a tube. It's not hard honey, bend your knees. Quite soon after I started making a weekly or biweekly trip across the capital I learned the art of staying upright, not only without looking like an idiot, but without having anything to hold onto at all. Unless the train brakes hard bending your knees and swaying is enough to keep your centre of balance - and if he does brake hard then a whole bunch of other people will go flying far worse because they're all so relaxed thinking that one hand on a rail is enough to keep them upright.

As for trains, it annoys me that you can run for a train only to find that 16 carriages have come in, but only 8 are leaving - i.e. that you need to run (still with the huge huge bag) to the other end of the platform. Thankfully this time, I made it. Then you find that the train is rammed - until that is you've fought your way through the first 3 carriages of rammed-ness only to find that after that the train is quite empty. Seriously, why would anyone who hasn't just run for the train not just move up the train to begin with!? Madness

Enough ranting for now...