It had to happen at some point. This evening while travelling home I was pickpocketed on the London Underground. I didn’t realise until I got off the train at Maidenhead - explained further on - so didn’t have a chance to report it to the transport police.
Luckily all they got was my Oyster card, and the swipe card for the building at work. The Oyster card is now cancelled, and a new one is on the way. It doesn’t stop me being mightily pissed off.
I know who did it too - an old man who got on the underground train at Kings Cross and bumped into me again and again. It didn’t help that the circle line was packed this evening either - my arms were stuck in the air holding railings to avoid leaning all over people (not that some people seem to care about doing just that) - with no room to lower them at all.
Thankfully I had the foresight to slide my messenger bag round to the front of me before getting on the train.
I don’t really care about the minor things I had stolen, but what does this say to people who come to visit London? “Welcome to London - make sure you’ve got nothing worth stealing in your pockets, because it really hasn’t progressed much further than Oliver Twist”.
I should have known the planets were aligning for something spectacular against me at lunchtime. I went out to get something for lunch, and was confronted with a beggar praying on anybody getting money from the cash machines - he told me he slept in a shed last night. I very nearly told him that I had just adopted three children from the care system and didn’t plan on adding a fourth, but thought better of it.
On about the kids, this evening I am the sole parent once more while W babysits for our friends around the corner. This very nearly went up the wall too - half way home something went wrong among the various trains and the train I was on started going very slowly. Allied with the penalities imposed by the government on late running trains, you get this stupid compounding effect - where the train operator will make one train suffer all the pain to make sure all the rest arrive on time… once you start to run late, you inevitably become very late. So late in fact that your connecting train gets cancelled.
I therefore found myself jumping off at an earlier station and getting a taxi home. Add to this our eldest going to a friend’s house for dinner, and needing to be collected by Mum - who could not leave the others on their own - and you can see the havoc that me working in London is causing at home.
If many more days go the way of today, I’m seriously going to consider writing on the web for a living. From home.
I have no clue what I’m going to find to eat this evening.