Tube Strike encounters

I worked at home on the first day of the tube strike. But it was a 48 hour strike and even the most diligent of homeworkers knows that after a very short while the lack of face to face interaction can seriously undermine your marketability. The time it takes for your colleagues to conclude that you have died a death and can safely be replaced is alarmingly short. Anyway, for whatever reason, mostly stemming from guilt if I am really honest, I decide I need to make a heroic effort to get into the office where I work on Tube Strike Day Two. I find to my initial pleasure and surprise, that the line on which I usually travel to central London, the Northern line, generally thought of, not without some reasonable justification, as the most godawful tube line in the history of underground travel, is in fact the best performer in these days of adversity. In fact it is the only one running trains at anything even remotely within the ball park of a normal timetable. So I hop on the first one, which is not my train, but I am a seasoned commuter and those who fall in that category know damn well that when travel goes belly up you take the first train that makes an appearance and stake your chances. So I do this, and to my consternation  I find that although the Northern line trains are running surprisingly well, the Northern line stations are not. Most of the ones in Central London on the branch I need, are in fact closed. Including every tube station within a 2 mile radius of my office. So, sighing, I hop off at the nearest one, which is about a half hour walk away, I take one look at the gridlocked roads and the massive queues of feral commuters at bus stops, and decide, along with, by the looks of it, a few million other people, to take to the streets and hoof my way to the office. It is an interesting exercise in psychology, watching how people get about if you take away their central artery ie the Tube. On the face of it, if breakfast TV is to be believed, we are all hardened and flexible at the same time - we have resilience borne of years of tube strikes which as we all know have no discernible impact on anyone except the poor buggers like me who pay the equivalent of several mortgages for the privilege of using it - and therefore we also know our way around sufficiently to deploy innovative, alternative routes. We walk, cycle, or zig zag across London on buses or even tuk tuks. Taxis move desultorily around the main stations but they have few takers. We are not that stupid - we have already paid once for a service that is not running, so it is hardly likely we will pay again for the privilege of circumventing it. But what the television cameras ignore, is the psychological anarchy. Half the population comes under the heading of VERY CROSS. These people think, for whatever reason, that their presence at the office is indispensable.  This may be for a very good reason, not least that they are not permanent staff but paid by the day or the hour and if they don't show up, they don't get paid. So I am not knocking the motivation. But the behaviour can be a little scarey. These are the people who, if they walk, will ignore every red pedestrian light, hop between speeding buses, jump in front of bicycles, run into the path of several cars, tread on toes or shove you into the road to get to their destination. I am not one of these people, who freak me out completely. Very important not to get caught in a crowd of VERY CROSS commuters. I take to the back streets, mostly along with people who fall under the second heading of RESIGNED. These people have worked out that no job is worth getting yourself killed for; that, if it means less hours in the office, you will find a way to make those hours up (working Mums often fall into this category, spending most of their lives making up lost hours one way or the other); and consequently these people do not just move more slowly an considerately, they also manage to summon a smile. These are also the people who stop half way for a coffee - well why not? No point in arriving looking like the total mess that the tube strike has reduced you to. I hop into a Nero, which I love because I am a slave to their Buy 20 Coffees Get One Free offer, and because they make a mean  latte, even if it does cost the earth - and I order a skinny latte. A guy behind me orders the same. I steal a look. He looks back at me. He does not look like the type of guy who favours a skinny anything. He and I wait at the end of the barista station to pick up our drink. He asks me where I have come from. I describe my 5 mile walk. We laugh quite a bit about it. Then we are affectionately abusive to rail unions, the tube, Boris Johnson, the Tories and the opposition. I pick up my drink to go. He then invites me to stay and drink our lattes together on the famed Nero sofa (there is only ever one in every Nero, and I have NEVER managed to plonk my rear in one - it is always, always occupied. Sometimes I wonder if commuters sleep there). I realise, with an undignified blush, that what I had taken for camaraderie, is in fact an amorous approach. I am being Chatted Up. OMG. Can he not see that my black eyeliner has wept all the way down to my cheeks? That my hair could safely house several birds nests? and that my five mile walk has generously distributed rainy mud all the way to the top of my thighs? None of this seems to bother him. But I am married, very happily so, so I smile and say no, I need to continue my epic trek, and I leave. But not without an arch nod to the sort of Blitz spirit that is no doubt behind the germ of multiple Tube Strike Romances.