Tube Strike

At 9 tonight a tube strike will start. Pretty much every time there is a tube strike I debate the options - to go into work at peak time and fight my way through the sweaty mass on and off trains and buses till I get to the office, sweaty, traumatised and so stressed out I can barely think. Or, to leave it an hour or two, then head up to the station, and experience the same journey, only with around a third fewer commuters, the net difference being marginal - it's just a few less fights to get a piece of standing room with access to breathable air. Or, run through the worst possible commuter scenarios, then get to the station to find that the stalwart employees who work on the Northern line have nearly all turned out and, bar a few closed stations, and trains running every 5 minutes instead of every 3, the service is actually almost normal as long as I don't mind getting out two stops before my usual one, as my usual stop is shut, and walking an extra 15 minutes, which of course I don't, I don't mind at all - I am in fact so relieved to get on to a train on which I can sit, and am so grateful to the train driver for not striking, that I arrive in a state of smug euphoria. Or, the fourth and final option, the one I have adopted increasingly over the years, which is to mull over the first three options, and then conclude that given the pace of modern technology, I could save myself a lot of worry, stress and hyper-preparation (extra sturdy shoes/trainers, breakfast and lunch in a backpack, change of clothes if I get too sweaty commuting in, calming music, phone numbers for all the local cab companies in case I get desperate, a wad of cash to pay grasping minicab drivers who will be preying on exhausted commuters out of alternative options) and Work At Home. I take Work At Home really seriously. I am dead conscientious. I do not paint my toenails or take extra long baths or go out shopping in the morning, deluding myself that a Day Working At Home is equivalent to three days in the office.  I do, however, adopt a different rhythm. Away from multiple ad hoc requests, papers to sign off etc, reading through unread email and digesting properly long thinkpieces and articles becomes a treasured indulgence, only doable when Working At Home. And as this is pretty intense activity - hunched over the kitchen table, work mobile phone switched off, metaphorical wet towel wrapped round the head - this activity needs to be broken up. By cooking and baking. My work at home tomorrow will comprise digesting massive tomes and lots of complicated diagrams. In between I will prove and punch olive bread dough. Put together the multiple layers of a sumptuous fish pie. Create a minestrone soup.  Bake more bread. My papers will go back to work with traces of flour on them.  But my kids will come home from school out of the relentless rain and cold wind to the "Aaah, Bisto..." smell of warm bread and cookies. I will be in a state of zen, propped up by cushions, reciting  statistics easily absorbed through the fug of soup. My thumbs will have cramp from the rapid emailing of instructions on the corporate Blackberry.  In between baking and reading I will have hula hooped a million times (the cool alternative to stretching my legs, perfect activity for rubbish Uk weather) or hopped on and off the trampoline, checking the status of my budding Spring bulbs en route.  I will have updated my To Do list and this time it will be legible, unlike the scrawls I leave on multiple yellow post it notes at the desk in my office.  It will even be prioritised, with alphabetised headings (and will stay that way for no longer than 24 hours).  Yup. I loathe tube strikes, I feel deeply resentful towards strikers, I am hugely irritated at the waste of a day's travel paid for in advance on my not at all cheap annual Gold Card season ticket. But hey.  As long as a travel meltdown is in the offing, I may as well make a virtue of it.