Do Not:
Stand in front of the barrier looking for your ticket in your handbag. I will walk into you, possibly hurt you, and not care.
Walk through the barrier, and then stop so everyone else walks into you (including me; I may hurt you, and I will not care).
Walk without looking. If you do, I will 'accidentally' hit you with my handbag which, last time I looked, contained a makeup bag, a big, old iPod, a novel, a hardback notebook, 3 pens, a large set of keys, a wallet full of 30 year old receipts, a car key, 5 lip balms, 3 half-eaten packets of Extra chewing-gum, one packet of Smints, £34 in loose change, and a mobile phone. It is therefore Heavy, and will Hurt.
Sit on your fat arse eating McDonald's when there are two very old ladies who need a seat, otherwise they will die and it will be your fault.
Get on the tube with two empty cardboard boxes that you place in front of you, therefore blocking the small amount of space between the seats. Furthermore, do not listen to some fucking hippy shit on your iPod and then sing along, tapping your Cornish Pasty shoes along to the folky rhythm. But most of all, do not do it when I am near you with a camera phone. Listen to piss-poor dance music (probably made by you at home on your 20ft Powerbook, the capacity of which you barely understand), at top volume on your B&O headphones, the quality of which is so fine that we can hear every nuance of your bizarre sub-Midfield Generals rip-off
Eat food with your mouth open.
Have a REALLY LOUD 'amusing' conversation with Charlotte, held solely to attract attention. I know you are trying to attract attention because every time you laugh, you look around the carriage.
Change carriages while the train is moving, slamming the door loudly.
Fall asleep in a nylon tracksuit with a packet of Dulcolax in your hand when I am sitting opposite you with a camera phone. Get in my carriage and play a guitar and sing. I will kill you.
Pick up your child and walk around with some white heather and mutter at me. I won't do it. Go away.
Get on the tube if you smell of wee and have a hole in your trousers through which your cock protrudes. These days, I choose the cocks I look at wisely and well, and yours is not one of them.
Walk onto the platform and stand still at the entrance with your other Swedish friends and your suitcases.
Ask me if I know where the Piccalilli Line is. Piccalilli is a kind of weird yellow relish, not a tube line.
Talk about me in French. I was once bilingual. I will understand you, raise my head as you start talking about my shoes, and fix you with a cold blue gaze. Then and only then might you realise that some English people speak more than one language (not many, admittedly, but you get my point), and fall in to an embarrassed silence.
Pay for a £3 tube fare in 5p coins on the big machine that takes credit cards and that everyone wants. Use one of the small ones, made for people like you.
Try and sell me your one-day Travelcard.
Use your mobile phone. Admittedly only possible on a few Tube lines, as not all of them are Underground, but - just don't. Please.
Play a tambourine.
Do a saxophone solo to 'Baker Street' and expect anyone to give you any money, ever.
Stand two abreast on the escalator.
Open your paper in my face.
Read my book/paper/letter over my shoulder.
Get on the tube in the summer if you are not clean.
Touch me. In any way. Even if I am dying.
Kiss in a way that shows the world your tongue revolving like doner kebab meat on a stick.
Do:
Use the bus, walk, cycle, get a taxi, drive, get a boat down the Thames or fly with your own arms.
Use the tube if you have an IQ of over 150.
Get an Oyster card.
Work from home.
Not work from home.
12 comments:
Sorry.
I will be reading over your shoulder. I know it's bad, and I hate doing it, and I hate having it done to me, but I can't help it.
If it's any consolation, I don't think I smell of wee.
I just got an Oyster card. Even though I live in Norfolk. And I have had enough of the Tube and will use the bus (or one of your useful alternatives) in future.
How DARE you!
It was the person beside me who smelled of wee.
Another...if this is your first time visiting London from the U.S. do not ask "Is this the down elevator" when taking the elevator to the underground from street level. I did this when I was a teenager and am still ashamed of such stupidity. Duh it is the underground not the aboveground!
I can't tell you how much I want to kick those cardboard boxes. Inconsiderate people really annoy the piss out me these days. Great post. : )
Z, eminently sensible, but you are of course clever enough to use the tube without being an idiot, so buses may not be necessary.
PBC - Did you have your cock out? Oh. Right.
Well, I ride the tube when it is very busy, and I get out at Victoria, so that is hellish. I can add: Don't stand with your back leaning against the pole as the carriage fills up, making it so no one else can hold on at all, but you have staked out a large space in which to read your copy of The Sun. Don't stand anywhere in the middle of the carriage if you are not prepared to move up, while people near the doors are practically kissing - or gagging - and gasping for vital air.
The other day I listened to two guys having a long, long conversation about their exploits with (of) (possibly imaginary, in any case) women that would have sounded out-of-date fifty years ago. But in a way that was a bonus, you don't often get to hear anything like that.
Don't, however, sit on either side of a passenger and talk around them as if they weren't there.
I think you really covered everything: and the suitcases! Dear God.
The box thing, though very inconsiderate, is partly the fault of the curse of the modern box. Whereas a few years back boxes were lovely taped together things that would fold flat for easy storage (and transportation on underground systems) these days they're mostly the kind of preglued, virtually unreusable things (with built in plastic bits to make recycling a pain) that Amazon send. Bah. Progress takes us backwards.
I see she has custody of Viking Direct Boxes - they come equipped with "tamper evident openings"
Which menas the box lid has to practically destroyed before you can get to the contents.
Not to mention the strength of the shrink-wrap they use to secure your stuff to the bottom of the box.
Ms B - splendid additions, for which I thank you. V. good point re. the pole in the middle. The Jubilee Line is the worst by far as full of knobs with TwatBerries desperately sending emails to their wives not, as they would like us to think, Credit Suisse First Boston, asking them to do something dangerous with some dollars.
Dave and Philip. You are two of my most favourite and loyal readers and Commentors, and yet I wonder: what does it say of me that I love you both so, and yet you both talk of empty cardboard boxes with such passion and knowledge?
We talk of cardboard boxes, so you dont have to.
I remain, Madam, your loyal Cardboard Co-correspondent
Nigh on ten years on the frontline of the human/box interface (the goods-in department of a bookshop, finally got out 5 years ago) and also a spell flatsharing with a packaging technologist - you learn a bit about boxes.
Transworld used to have nice boxes. Perhaps they still do.
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