Channelling the spirit of the Blitz (From Watford Observer)

Channelling the spirit of the Blitz

11:06am Monday 15th June 2009

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One of the universe’s most mysterious laws decrees that there shall always be a rail or Tube strike, or possibly both, when the England football team is playing a World Cup qualifying match.

Last week was no exception.

Just as our brave lads were girding their loins to do battle on the pitch, pretty much all of the London Underground network barred its gates and ground to a halt. I leave you to judge whether there was any connection between the match last Wednesday - admittedly a rather minor affair - and the strike, but I’d like to draw your attention to the uncanny correlation between football and industrial action for future reference.

Pack that thought away somewhere safe and take it out for a buff-up next time you find yourself trapped on a London bus with so many other people that if you were a sheep on its way to an abattoir under similar conditions the RSPCA would probably rescue you and bring a prosecution.

Actually, I didn’t intend to get on a bus at all during the strike last week. Armed with my trusty battered copy of the A-Z and an almost born-again enthusiasm for the health benefits of walking to work (for two days, anyway) I was quite looking forward to pounding the pavements between St Pancras and the City.

What I didn’t count upon on the first day of the strike was the fact that my usual train into London would be delayed by half an hour by faulty brakes and that the monsoon season would begin at the very moment I hit the pavement.

I was late, I was cold and as I didn’t have my umbrella with me, I was soaked. Joining the huge queues of people hoping for various buses in Euston Road, I was at least able to keep dry under the roof of the bus shelter, but the wait seemed endless.

And when the right buses arrived they were so jammed full of passengers that it was impossible to climb on board.

Eventually, after half an hour or so I’d moved to the front of the queue and actually managed to make it onto a bus heading in the right direction. Rather amazingly, I even got a seat at the back.

The journey was agonisingly slow due to the volume of traffic and if it hadn’t been raining so heavily I would definitely have been better off walking.

Opposite me sat a young partially-sighted girl who seemed to be quite agitated. She was talking on her mobile phone, and trying to make herself heard above the alarming clanking and grinding noises coming from the engine.

“But I can’t!” she wailed into the phone. “Please, is there someone I can talk to there to explain”.

I assume the answer to this must have been negative, because she then threw the phone into her bag and burst into loud, heart-wrenching tears.

“Excuse me,” she asked me between sobs, “Can you tell me exactly where we are?”

I started to rifle in my bag for my A-Z to show her the map, but she explained that she couldn’t see the pages clearly enough. “I just need to know how close we are to Holborn,” she said.

It transpired that she was a student on her way to a critical exam. She had been travelling, by bus, from Hackney Marshes since 7am that morning to make sure that she arrived in good time for the 10am start, but now, as it was already 10.15am, it looked as if she was not going to be allowed into the room.

Exams are stressful enough at the best of times, but this was just awful.

The poor girl was a mass of nervous tension, clenching and unclenching her fists, fidgeting in the seat and anxiously scanning her mobile phone for messages.

Ten minutes later when we’d moved a measly 50ft further down the road, she crumpled up in the seat and started to howl, beating her knees with her little fists.

“That’s it for a whole year now,” she told anyone interested. “All that work, all that revision down the drain over a ridiculous strike. They should all think themselves lucky to have a job at all, ’cos it looks like I’m never going to have one at this rate.”

Sometimes I’m quite proud to be a demi-Londoner.

For all the talk about modern society breeding a nation of Levites and Pharisees only too happy to avert their gaze and walk on by, I have to say the reaction to the student’s horrible predicament on that bus last week was heart-warming.

It’s no exaggeration to say that our corner of the 91 was channelling the spirit of the Blitz.

The City-slick woman sitting next to the girl put a maternal arm around her shoulder, the heavily tattooed yoof on my right proffered a sympathetic stick of tropical chewing gum and a nearby man wedged in the aisle of the bus offered to ring her college and explain the situation to them again.

Looking back I’m quite chuffed, if slightly mystified, to have heard myself offering to get out and walk the distance with her to make sure she didn’t get lost. (At some point I have clearly developed a vestigial heart!)

We all tried to make some feeble jokes to cheer her up and told her to be firm when she arrived at the exam room.

“Just explain what happened. They can’t bar you and you should definitely ask for extra time. I really can’t believe your college couldn’t see this coming,” said the no-nonsense, but cuddly underneath, City slicker, who I suspect was some sort of lawyer.

I hope our sympathy and attention helped a bit. When the bus eventually arrived at Holborn some 15 minutes later, the student had calmed down enough to give us all a feeble smile along with thanks and embarrassed apologies for crying. As the bus swept away leaving her forlorn little figure behind us in the rain, she even waved.

I think that what upset us all most was the fact that here was a decent young girl who had clearly had to battle adversity to achieve a university place, and now, just at the most critical moment, everything she’d struggled for was potentially about to be destroyed through no fault of her own.

It certainly made me reflect that when industrial action is used as weapon by those who run the services on which our cities rely, lives can be wounded at a much more profound level than having to walk a bit further in the rain or being squashed by a ventripotent stomach on the bus.

I wonder how many people missed a vitally important job interview, hospital appointment or exam last week?

“They say that young people today are ignorant and thoughtless, but who is really being igonorant and thoughtless here?” sobbed that poor student last Wednesday as the clock ticked on. Who indeed?

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