Minor delays.

Minor delays.

Like something from a Huxley novel the daily shuffle down into the Victoria line starts again.

I am convinced it is the same air being pushed around by the giant people carrying pistons that has been down here for over thirty years.

I sit at the front of the train right by the driver’s door because I like to hear his radio, my baseball cap pulled down low so I don’t accidentally make eye contact, reading a book and desperately trying to be somewhere else, anywhere else.

By the third stop the train is full, by the fourth someone shouts ‘can you move down please’ people shuffle a bit closer giving up any personal space they had left.

Ankles and shoes come and go over the top of my book. Someone’s umbrella drips onto my knee. My feet are wet, and probably will be all day.

The train empties at Victoria. I still have one more stop to go. Then eight hours until I make the return trip.

All these people, all these lives, so close together, yet never are touching.