The lost hour

Allow me to recount one of the strangest commuting days that Lunchista has ever had. It happened round about this time of year, which is why I'm reminded of it now, as the trees start to revive.

It started out normally enough, with a bus journey so routine that I have forgotten that bit altogether. But that was just to lull the unsuspecting Lunchista into a false sense of security. The first of my two trains, being late, was more crowded than usual: so much so that it was standing room only at the ends of the carriages, and not a hope of walking through into the warm, quiet bit where the passengers (remember them?) were supposed to be. Not if I wanted to get to the doors in time to get out at my stop, anyway.

Things started to go wrong just before the doors opened: I heard a bit of a kerfuffle behind me and felt a hand groping down my back. A young, smartly-dressed lass had collapsed and lay mumbling on the floor. Somebody who could spare more time than I could on the way to work called for help as soon as the doors opened. Another commuter nearby went to help the fallen girl. I only hope they knew what to do: I had ten seconds to sprint over the footbridge to my next train, or be made to feel terrible about being half an hour late in. Curiously enough, if I'd actually had any work to do when I got there, it wouldn't have been so bad, and I wouldn't have felt so guilty. Isn't that strange? As it was of course I felt terrible anyway: there were so many other people who looked as if they were doing something to help, but how will I ever know if they actually were?

There followed a working day so unremarkable that it slipped out of my consciousness as soon as I left the building to go home. My walk to the station, a third of a mile uphill and another third down, had to be brisk for two reasons: first, if I timed it just right I got straight on a train without having to wait half an hour, and second, there had been a murder nearby. I was always glad to get to the top of the route so I could see where I was going. That day I saw something else: a teenage couple were walking along chatting, when the lass suddenly, and without comment, threw up. Both continued on their way as if nothing had happened. And they hadn't even been drinking.

The way downhill is quite steep, lined with a staircase of classic blackened millstone houses: anyone parking there has to have a good handbreak. A white van pulled in just as someone was crossing the road. As I walked by it was obvious that the van hadn't hit him, but even so he just toppled over onto the tarmac. You don't forget the sound of a head hitting the road. I had to get there first in case anybody tried something daft, like moving him, or trying to drive round him and failing. People came out into the street, including a lady who said she was a nurse and knew what to do. Someone rang for an ambulance.

After all that I began to wonder, why today? What was it about this particular Monday that had done this to so many otherwise healthy-looking young people?

Those light evenings that everybody looks forward to in the spring, have a price. Some people will sail through the twice-yearly disruption to their daily rhythm. Some, like Lunchista, are a bit more sensitive but will at least try to make sure that they get enough sleep. Many will not realise that an hour of sleep has been taken from them as "the clocks go forward". I wonder how many accidents are caused by these discontinuities in time? Or how many people know that the idea was originally dreamed up by a golf enthusiast who wanted to give the Working Classes an extra hour of daylight in the summer in which to, well, work?

Space Invaders

"What d'you do if you see a space-man?"
"Dunno"
"Park in it-man!"

The quality of jokes circulating at Lunchista fille's school never ceases to amaze. But I quote this one because it describes, quite nicely, what a bunch of us got up to on International Car-Free Day: we invaded some space. In fact we happen to know that we invaded exactly 18 square metres of space.

Now that particular 18 square metres of space isn't much to look at. I must have walked past it dozens of times, and never really noticed it. And there'll be people who drive past it every day, who'll see it but on whose brains it will make no impression whatever, because their attention will be elsewhere. That probably includes a lot of people who have actually parked their cars on it at some time in the past. And that's why we had to go there quietly before the day's events and "case the joint". The area, the cost, the distance from the nearest place where we could store things, how early in the morning it would start to get busy, and so on. I volunteered to be the first to arrive, and my mobile number went on the press release. Then I looked at the weather forecast and shuddered.

And so, at 7 a.m., aided and abetted by my other half (who is very tolerant about all this) and his bike-trailer, we arrived on our bikes with two deckchairs, a huge potted palm and a banner. Incredibly I've never had to work a parking meter before: I was pleasantly surprised that it actually produced a ticket, rather than simply eat my last pound coins, smile at me and leave me stranded on the wrong side of the law without a witness. Some of the meters here even have solar panels on top.

At this point the big guns rolled in. Trike-trailers, drafted away from their usual task of picking up the recycling from our city's best narrow streets, had been loaded with turf the night before. Our resident eco-enthusiast had bought it the day before that, ensuring not only that the nearest DIY emporium actually had it in stock, but also that he knew someone to whom he could sell it on afterwards: total cost, zero.

So we laid down the turf. We put up a table and got out the deckchairs, next to not one but by now two huge potted palms, and a parasol brought along by some brave soul unfamiliar with the term "equinoxial gales". Mind you my banner was also struggling, but people (including the gentleman from the Press who turned up at 8:30) were still able to make out the blurb:

People Park, not Car Park

Car-Free Day Sept 22

The table was graced with a cloth, two self-service tea-urns with cups, milk, sugar, and plates full of Danish Pastries. There was also a basket of apples from the Orchard. The idea was to have a picnic breakfast, and to offer some to hungry commuters.

Now there are people out there who write fascinating research tracts in fields with names like "Psycho-geography", about phenomena such as "mental maps", "sense of place" and "connectivity", whose description of our activities would sound a bit odd at first blush, but bear with Lunchista as she leaves her home turf of energy and matter to foray into the ever-changing world of intangibles.

Apparently what we achieved was to turn a "non-place" into a "place". Oh all right, the first person to come up with the term "non-place" was called Marc, did it in French and spent far too much time indulging in existentialist contemplation of the meaninglessness of his modern life, probably while smoking too many Gauloises, and so didn't follow his idea through very well. So instead, how about an American chap called Eric talking in a straightforward, no-nonsense way about how he first came to notice that his home-town was becoming "nowhere", instead? Or even, how about Will Self?

For three hours or thereabouts, in fact until our ticket ran out, we chatted, drank tea, waved to passing drivers, offered our breakfasts, read articles and (in my case) were quietly thankful that the weather forecast had got it wrong, and the sun was shining. A jolly lass in a red dress and dreadlocks from the local radio turned up and Lunchista, as the person whose number had been given on the press release, was interviewed live on air. City councillors came along, including the former leader (on his bike as ever), and our favourite LibDem (because he's such a character) who took our leaflets out into the 5 lanes of raging traffic and handed them to passing commuters. We had turned a bit of space that nobody gave a second thought to, into something that was (apart from the incredible noise level from the traffic) really rather worth something.

Late morning took me into the city centre, where I could sample the delights of a street I'd never walked down before, because the pavements are narrower than I am and it had always been full of traffic. But the Council, as a bit of a dare, had closed it to traffic for the day (using a row of massive planters of flowers: it looked rather good). Suddenly you could walk down it, and look at the shop windows, at the same time. People had brought their wares out into the street. The buildings were visible, in that you could afford the time to look up at them: everything from mediaeval to art deco. It reminded me of Diagon Alley from Harry Potter: it really was another world.

The radio station rang again: heck, they couldn't get enough of us! I was back on the air, live from the studio, and by a delicious irony for "Drive", the afternoon commuters' show. No doubt some of the listeners will have thought Lunchista was a bit barking. But I wonder how many are, even now, beginning to plot their escape?

Commutes I have known

Let me share with you (as the people of the USA would say. Aren't they generous?) part of the motivation for the year-long lunch break. This picture was taken from our house, at 06:43 one morning, making it just ten minutes before I had to set off for my 90 minute commute to work. That commute gave me a 12-hour day. The picture quality isn't great: it was dark, the camera may have had a special setting for this which would have made the result less grainy, but I was still too sleepy to find it. The moon was on the wane, and setting, and it really was that colour. It was rather beautiful.

The date on the picture is 5th March 2007. Yes, March. Do you like dark mornings?

I have done three 90-minute commutes and, now I come to think of it, each for two years.

Brighton to London was probably the worst, partly because the commute was in addition to a twelve-hour working day (though to be fair I only did this seven days in a fortnight: there are limits). It was given an extra dimension (mostly in the form of Time) by the fact that nothing ever seemed to work. My 5-minute walk down to the station was the only part of the journey that never went wrong. Sometimes I was working at weekends, and of course so were the railway engineers. This made for a 5 a.m. start if I were to turn up on time for the early shift, and I was lucky to get back by ten. In the winter months my trips fell entirely in darkness, and to cap it all my workplace was underground. I used to ask Security, as I walked out of the gate at the end of the day, "What was the weather like today?", just to get my bearings.

The late shift brought its own interesting variations on a theme. I didn't have to get to work until mid-day, so at least there were no dark mornings. I got to have a look at the wonderful Sussex countryside on the way in and all the delightful realia of British Rail Southern Region, like the shadow of the Balcombe viaduct over the fields and all the little stations with their fretwork and their flower-planters. But the trip back...I couldn't even fall asleep, because for much of my time there they hadn't yet caught The Southern Region Rapist. For all I knew, at any moment my skills in delicate negotiations, or unarmed combat, could be called upon, and that notorious graffito (written over the communications cord: "This is your last chance to stay a virgin") would somehow lose its funny edge. Although I would at least have a chance to follow a noble family tradition: my grandmother, it is rumoured, once successfully defended her honour with a hat-pin.

Sometimes migraine would get at me during my working day, and I would be hallucinating all the way home. CCTV wasn't all the rage in those days like it is now, so it is possible that I got away with losing my lunch in the planters at Victoria Station unseen. The pain came on in waves, and it really wasn't clever to move about if it was at its worst, or even look around too much. Which explains my accidental presence in the first-class compartment one evening. The guard who checked my ticket must have looked very stern (how was I to know? I couldn't bear to open my eyes) but I was one better: I probably looked like a ghost. "Please. don't. ask. me. to. move. I'll. be. sick..."

Why on earth did I do it? Well, because neither I nor any normal person could afford to live in London during the 1980s property boom. Not if they had any expensive hobbies, like eating.

Glasgow to Edinburgh was somehow a much more friendly affair. For a start the trains were quiet enough that you could acually hear people talking, and the views of the Campsie Fells are spectacular. It also involved the wonderful (and at that time absolutely rock-solid reliable) "Clockwork Orange". The full journey embraced two very different weather zones: all too often I'd be dressed for mild Glasgow rain, only to reach the East coast and be greeted with clear skies and either frost or tee-shirts (or both! Think Geordies only a bit further North).

There's a long climb from Waverley Station to the Royal Mile: depending on where you cross the road you can take 60-odd steps up a ginnel (I should have found out what the Scots call ginnels...) or inside one of the pillars of South Bridge. My path, on the days when I chose the latter, took me past a little cafe which I never even noticed, let alone went into. Which is a pity, because for much of that year one of its customers was a poor single mother, possibly making her coffee last all day, while she sat beside her sleeping child and wrote a children's fantasy novel: a very unfashionable idea at the time. Her name was Jo Rowling.

Somehow when I embarked on commuting from York to Leeds I thought it wouldn't be quite as bad. How could it possibly take 90 minutes when you can get from one station to the other in just 26? Well, the job, which I had thought was going to be totally marvellous and The Best Job In The World, was three miles out on the West side of Leeds. Incredibly those three miles (which I could have cycled had there been a proper route. You know, the sort with no fast-asleep drivers or 40-tonne lorries on) added over half an hour to each trip. When it was working as planned, that is.

I noticed a correlation between the time taken for that part of the commute, and the price of Copper. When the commodity price hit its high point the local entreprenneurs would tool up and help themselves to vital Copper bits of railway signalling gear, and we'd all be left stranded.

I say "we all", but I lie. Only myself and one other of this firm who prided themselves on offering "Low-Carbon solutions" to their clients took the train to work. Two others, to their credit, walked or cycled in. The remainder, over 60 people, all drove. Sometimes their delay stories were even worse than mine.