Screwing up my nerve, I join the throng, and exhale in relief as a train pulls into the station. The only festive touch consists of a few miserable-looking fairy lights and a series of warning annnouncements about holiday transport. Everyone’s too tense and cold and Monday- morning-ish. It’s mid-December, but there’s no Christmas spirit here. They must have cancelled at least two trains, because this looks like three trainloads of people, all waiting for the next one, clustered near the edge of the platform at strategic points. They’re crowded on the platform, squinting up at the information screen, jostling for position, peering down the line, scowling at each other and ignoring each other, all at the same time. What are all the people who were planning to get on that train supposed to do? Evaporate?Īs I pass through the ticket barrier I can already see the answer. Trouble is, in London rush hour, you can’t just cancel trains. They’ve been having a lot of problems on our line recently, and keep cancelling trains with no warning. My boss has started throwing all sorts of hissy fits about people ‘swanning in at all times’, so I left an extra twenty minutes early, in case it was a bad day. It’s as I get near to Catford Bridge that I start to feel a knot of tension. Or maybe no label because you make your clothes yourself out of retro fabrics that you source at Alfies Antiques. You could have a genuine vintage Christian Dior label. You can’t work where I work and have ‘Christin Bior’ in your coat. It had a label in it, ‘Christin Bior’, but I cut it out as soon as I got home. My coat’s pretty warm, even though it cost £9.99 and came from the market. The grey December air is like iron in my chest, but I feel good. That’s why I’m here.Īnyway, my twenty-minute walk to the station is fine. My dad always says: if you can’t run with the big dogs, stay under the porch. (Actually, it’s not much like Tate Modern. It’s part of the London experience, like Tate Modern. I want to live in London I want to do this and commuting is part of the deal. As commutes go, it could be a lot worse, and I must keep remembering this.

My not so perfect life review