default...

I find myself a space by default.

A tunnel between Aldgate and tower hill.

We’ve been for the past 20 minutes.

As a space, I can honestly say that it is becoming claustrophobic.

Bizarrely enough, there is a signal for phones, which is quite annoying for me

but saying that I am probably annoying other people with the noise of my headphones blaring out the southpark I am watching. There are now three different people describing to abstract voices how they have been stuck on a train for 20 minutes and that they can see the station possibly 100 yards away. There are 18 people in the carriage, of which eleven are men. People are beginning to get aggravated and to puff and blow but my word doc and I, oh and my south park, are very content thank you very much. A woman is picking her nose (I really didn’t know they did that.) There is illegible graffiti scratched along the glass. You would think that if they were going to risk being arrested they would at least care about the aesthetic of the marks they make. Coughing and spluttering has become regular; as has the tapping of some annoying bastard on his laptop -I wonder if we could walk to the station? We’ve now been here for 40 minutes and I have to admit I am getting concerned. My emotional space is fraught with impatience and the nonsense of personal life and my physical space is claustrophobic but the two are somehow connected. People are starting to lose patience.. 5 people are on their phones now and agitation is beginning to overcome everyone, including myself. People cannot stand to be confined or have their routine interfered with…. They want to know what is happening but just knowing will change nothing, the fact remains we are stuck here. It is quite strange that trains are going one way but not the other. I am begin to wonder if someone hasn’t been platform, surfing. My stomach is killing me, as is my leg, but unfortunately I can’t put that down to my predicament. A couple of guys have begin to doze off and I must say the noise of the fluorescent lights ad the humming of the trains batteries is quite soporific. We have now been here for 50 minutes….mmmm monotony abounds…. there is a rogue hair atop the ‘s’ key of my laptop-really hope its mine and that it doesn’t belong to some skank. I’ve never really been a fan of people that put their feet up on the seats of public transport but maybe that’s an age thing. . As a physical space its nicer than my public toilet but only by default, in that, there are no bad smells or people trying to sell me drugs… finally, we have begun to move!

So after 50 minutes I was witness to something I quite like but don’t see that often which was the old ‘blitz spirit’. I have to say there is something quite appealing about Londoners when they decide to let down their barriers. People actually spoke to one another which is something I see so rarely these days… it must be nearer an hour and I am going back to watching southpark…