I’ve never been a fan of commuting, but the last few weeks have been a particular chore. Where every day I go in – and fortunately I have to do so less than many – I get some sort of what the f*ck moment as I arrive at Waterloo and prepare to disappear into the office for the day.
It’s not so much a sense of dread, of fear of spending a day tapping on a computer, having half-arsed conversations with colleagues, and lunching on the salmon sandwich and carrots and tomatoes I’ve brought from home again because I can’t face paying £12 paying for a small helping of something or other from whatever faceless something or other place I choose today. But more a practical, matter of fact, what the f*ck am I doing, what are we doing?
There’s the commute itself. Train travel is supposed to be fun, a journey through countryside, journeys into the unknown, a place to look out of the window and dream. Not to be wedged uncomfortably in place, whether sat or standing, where the main view is your temporary neighbour’s backside or the emails or performance reviews being written on the computer next to you. Simon Lee Winter: if you’re reading this, your invoice should be paid soon.
Not to feel like you’re part of a production line of silent, expressionless cyborgs turning out for another day’s duty. Or where there’s always one person who comes to stand right next to you on the platform, even if there’s no-one else around, because they’ve been doing this for twenty years and know that’s exactly where the train will stop and the doors will open.
Not to see the same sights day in, day out. The rows of suburban houses with the obligatory loft and garden extensions. The dingy-looking apartment blocks, victims of grim architecture and an inability or refusal of landlords to take any care of or give any shit for their tenants. The flashes of green as we go by playing fields that feel half-abandoned, never with any real activity happening. A row of strange houses that look like tugboats, as much lost in the middle of a city as I sometimes feel.
And then the silent shuffle through Waterloo station. For some, a resigned drift and a patient wait to head to an unknown destination underground, no questions asked, no answers given – like lemmings, its just what they do, each day, head down, move on. For others, like me, that drift takes us outside, a walk through the city to reach the workplace – a scene from the Walking Dead, zombies walking at a steady pace, in the same general direction and with the same blank expressions.
On these daily drifts, I think that I can’t be the only one who thinks like this. I can’t be the only one of the hundreds of thousands who duck and dive around London who feels frustrated, angry even, about the lack of purpose to it all – other than it serves that basic purpose of keeping us in a home, enabling us to support a family, and allowing us to enjoy all the more those days when we’re not stuck in the commuting doom loop.
And sometimes, of course, I do find an enjoyment within the routine. As I get deeper into the city, there’s that constant ebb and flow of people, of traffic, of movement in all places and in all directions which reminds me of fish dancing around coral reefs – the same endless movement, seemingly random but in my mind controlled by hidden underwater system of traffic lights and roundabouts and roads. There’s the beautiful clear light of a sunny winter’s morning after rain the night before, lighting up the scenes and sights around the Thames in a gentle glow, or the simple enjoyment of seeing the city come alive in spring as warmer weather returns.
There are the days when I can simply enjoy whatever it is I see and what comes into my mind. Days when my mind can be alive to a million and one eventualities, and where I can see the funny side of spending a few minutes in a favourite bookshop and seeing one book that immediately stands out: Bullshit jobs: The rise of pointless work and what we can do about it.
Perhaps I’m being harsh on my work, and maybe I’m lucky as I get to write from a position of privilege, of having a decent job, a decent house, a decent life. But equally I’m not sure that precludes me from having those what the f*ck moments; from wanting something more, not necessarily financially, but simply doing something that gives me more purpose, allows me more time in the places and environments that I enjoy and value the most. I try to convince myself that one day I’ll get there, but I wonder how many more commuter Groundhog Days I’ll have to endure before I do so.