Yesterday a colleague and I travelled to The Big Smoke to look at an upcoming job, because we had to take templates we opted to drive to Cockfosters and tube it in! Nice easy route in, get on the Piccadilly Line and stay on it until the round TFL sign says Piccadilly Circus!
Before I get into it, I would like to explain to you that I have “one of those faces”, You know the type that appears to be approachable? So I’m always being spoken to by extroverted strangers wanting to pass the time of day with me… In the grand scheme of things there is nothing wrong with this, but I often value my solitude! “Alone not lonely” is one of the mantras I live by, so you can imagine my annoyance when I’m minding my own business, and some stranger tries to spark up a conversation. I am often in the situation where I am sat in a pub or coffee shop and I can feel some chatty stranger staring at me waiting for me to turn and look at them, giving them the tiniest “in” allowing them to ruin my quiet time!
Anyway, grumpy rant out the way… Picture the scene, we’re sat in the carriage minding our own business when the train arrives at Finsbury park and the doors slide open and a Santa Claus looking gentleman purposefully steps in bringing with him a certain presence which made me look up… Without missing a beat and with the confidence of a Game Show Host he said… “Wow, did you know the Piccadilly Line is 7 degrees cooler than the Victoria Line?” Without realising it I’d given him an “in”… And boy was he in!
Now, I don’t know if he’d just come from the Victoria Line, it would be logical as you can change for the Victoria Line at Finsbury Park, but maybe it was just one of his favourite ice breakers, either way it worked and it opened him up to an audience for what unfolded to be a barrage of facts and stories.
Before I continue, I must tell you that I did manage to capture some of his stories in my notebook, but I did fail to remember some, so what you are about to read is probably only 70% of what he told us. I have fact checked the ones that could be fact checked and they turn out to be true to a point, as for the personal stories… Are they true? I most bloody sincerely hope so!!!
So, the jolly gentleman sat down and explained the reason for this 7 degree discrepancy, something to do with the depth and less natural airflow, he didn’t mention anything about it being closer to the Earths core though… He asked us if we liked the fact, which we grunted at with as little commitment as possible, to which he said “I’ll tell you another one, then I’ll leave you alone.” You will notice that there is a theme here… “Holborn Station used to have an escalator which kept breaking down, do you know why?” we shrugged… “Because it was a spiral!…. You probably don’t believe me.” You’ll also notice that there is a theme here too!
He went on… “one more tube fact then I’ll leave you alone I promise!” He didn’t keep this promise. “Whitechapel has both overground and underground trains, can you tell me what’s weird about that?” Again, we shrugged…. “The underground station is overground and the overground station is underground – mad eh!? You probably don’t believe me!” This isn’t far wrong, they’re actually on the same level…. Which is still a bit odd.
You may not be surprised to learn he didn’t leave us alone after that one either, he then asked us: “Do you want to know what the weirdest thing I ever saw on the tube was? You probably won’t believe me…”
“Sure….” We replied.
“I got on the carriage and there was a woman sat there, with a fully grown magpie perched on her arm like it was a falcon! I had to nudge the guy next to me to ask him if he was seeing it too!” I don’t believe this, I should say, I believe the magpie bit, but I don’t believe that he was sat next to someone and not already engaged in conversation with him…
This story was the nail in the coffin, and that was it, I was invested, I liked him and I wanted to know more!
“I saw something even weirder on holiday, I was in the Scilly Isles, beautiful little islands west of Cornwall, so peaceful you can have whole beaches to yourself, now you probably won’t believe this, not many people do…. But my wife, son and I were on a beach there and there was a lady down the other end of the beach and she had a large animal with her, I thought is that a horse? So I went and investigated, it wasn’t a horse…. Do you know what it was?? You won’t believe this….”
“No….” We replied in anticipation.
“A bloody reindeer!!! She’d taken her reindeer a walk on the beach!!! You probably don’t believe me, not many do, but it’s true…. I’ll tell you one more then I’ll stop boring you!”
This next story made me like him more, I wanted to sit and listen to this short bearded St Nick all day! “I had a brain haemorrhage” he said “Stress induced it was, I loved stress, I lived off of it, thrived off of it! I always put myself in these stressful situations, but it isn’t good, it caused my brain haemorrhage, now I live a slower life… What’s the point of rushing? Why leave 10 minutes before your train and rush? Leave 30 minutes earlier and have a beer on the way!”
Yes!!! This was my guy! Find some calm in the chaos, why rush? What’s it all for!? We have one life, steal those moments when you can….
He continued with the story…. “Which reminds me… I was on holiday in Devon once, in a place called Beer, which is unrelated…” he said, I’m not quite sure how it was unrelated, but it did make me think of my friend who lives in Devon who loves to go out walking with his lovely wife to be, he always says the walks are “Via Beer” which is odd because Beer is the wrong side of the River Ex to them…. Anyway… He was in beer… “I wanted a beer and the wife wanted a soda water and ice, so I asked the barmaid for half a pint of bitter and half a soda and ice, can you guess what she did!? Yes, she put it all in one glass! I laughed and she told me it’s what I asked for, I couldn’t believe it. The manager came to apologise and said it’s her first day, I’m not sure if she had a second…”
Our stop was coming up so I had to check the signs by looking behind me, which prompted him to promise that this was the last fact, and he would stop being boring…. It wasn’t the last, and he wasn’t being boring, I was captivated. Turned out he was going to Leicester Square to watch his favourite film of 2024, The Substance with Demi Moore, looks good, I’ll check it out!
He then hit us with some boxing facts… George Foreman named all his son’s George Edward, that’s 5 kids, all with the same name!! George also made millions from boxing, but hundreds of millions from his grill! He also told us that he asked a guy on the tube (totally believable) “Why didn’t Muhammad Ali Fight Cassius Clay? The guy didn’t know!!” I guess he had some internal battles, but I guess that wasn’t the point…
He told us many more including some about Tina Turner Sueing her own tribute act and why Heathrow Airport has Terminals 2-5 but no Terminal 1… Unfortunately, we both reached our stops and we were sucked back into the real world.
This jolly Santa like chap made an impression on me. Normally I’d find a polite escape route from this sort of chat, but this time I’m glad I didn’t. He reminded me that there are brilliant characters everywhere, little sparks of humanity that we miss when we keep our heads down and rush about.
So take his advice. Leave early. Slow down. And if you can, grab a pint on the way.
Take it easy.
TM
1 Comment. Leave new
That was a great read, thanks for sharing!