Lost Property: Part 2 The Commute

Despite her green duffle coat, red woolly hat and the 10 miles of blue scarf wrapped around her throat, fingers of morning cold still found vulnerable areas to tickle and nip. Shivering, Michelle blew her warm breath up towards her nose in a vain attempt to defrost it.

Standing at Earlsfield Station was never the highlight of her day. The combination of pain, cold, thirst and tiredness made the whole commuter battle seem impossible. The thought of cramming herself onto an overcrowded train made bile rise to the back of her throat. She had already let three trains go without joining the herd fighting their way on-board. Unfortunately for every person carried away on the train, another two seemed to appear at the station to take their place. It was now or never, she psyched herself up. The next train, she would muscle her way in.

The next train to pull in was uncharacteristically empty. Although all the seats were taken there was actual standing room, this was a miracle of biblical proportions. Michelle sent a quiet “Thank you” to the god of commuters as she wedged herself in the corridor between the seats. They formed a natural barrier that limited the number of people that could stand or lean on her. Despite this, she still found herself uncomfortably close to an armpit on her left and a newspaper on her right. Couldn’t they stop reading for the 12 minutes it takes to get to Waterloo so she didn’t feel like a human coffee table? It would have been less obnoxious if the business man reading the paper didn’t glare at her every time she moved her head and it rustled the pages of his Times. She preferred Guardian readers anyway.

Rushing out of the train at Waterloo, Michelle moved with the other commuters, pulled along like water going down a drain. Propelled in to the bowel s of the underground she headed for the Northbound Northern line platform for part 2 of her torturous morning commute. Fortunately Michelle was a seasoned professional and knew exactly where to stand to line up with the doors of the tube train when it arrived.

1 minute later and she secured herself an actual seat on a train rocking and shaking its way northwards. Michelle briefly closed her eyes and enjoyed the ability to relax for a moment. Opening her eyes she watched a girl in the far corner carefully applying make-up. As the girl pulled out a mascara wand Michelle shuddered at her bravery, but looked away as she didn’t think she could stomach witnessing an accidental impaling.

She realised that she probably looked pretty shocking. Looking at her reflection opposite she was startled to discover that she had what looked like stubble all over her chin. Reflexively she stroked her face but there was nothing. No stubble under her fingers and no answering movement in the window opposite. Michelle blinked her eyes firmly to dispel the rather uncomfortable sensation that she wasn’t looking at her own reflection. On re-opening her eyes though nothing had changed. Either she'd morphed in to a 30-something ginger haired man in need of a shave or she was sitting opposite the wrong reflection.

Looking desperately along the far window, she could not find herself anywhere and all of the other reflections matched the person sitting opposite them. “Of course” Michelle thought bitterly “I’m the one with an out of whack reflection.” As if to add insult to injury her ginger companion winked and smiled at her. “Brilliant and he’s a comedian” she muttered to herself as she scuffed her shoes together violently in confused irritation, stopping only when a maternal looking lady gave her a pointedly concerned look.

Getting off at Warren Street, Michelle moved in autopilot out of the station along her normal route to the office. She was worried that her work colleagues might notice that she had a man’s reflection and she would never hear the end of it. Surely that was considered a major no-no in client meetings? Feeling rather persecuted, Michelle felt it was just typical that something like this would happen to her! Taking a deep breath she stopped and turned to stare in the window of a news-agency. There she was, distinctly transparent but also quite clearly neither ginger nor male. Heaving a big sigh of relief she’d resumed her walk to work.

Maybe everything was going to be OK after all.

To be continued.......