The Things I Hate About The Underground

As someone who uses the London Underground every day of their life, I’ve noticed a fair few things about it that annoy me. When I say annoy me, I mean they make me want to floss my brain with razor wire.

To those who perhaps don’t know the many horrors that inhabit the daily commute to Wherever Land, I’ve compiled a list of what’s worst about it. Because I’m nice like that.

Book your dental appointment now, because your teeth are about to grind into a fine powder.

The Elderly

If there’s one thing I’m dreading about my later years, it’s becoming a shuffling shambles; a human inconvenience, sifting through the streets at snails pace like a flappy skinned ghost, haunting everyone with the reality of my tired existence. This becomes even more problematic when you’re surrounded by 300 people rushing around, trying to get to Starbucks before the supply of Chai Ti Latte’s deplete. You can’t knock into them, they’ll fall over / apart. You feel obligated to give your hard earned seat up to them – even though they’re capable enough to walk down 3 flights of stairs, 2 escalators and make a last gasp dash for the train on the platform. Poor old things.

Pushchair operators

This is even worse in rush hour. There’s a horde of people trying to get on the train to go to work, yet they can’t get on because Mrs. Chelsea and little Tarquin Farthing are occupying 5 square feet with their 4×4 prams. And then it cries, and everyone’s journey becomes that much more unbearable.

School trips

Imagine: it’s a swelteringly hot day. The air conditioning in the train is on the fritz. Everyone has rivulets of sweat dripping down their faces like a salty waterfall. Things can’t really get more uncomfortable, can they? WRONG. Before you can wipe the condensation from your moist brow, 40 yelping 7-year-olds clamber on the train, chocolate stains like birth marks on their goblin-like maws. The exhausted teachers try and segregate them to the few remaining seats, but naturally there isn’t enough. Most of them stand there awkwardly, staring at you, intrigued by your monolithic height. I try and avoid eye contact, lest they ask me anything about… I don’t know, ‘Tom & Jerry’ or whatever the kids are into these days.

European Backpackers

“Du hast bin mich zehr LONDON EYE bin heisse?”

“O ja ja, sehr getes SCHLECT mit braun dim HYDEH PARKEH mit dem SCHLEISSE HASSE”

“OH JAH, ICH EINE FLASSEBASSE DIM SCHAUSSE LICH GREAT BRITAIN HAHAHAHAH”

“HAHAHAHA DU HAST MICHH!!”

“PLEASE… PLEASE STOP, I… I CAN’T TAKE ANY MORE.”

Unwashed commuters

If you’re going to get on a tiny tube train, packed to the edges with disgruntled, often manically depressed people, please have the courtesy to have a shower. Maybe use some shower gel. You never know, you might even enjoy it!

People

People are inherently awful on public transport. They’re selfish, rude, sweaty, uncouth, preening morons who have no awareness of anyone around them. I think people should be banned from the tube, and the trains should be used to transport newborn puppies to a utopian Eden Project-style garden so they can live out their dog lives in extreme comfort and tranquillity. We can all cycle, or something.

Joe Bishop