The gale caused all kinds of trouble to the underground
trains. When I got on at Newbury Park, there was an announcement that
trains would be running slow today because there were trees on the
track. It wasn't too far after that accident, and the British Rail
was running slowly as it is. Looked like the underground would match it.
Then there was another delay -- signal confusion this time.
But the cake was when they stopped the train because there
was a 'suspicious looking package on the track'. Now, I can't imagine
what brave soul decided to inspect it, before reporting after two
minutes that it was 'no longer suspicious', but even less, what could
have been in there.
The train problem wasn't local to London. Carlos (another
exchange student) was on the ferry from Calais to Dover, and the
ferry was rocking worse than a plane in the middle of a big storm.
Of course, people threw up on the boat more than the boat threw them
up. By the time they reached Dover, the port was closed, and Carlos
was stuck at Dover for 14 hours (with barely any food). He ended up
a little late to class, unshaven. Apparantly the gale toll was pretty
high.
But with all these heady issues, my time in the train was
spent observing a character quite unconcerned with these proceedings.
A 2-year old blonde boy (blue-eyed) was sitting next to his mother,
reading a copy of the Metro (the local newspaper). I say "reading"
because that's exactly what it looked like he was doing. It was on
his lap, and he seemed to be staring at it intently. From where I
was sitting, I could read the headlines: "Oil Profits Soar to 10-year
High". Future oil-magnate, perhaps. A few seconds later, he lifted
the paper carefully,
turned a few pages (no kidding -- he
actually flipped them), came back to the front page, stared at one
corner, and started biting it.
Now, that looked like a much more normal thing for a kid of
his age to do. It wasn't until I got off that I noticed what was
on that corner of the page.
"Spice Girls Toast Their Ninth No. 1"