Tragedy & Luck, different sides of the same coin

'When I was a commuter my office was opposite the entrance to Aldgate tube station. Periodically, throughout the day, I’d look across at its gaping entrance laughing back at me. It spat me out each morning and sucked me back in every night. I soon learned to treat it with contempt. Simply another cog in a commuting machine moving people from A to B whether they want to go or not. On July 7^th 2005 it didn’t just spit. It spluttered, and then hacked, until it spewed putrid flumes of smoke.

I was putting my jacket over my chair while waiting for my computer to boot up when I first noticed something was wrong. And over the course of the next hour, from my remarkable vantage point, I watched events unfold.

‘There’s been a power surge in the tube,’ one of my staff suggested matter-of-factly as he came in, ‘bloke on the bus said, anyway.’

But it wasn’t, of course. It was a bomb. I watched shocked and dazed commuters stumble from the station until we were told to abandon our building. I threaded my way through the triage centre, which an hour earlier had been Minories bus station; I could smell smoke and mustiness that I normally associated with hot and stuffy platforms. People were crying, one lady, shoeless, screaming she’d lost her companion in the darkness, was being comforted by a passer-by, his white shirt smeared with dust from her hair…'

The above is an excerpt from a bigger article I wrote, a few months after the bombings, which I was reminded of when the news broke of the fire in the Channel Tunnel. OK, you can’t compare the two events; one was an outrage, the other an accident. But for the people involved in either, a dreadful experience.

I talked about luck in a previous Blog entry, or rather my lack of it, but on July 7^th there were probably two trains between the one I got off, and the one that was blown up. Even I’m prepared to concede that I was lucky. But whilst I’ve avoided real tragedy, it still seems to me, to be lurking with intent wherever I go.

Examples. Not long after I purchased a non-refundable ticket from St Pancras to Moscow, the first leg of my Commuter Revenge is thrown into doubt by the fire in the Channel Tunnel. The minute I book my trans-Manchurian train (yep, non-refundable) a plane crashes in Russia, reportedly on the track I’ll be travelling along. See what I mean? It’s like something, the thing in charge of tragic events, is locked into my travel arrangements. It just hasn’t quite got the range quite right yet.

Which is why I’ve decided not to make any travel arrangements beyond Hanoi. I’m not stupid. What tragedy doesn’t know won’t hurt him. I’ll be winging this part of the trip, and I have to admit, I prefer it that way.

I’m really looking forward to Russia and China, but the effort involved in organising these destinations does sometimes take the shine off it. And Russia is starting to make me nervous. If I believe everything I’ve read, I’m going to spend 10 days eating cabbage soup from dirty bowls, served by waiters who think table service is the start to a ping-pong match. Apparently my bags will be searched hourly by bureaucrats who will borrow my mouth for a little Russian roulette practise, prior to relieving me of some ‘local income’ tax.

One of my travel books suggests avoiding some of the vodka on account of it causing blindness. The next paragraph, on Russian Etiquette explains how disrespectful it is to not drink vodka when it’s offered.

So, if I don’t take a drink, I piss them off, if I do, I go blind and die falling off the train.

South East Asia, for some reason, feels more serene, a little more laid back. I put this down to their leaders, who are in the main, more non-descript as the Labour Cabinet. Except in Thailand, where the Prime Minister has recently been sacked. I know what you’re thinking, corruption, shadowy deals, but you’d be wrong. He got sacked because he was moonlighting. In the evenings after a hard days governing he presented a cookery show. OK, you would have thought, if he needed to moonlight, he’d have opted for something less high profile, like a cleaning job, or table waiter.

            Now he’s unemployed he might be looking for a job. I know a buffet car that could use his culinary skills, if he’s interested…