The Long Walk

I was late for work today. Not by a great deal, but enough to make me tetchy and nervous. That's the thing when you rock up late to your job, you imagine (at least, I do) that everybody else is sitting in judgement, darkly commenting on your inability to do basic things like know the time. No matter that when it happens to someone else, you really couldn't care less. But it makes no difference: I still assume that my work colleagues have less than flattering things to say about me when I'm late. Actually, I assume that they have plenty of stuff like that to say even when I'm early, which probably points at some underlying paranoia stemming from the fact that my parents didn't buy me a BMX bike when I was a kid, and is probably more a complicated series of neuroses than we really have space to get into here.

Actually, talking about bikes, it was a puncture that caused my lateness this morning. I cycle to Hove station, and then cycle from West Worthing station in, well, Worthing, to work. Both cycling bits of the journey take just under ten minutes each. However, if I find myself without a bike, and have to walk, both take about half a hour each. That's a hour added to my morning journey, which isn't the best way to start your working day.

The closer I got to work this morning, the more frustrating this became - to be so close to my destination, a route that usually takes only about eight minutes, but to know that it was now going to take the length of an episode of The Big Bang Theory to get there, was pretty annoying. I began to wish that I could be taller, so that I could take longer strides, and have at least an outside chance of arriving on time. This would have advantages and disadvantages. True, I would get to more places more quickly, but once I'd arrived, there would be more people asking me what the weather was like up there.

A few years ago, I knew an extraordinarily good looking woman who happened to be reasonably tall - around six feet. The combination of these two factors meant that men who were attempting to hit on her in night clubs were fairly unoriginal in their approach. 'You're really tall!' they'd declare happily as their opening gambit, presumably under the impression that she hadn't spotted this physical anomaly for herself. After a while, her reply ended up being equally unoriginal: 'I know!', she'd answer, in the tone of voice one normally reserves for conversations with toddlers and victims of recent head trauma. She's married now, and I'd be willing to bet that the man who won her fair heart did so by the simple expedient of managing to find something else to discuss when they first met other than her height.

If we're honest, however, a hour at both ends isn't the worst hardship that can be added to my working day. I'm pretty sure both my parents had to walk even longer to get to school each day. Of course, this was rural Ireland in the 1950s, and they didn't get to catch a train for the middle portion. While we're at it, the train can be a bit of a strain, too, when you're carrying a bike. Even when you restrict yourself to those sections of the train that are specifically designed to carry bikes. People seem to delight in standing directly in the doorways, thereby getting in the way of everyone else trying to get on or off the train. This is even more exasperating when you've got a bike in hand, since many people seem to think that, as a cyclist, you absolutely shouldn't be allowed on board.

But, anyway. I shouldn't moan. I need to save my energy: it's nearly home time, and I've got a long walk back.