‘Terrorism’, Transport in London and my first Tube Delay.

So, I’ve now been in London for approximately four months. And I’ve absolutely loved it here. There’s a certain grandness here that quite appeals to me. I’d perhaps have to write a dissertation to capture all — or most — of the elements that combine to make me love London so much.

But one of the things I like most about London is its transport system. It’s absolutely efficient! Very first-world!

Your tubes, trains and buses come on time. And there’s the facilitation to check just when they’ll arrive and how long they’ll take to get you to your destination. I just love it.

Now, people generally love predictability where their transport is concerned, I think. And if that’s unexpectedly disturbed that could be so jarring.

Well, so was my experience last evening as I travelled from Ealing Broadway on the Central Line. Mile End, my destination, was approximately 45 minutes away. But I ended up having a journey that lasted approximately 2 hours.

I’d plan to hang out with a friend and we began our journey together from the Ealing Broadway Station — the station closest to where I live. We were taking the Central Line; the fastest around town, I’m told.

It was about 8:40 PM.

Now, we’d not been far on our journey when suddenly our tube came to a halt and the waiting began. We were now at Shepherd’s Bush; only five stops from where we’d depart.

I’d expected that we’d be on our way soon again. However, the train operators began announcing there was likely going to be a severe, indefinite delay. We were also being advised get off the tube and change our routes.

Well, thinking there wouldn’t be any real need for that, my friend suggested we could defy that advice because the issue (whatever it was) would likely be resolved soon enough and we’d be well on our way again.

But that was never to be the case. We sat on the tube until we threw in the towel. With reluctant annoyance, we departed the tube and continued on an alternate route. We’d been sitting around, waiting for our tube to restart its journey for about 30 minutes.

‘What could be causing such a major delay?’ I wondered.

It was my first time experiencing a delay on the tube in London. What a horrible virginal experience! It was so cold and windy. And having to depart the tube station and face the chill of last night was really annoying.

But we had to do it and we did.

On departing the tube station, I’d heard an announcement that the ‘police’ were investigating a ‘serious’ incident that had occurred a bit earlier. I quickly told my friend but he scoffed at it saying they like to be ‘melodramatic’ here.

I later found out what caused my first delay on the tube in London. And much to my surprise, it’s an incident the police are treating as a ‘terror attack’.

If you haven’t heard about it, here’s a link below where you can read about the stabbing incident that happened last evening at the Leytonstone tube station.