A few weeks ago I watched a documentary about the London Underground and there was this comment about one of the passengers losing a shoe underneath a train. Apparently, this is a common occurrence, as when people run for the train, their shoes fall off.
This struck me as quite a strange thing to happen - in nearly 5 years of catching the tube everyday for work, I never saw someone lose a shoe. It's probably possible though. Once at Farringdon station, a train station in London, I did see some guy get his head stuck between two closing doors of a Metropolitan line train, literally 1/2 a metre in front of me. What made it really amusing was the fact that he was dressed in a suit, slightly balding, wearing glasses and heavily laden down with an engorged laptop bag, a bag of shopping and a newspaper. He was standing in front of me on the platform and as the train pulled in, nothing untoward looked like it was going to happen. The train came to a standstill, the doors opened, he got on, I moved up to fill his spot. Nothing strange so far.
Until he was standing on the train, turned round and as the doors closed he was fumbling for something and dropped the newspaper. Just as he dropped it, the doors started closing, and so he probably figured he had enough time to retrieve it. He awkwardly bent down to reach for it and he grabbed at it, getting it barely by the ends. Success. Or so he thought.
But that thing happened where if you're carrying a one-strapped bag (such as a laptop bag), it over balances you. This happened to him and just as the automated doors were a 1.5 skull-widths of distance apart, he fell forwards a bit.
The doors closed on his hanging head.
While he was slowly toppling forward.
The force of the doors hitting his head jostled his glasses free and they fell. When the closing doors made contact with his head, they safety mechanism kicked in, and the doors retracted; it looked like they bounced off his skull. Then it felt like time had slowed down. He was caught in a brief physical, emotional and logistical dilemma; he had been hit on both sides of the head, his glasses were in mid descent - so undoubtedly he was feeling a bit of shock, pain and embarrassment. Should he remove his head from the doors, for an obstruction of the doors would force them to automatically open again, delaying the train and drawing attention from curious passengers as to why the doors were obstructed. Or did he rescue his doomed specs.
Gravity and the gap between the train and the platform made the decision for him. His mind was probably still reeling from the gentle crushing of the train doors and he obviously didn't want to enter round 2. The train would win again.
Just as his glasses bounced on the train door threshold and off into the dark depths of the gap the man stumbled back a bit and the train doors closed.
I couldn't see his face and we didn't make eye contact, I didn't want really want to as I knew that I would just totally lose my shit and break down into fits of giggles. I couldn't believe that this all happened right in front of me. My fellow passengers standing either side of me were oblivious to what they could have just witnessed. One guy was engrossed in his phone, the other guy was reading a newspaper.
A side note; I have a soft spot for public transport. Sometimes it lets me down, but most of the time it provides me with quite an efficient people watching medium and a wealth of anthropological analysis. You can get to see the interesting mundanities of life, such as my experience of Mr Talky.
So, the story continues.
One morning a few days ago on my way to work, I was bequeath another humorous train story.
A smartly dressed small Asian lady was running for the train. The doors were about to close, so the Small Asian Lady paused for a fraction of a second so as not to collide with the doors. But the train driver probably saw her running for the doors, so they started to move in the opposite direction. As they did the Small Asian Lady reacted to this and hastened her pace. But her pausing and 300 millisecond rearing up, like an equestrian horse afraid of a jump, had dislodged one of her flat-soled shoes from the grip of her toes. Lacking the vital purchase of toes, the shoe covered the remaining metre of platform on it's own momentum. I was standing next to the door but stepped away to let her on, and there was also a guy opposite me who was still standing by the door. He stared at her descending shoe, which had now plopped off of the platform edge and disappeared under the train. The lady looked at him for help, he looked at me, I looked back at him, the lady looked at him, the guy getting on the train in front of the lady turned round and looked at the shoe disappearing. We all smiled, probably each hoping that it was a smile that showed concern. She stood frozen momentarily, peering down the gap. By now the guy opposite me and I had made eye contact and were giggling. He felt guilty I think and bent down to peer down the gap with. I covered my mouth, looked at the ground to compose myself. I looked up again and the guy was now positioned at the other side of the doors, as if getting a better viewing angle would help things. Sadly it didn't improve anything, the doors closed and the train moved off.
One day during lunch time, my colleague noticed something hanging from a telegraph cable. On closer inspection, it was a dead bat. These two pictures show the bat; presumably the stiffness of death making its claws tightly grip the wire.
This struck me as quite a strange thing to happen - in nearly 5 years of catching the tube everyday for work, I never saw someone lose a shoe. It's probably possible though. Once at Farringdon station, a train station in London, I did see some guy get his head stuck between two closing doors of a Metropolitan line train, literally 1/2 a metre in front of me. What made it really amusing was the fact that he was dressed in a suit, slightly balding, wearing glasses and heavily laden down with an engorged laptop bag, a bag of shopping and a newspaper. He was standing in front of me on the platform and as the train pulled in, nothing untoward looked like it was going to happen. The train came to a standstill, the doors opened, he got on, I moved up to fill his spot. Nothing strange so far.
Until he was standing on the train, turned round and as the doors closed he was fumbling for something and dropped the newspaper. Just as he dropped it, the doors started closing, and so he probably figured he had enough time to retrieve it. He awkwardly bent down to reach for it and he grabbed at it, getting it barely by the ends. Success. Or so he thought.
But that thing happened where if you're carrying a one-strapped bag (such as a laptop bag), it over balances you. This happened to him and just as the automated doors were a 1.5 skull-widths of distance apart, he fell forwards a bit.
The doors closed on his hanging head.
While he was slowly toppling forward.
The force of the doors hitting his head jostled his glasses free and they fell. When the closing doors made contact with his head, they safety mechanism kicked in, and the doors retracted; it looked like they bounced off his skull. Then it felt like time had slowed down. He was caught in a brief physical, emotional and logistical dilemma; he had been hit on both sides of the head, his glasses were in mid descent - so undoubtedly he was feeling a bit of shock, pain and embarrassment. Should he remove his head from the doors, for an obstruction of the doors would force them to automatically open again, delaying the train and drawing attention from curious passengers as to why the doors were obstructed. Or did he rescue his doomed specs.
Gravity and the gap between the train and the platform made the decision for him. His mind was probably still reeling from the gentle crushing of the train doors and he obviously didn't want to enter round 2. The train would win again.
Just as his glasses bounced on the train door threshold and off into the dark depths of the gap the man stumbled back a bit and the train doors closed.
I couldn't see his face and we didn't make eye contact, I didn't want really want to as I knew that I would just totally lose my shit and break down into fits of giggles. I couldn't believe that this all happened right in front of me. My fellow passengers standing either side of me were oblivious to what they could have just witnessed. One guy was engrossed in his phone, the other guy was reading a newspaper.
A side note; I have a soft spot for public transport. Sometimes it lets me down, but most of the time it provides me with quite an efficient people watching medium and a wealth of anthropological analysis. You can get to see the interesting mundanities of life, such as my experience of Mr Talky.
So, the story continues.
One morning a few days ago on my way to work, I was bequeath another humorous train story.
A smartly dressed small Asian lady was running for the train. The doors were about to close, so the Small Asian Lady paused for a fraction of a second so as not to collide with the doors. But the train driver probably saw her running for the doors, so they started to move in the opposite direction. As they did the Small Asian Lady reacted to this and hastened her pace. But her pausing and 300 millisecond rearing up, like an equestrian horse afraid of a jump, had dislodged one of her flat-soled shoes from the grip of her toes. Lacking the vital purchase of toes, the shoe covered the remaining metre of platform on it's own momentum. I was standing next to the door but stepped away to let her on, and there was also a guy opposite me who was still standing by the door. He stared at her descending shoe, which had now plopped off of the platform edge and disappeared under the train. The lady looked at him for help, he looked at me, I looked back at him, the lady looked at him, the guy getting on the train in front of the lady turned round and looked at the shoe disappearing. We all smiled, probably each hoping that it was a smile that showed concern. She stood frozen momentarily, peering down the gap. By now the guy opposite me and I had made eye contact and were giggling. He felt guilty I think and bent down to peer down the gap with. I covered my mouth, looked at the ground to compose myself. I looked up again and the guy was now positioned at the other side of the doors, as if getting a better viewing angle would help things. Sadly it didn't improve anything, the doors closed and the train moved off.
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| I took this picture of a frog that decided to join me one evening, and attach himself to my fly-screen door. I don't think he was poisonous. |
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| At the end of February, I went to see Slipknot. I think this is quite a cool photo. |
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| A local Thai restaurant, in which I thought the logo largely resembled a penis. I've eaten there, and can confirm that the food is ok - this is just a bad choice of logo. |
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| It was my birthday recently. Some friends made me an amazing cake of a spider on a ladies' hand. |
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| Not a TV channel devoted to blow jobs, but TVB for kids... |
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| For ANZAC Day I went down to one of my friend's beach house, near to Stanwell Beach. This was the view from his top floor balcony. It was such a beautiful location, surrounded by hills on the other side. |
Back at the end of 2011, I went shooting with a few friends. We shot the standard Magnums, shotguns and 9mm semi-autos. This video is of one of the gun club members shooting his 500 cal magnum. It was loud. You could feel the shockwaves.
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