I miss you TFL

Published in The London Metro, 3rd May, 2011

There’s a lot I miss about London. Since I left three months ago I haven’t had a decent curry or watched a game of football. I miss free museums and the little off-licence down the road. I miss Boris Johnson’s hair. But most of all I miss Transport for London.

In the rushed and often insular world of London, you were like a mother to me TFL. An annoying, monotonous, nagging mother at times, sure. Occasionally bordering on OCD; a little passive aggressive perhaps. But a mother none the less – caring and well meaning, loving and respectful. You soothed me when I was lonely, you held my hand when I was lost, you reassured me when the thought of catching the tube across London in peak hour seemed all too hard.

I swore at you sometimes. I often used your name in vain. Once, when you cancelled the Circle Line at 5:30pm on a Friday, I may have used the letters T, F and L to come up with more colourful acronyms. In fact, I think I Totally F***ing Lost-it. But, like a teenager who has moved out of home only to find that Mum actually did quite a lot, I realise now how much I miss you.

I miss your constant chatter, your caring reminders, your statements of the bleeding obvious. I miss being told, incessantly, to let passengers off the train before boarding. I miss being made aware, again and again, of the gap between the train and the platform. I miss being advised to bring a water bottle in hot weather. I miss being told to check for my belongings at the end of the line (but strangely not at any other stop).

I miss the advance notice of station closures. I was in New York recently and arrived at a station to find a tiny A4 print out Sellotaped to a pole advising that the station was closed. In London you would have given me six week’s warning, posted messages on industrial sized whiteboards, sent me text messages and emails and employed a man on a megaphone to shout in my ear about it for weeks, even if the station was in Zone 9 on the other side of the city.

I miss your well-mannered posters apologising for the morning’s delays and begging for forgiveness. I miss the TFL guy at my local station who told me not only which train was approaching but also all of the subsequent stops, even though they were written in big block letters on the poster across the track.

I miss hearing that, apart from planned engineering works on the Central, Circle, District, Piccadilly, Hammersmith & City, Bakerloo, Victoria and Jubilee lines, there is a good service on all London Underground lines.

I miss being told to alight here for Buckingham Palace. I miss the word alight.

I miss standing on the right of escalators and smugly watching tourists who don’t.

I miss the accepted code of conduct on your trains. In New York there was a guy who loudly and confidently said “excuse me” and “God bless” as he walked down the train. How awkward.

I miss hearing that Blackfriers will be closed until late 2011. I miss knowing exactly how many steps there are to the platform. I miss the tube map, not least because it gives tourists the impression it’s worth changing trains to get from Leicester Square to Covent Garden, even though it’s only 300 m away.

I miss the rude old hag on the PA system in lifts who shouts “Do NOT obstruct the doors, please”. It brings back memories of my school days. I miss the word Cockfosters.

Now, living in Melbourne, I’m lost and lonely. The public transport system here has none of the chatter, not a bit of the personality, none of the comforting reminders and the signage is rubbish. I don’t know when to get on, I don’t know which side to stand on and I don’t know what to do with the gap between the platform and the train. God knows what I’ll do in hot weather.

TFL, we’ve had our difficult moments. There was that time when I snuck out of work in my lunch hour to go to the bank only to get stuck between Edgware Road and Baker Street for a full 45 minutes. Or those days when you went on strike for no apparent reason. But I’m willing to gloss over all of that. TFL, my friend, come and visit me in Melbourne. Please. I miss you.

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