I caught the 6am train from Runcorn yesterday, to get to the London Book Fair for 9am; I had composed a letter to the editor of my local paper about the ghastly ordeal of the rush hour before I'd got to Euston, so confident was I that the tube at 8.15am would be hell on earth. Wrong. It was really quite civilised - no shoving, even room to read the paper in comfort. Where was everyone? Was it Sunday? Was it Christmas? Was it a parallel universe?
No - just late. When I lived in London, most people got to work for 9am. These days only London laggards and country mice are still commuting at such a decadently late hour. This became clear at the end of the day when I caught the tube back to Euston at 7pm and the place was crammed with worker bees released from the hive, a good 90 minutes later than the 1980s norm.
So I can still write my hurrah-I-don't-live-in-London-any-more letter to the editor of the Liverpool Daily Post. For a while there I thought I'd have to revise my prejudices about my erstwhile and unlamented home, but I'm safe after all.
