I got a call from Wood Lane at BAN EB to tell me that I’d be met at LIS by station staff to investigate a report that some “Eastern European” men were being “aggressive” in Car 5.  At STP I’d noticed four men get off Car 5 who seemed to be engaged in a highly animated conversation, lots of finger pointing, confrontational body language, the sort of thing you learn to recognise when you’ve worked on a ticket barrier for five years.  I told Wood Lane that I thought they’d already left the train and said the same thing to the Super at LIS after he’d failed to find anything.  The BTP were also in attendance but I have no idea if they went off in pursuit of the offensive foursome or not.

Later at GRE WB I was closing the doors when a man staggered off the train around car 3, fell back onto the closing doors and then pitched forward again.  He was assisted to the bench on the platform by some other passengers and was sitting down on his own when I left.  I called Wood Lane to ask them to inform the Super at GRE that the first possible drunk of the evening had arrived and was at the far end of the platform, when I returned he was gone.  Once more I have no idea of the outcome, whether he was drunk or ill, whether he needed help or whether he left under his own steam but that is the nature of the job, we see things, we report them but rarely do we ever find out what happened.

Maybe I should start a book; “Half-finished tales of the Tube”.  Speaking of books I can thoroughly recommend Morrissey’s Autobiography, I’m not going to hazard a guess how much of it is true or how much of it is a product of his glorious imagination but it’s a beautiful example of the man’s love of words, like a Smiths song that goes on for 600+ pages.  If you like the Smiths buy it for someone you love, if you don’t then buy it for someone you loathe.