This morning, between about 7am and 10, the Transport for London Twitter account (@TfLTravelAlerts, for future reference) looked like it was receiving the kind of vitriol usually reserved for the likes of Joey Barton, Piers Morgan and pro-life activists.
The District line – the Millennium Dome of the London underground but without the eventual conversion to useful national treasure - was delivering its latest nightmare to the thousands of us travelling in from Wimbledon via Earl’s Court.
My journey from East Putney to High Street Kensington should take about 20 minutes but ended up taking more than 90. I would have preferred to creep along at 2mph, progressing smugly like an iceberg. As it was we stopped every few hundred yards and listened, frowningly, to a slightly modified declaration from the driver.
“I suppose… all we can do here is persevere,” he said at about Fulham Broadway, as if we were all somehow responsible for our fates.
“F***ing horrified,” tweeted photographer Cat Linton to her followers. “Thinking about making another twitter specifically for my District Line rants.” she said.
Adam Marshall, a big name at the British Chambers of Commerce had already extrapolated the meaning of what was happening to us – this was about British competitiveness. “Thank you, London Underground, for undermining UK productivity by holding packed trains of worker bees on District Line for ages,” he tweeted, damningly.
The looming Games has altered the discourse of Underground moaning. In the past, the delayed masses cursed fares, and Boris, and Bob Crow but now we are all prophets of Olympic doom.
This morning’s District Line debacle was no mere disruption caused by “a temporary speed limit in place at Earl’s Court due to a track fault”. Clearly, it was a harbinger of Seb Coe’s apocalypse.
@JoshiHerrmann
