Travel Writing.

I had reached song 7 and my timing was only out by 1 minute and 20 seconds, until disaster struck. At first I thought that it was a joke or she had made a mistake but the lady at the front who shouted "THE ******* IDIOT HAS JUMPED ON THE TRACK!!" was telling the truth. A over weight man in his late 30's possibly early 40's had spread himself over the tracks in a very poor suicide attempt and now that he was being asked to remove himself from the track he started kicking out and remained laying o the track.

You might find this selfish and horrible but I was not happy, I had gone from song 7 to song 9 and we had only moved a length of a football pitch. It had thrown my timing way off course.

As people started gathering around and blocking my view of the track, police and ambulance sirens began to get louder and louder until a police car screeched to a halt right outside my window. Instead of looking at my watch to get a glimpse of the time I looked at my MiniDisc player, and sure enough I was going to be very late, in fact while I was still outside East Croydon station I should have been approaching Wimbledon Tram station getting ready for my 10 minute walk to my workplace.

Many stories have a superhero and a happy ending and this one is no different even though at this point in the journey chances of a happy ending were looking very, very slim.

My new mobile phone began to vibrate in my pocket so I began the struggle with my trousers pocket zip to try and free my mobile, After a embarrassing battle I freed my mobile and answered me phone. "Adam, where are you? I've been waiting at the station for half an hour! And to top it all off there's been an accident down the road, we're going to be late, where are you?" At that point I froze for a second then burst out in a fit of laughter, everyone o the tram then looked round at me wondering whether I was having a fit or whether I was laughing at the suicidal man's misfortunes. I have to say I have never felt so embarrassed in all my life, so I made a dash for the door and jumped off the tram. "Adam, talk to me!" my dad continued to shout down the phone, "Oh sorry dad, I was just getting of the tram"

"The tram?? I told you last night that work is closed today! In case you forgot we're going up to my mums!"

I hung up and began to walk back up the hill to the station just laughing to myself, I had totally forgotten about my dad's phone call last night about work being closed and that we were going to go and see my grandparents!

I wish I had had a camera to take a photo of my dad's face when I opened the car door, sat in the seat, smiled and said "C'mon dad were late, my MiniDisc has stopped"

Adam Charlton Travel Writing 30/04/2007