(no subject)
Sisuphos' greatest train journeys, number 1:
As I went to a special school for the super-intelligent (imagine the most nerdish, socially-inept boy in your year, then fill a whole school full of them), I had to travel some miles to get there. In my early years I took a school bus. There was only one bus in the morning, and one in the evening. So if you missed the bus, then you had to find some alternative method of transportation.
I was in my first year, I had stayed behind late for some super-intelligent activity (such as chess, debating or *advanced* dungeons and dragons), and had missed the bus. I was now cutting it fine for the next train. I half-ran to the station, waited impatiently whilst the machine printed my ticket, and ran to platform one from where the trains for my home town departed. Or so I thought: I didn't realise that just because the previous two trains I had taken home had departed from platform one did not mean that all trains that departed from platform one were for my home town. I had barely got on the old slam-door train, the door was not even fully closed, when it started moving.
Disconcerted by the still ajar door, I became increasingly worried when the train did not stop at the next station, or the next, and the third was an unfamiliar stop. I worried for a while, and then I pulled the emergency cord. The train ground to a halt. A few minutes later, an irate guard swung in through the door.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he said angrily.
I burst into tears.
His expression softened slightly, and he shook his head from side to side: "Why couldn't you pull it in a station? Just wait here till we get to Charing Cross Station."
He swung out of the door.
A few minutes later the train pulled into the terminus. A member of the railway staff was waiting on the platform to meet me. He told me that in the evening rush hour, as far more people want to leave London than want to go there, they run empty trains up to town, and that is what I had caught. He took me to the police office by a ridiculously circuitous series of back passages, when we could have just walked about twenty yards across the concourse. A female police sergeant wrote my details in a book, and then phoned my parents.
"Hello, Mrs Sisuphos. This is the British Transport Police. It's about your son." (I suspect that my mother was somewhat worried at this point.) "Nothing to worry about, he's just had a bit of an adventure..."
They put me on to my mother. She told me I was an idiot.
I was placed on a train to my home town. To make sure I didn't get in any trouble, I was put at the rear of the train with the guard. As this was a train that could be driven from either end, he showed me how to drive the train from his set of controls.
I subsequently learnt that I had pulled the emergency cord at the peak of rush hour at a bottleneck, just coming into central London, where there are only two lines - one of the busiest parts of the British rail network. My father was a quarter of an hour late home that evening, as were thousands of other people, all as a result of my actions. This is possibly the biggest impact I have ever had on the world.
As I went to a special school for the super-intelligent (imagine the most nerdish, socially-inept boy in your year, then fill a whole school full of them), I had to travel some miles to get there. In my early years I took a school bus. There was only one bus in the morning, and one in the evening. So if you missed the bus, then you had to find some alternative method of transportation.
I was in my first year, I had stayed behind late for some super-intelligent activity (such as chess, debating or *advanced* dungeons and dragons), and had missed the bus. I was now cutting it fine for the next train. I half-ran to the station, waited impatiently whilst the machine printed my ticket, and ran to platform one from where the trains for my home town departed. Or so I thought: I didn't realise that just because the previous two trains I had taken home had departed from platform one did not mean that all trains that departed from platform one were for my home town. I had barely got on the old slam-door train, the door was not even fully closed, when it started moving.
Disconcerted by the still ajar door, I became increasingly worried when the train did not stop at the next station, or the next, and the third was an unfamiliar stop. I worried for a while, and then I pulled the emergency cord. The train ground to a halt. A few minutes later, an irate guard swung in through the door.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he said angrily.
I burst into tears.
His expression softened slightly, and he shook his head from side to side: "Why couldn't you pull it in a station? Just wait here till we get to Charing Cross Station."
He swung out of the door.
A few minutes later the train pulled into the terminus. A member of the railway staff was waiting on the platform to meet me. He told me that in the evening rush hour, as far more people want to leave London than want to go there, they run empty trains up to town, and that is what I had caught. He took me to the police office by a ridiculously circuitous series of back passages, when we could have just walked about twenty yards across the concourse. A female police sergeant wrote my details in a book, and then phoned my parents.
"Hello, Mrs Sisuphos. This is the British Transport Police. It's about your son." (I suspect that my mother was somewhat worried at this point.) "Nothing to worry about, he's just had a bit of an adventure..."
They put me on to my mother. She told me I was an idiot.
I was placed on a train to my home town. To make sure I didn't get in any trouble, I was put at the rear of the train with the guard. As this was a train that could be driven from either end, he showed me how to drive the train from his set of controls.
I subsequently learnt that I had pulled the emergency cord at the peak of rush hour at a bottleneck, just coming into central London, where there are only two lines - one of the busiest parts of the British rail network. My father was a quarter of an hour late home that evening, as were thousands of other people, all as a result of my actions. This is possibly the biggest impact I have ever had on the world.