I was running slightly late for work today. Not so late that eyebrows would be raised, but late enough that I would be able to get on the Northern Line at Clapham North without being asfixy asphyxiay suffocated by a crowd of angry commuters. Or so I thought.

I rounded the corner to the station to see that the shutters were half closed. Not a good sign. Venturing closer in some vain hope that any problems were limited to the Southbound service, I found that the line was suspended up to Stockwell due to "passenger action" - quite the type of action was not explained, be it industrial, affirmative or pump. This was, however, beside the point, in all likelihood it was a fluffy euphimism for the older, decidedly less pleasant term "person under a train".

Fine, I thought, Stockwell's only a short walk north, I can handle that. And was slightly pleased that the train would likely be completely empty. I was half right. After getting mixed up about exactly which platform I should wait on - being in a hurry causing a strange form of temporary dyspraxia - I took a seat on a terminated southbound train that was to be imminently repurposed to go back north.

We sat patiently for a few minutes, smug at attaining seats at this time on a Monday, until the train had a sudden change of heart and decided it was going south after all. So hundreds of eager (read: late) commuters dutifully marched across to the Northbound platform - which, being entirely in tunnels with off-grey tiled walls, seemed a really long way.

The sudden re-repurposing of the train left something of a gap in the service. After five minutes of waiting, an empty Northbound train came into the station, and then went straight back out again without stopping. So we had to wait a further five or so minutes for the next train to arrive (with a running commentary of where it was from the platform staff - who probably shared our ire), this train was invariably rammed, and I was typically stood furthest from the door, so I had to wait for the next train.

Despite there being several of us stood back from the door of a train clearly crowded to Tokyo-ian(?) levels, one woman decided she would still have a try, and stepped around us before poking at gaps in the crowd with her body in a vain attempt to fit inside. Her grim determination might have impressed me, had she not implied by her actions that she thought I was fatter than her - bitch.

The staff announced that they were very sorry for the inconvenience...