Danger! Moving Parts

On Friday night I got off the tube at my home station at the same time as a mother and her small daughter, aged about four.  The mother was pushing an enormous buggy and the daughter was trailing a small (although it looked very large against her) pink wheelie case.  They got to the bottom of the escalator marginally before I did, and the mother urged her daughter to walk onto the escalator in front of her, while she followed on behind.  As I usually do, I moved into the fast lane and prepared to walk up the escalator.  However, as I did so, disaster struck.  The daughter made her way onto the escalator, and tried to turn to face her mother.  However, she had placed her feet just over the join of a step, and, as the escalator began to rise and the steps split, she lost her balance, falling face first back down the escalator.  There was an immediate terrified wail, as she felt herself falling, and she tried to scramble back towards her mother, but was unable to do so.  She was therefore stuck, head facing down the escalator, legs tangled up in her bag, crying her eyes out.  The mother was hampered by the buggy that she was pushing so, in a split second decision, I stepped in to help.

The girl was, luckily, a total sweetie.  I know many children that would have refused help from a strange adult, but she accepted the hand I offered and didn’t mind at all when I picked her up bodily, as being the only way to get her upright again.  We disentangled her feet from her bag handle and the wails of fear stopped, to be replaced by tears of pain, as she realised that she’d banged her knee as she fell.  There was a beautifully touching childlike moment as she pointed to her knee, just assuming that, because I’m a grown-up, I could make it all better.  As we reached the top of the escalator I took her bag and offered her my hand, which she trustingly took, and we made it safely off the top.

As we turned to look back down the steps and wait for her mother to arrive, I suddenly felt awkward.  My instinct was to give the girl a hug -  she was clearly far more shaken than physically hurt, so all she really needed was comfort – but such is my ingrained London-ness nowadays that I half expected to be given a mouthful of abuse for touching someone else’s child.  Thankfully, however, the mother was also lovely, and gave me a big smile and a thank you before comforting her daughter.  A happy ending.

Gritty Southern Drama

I live very close to Kilburn High Road, and walk along it every morning as I go to the tube. One of the interesting things about Kilburn High Road (and one of the reasons it was a bit shit for many years) is that it is the dividing line between Brent and Camden authorities, and so neither really wanted to take responsibility for it. Anyway, it received a grant all of its very own a few years ago and has been being improved ever since – although I do miss the shitness at times. It’s lovely having a Caffe Nero etc, but the character’s rather gone. Anyway, I digress.

It was icy this morning, as expected. I had worn my Cat boots in readiness. These, combined with fishnet tights and a pinstripe skirt, made me look like a bit of a twat, but at least I didn’t fall over, and I made it to work with warm, dry feet. These things matter in my old age. Anyway – once more, I digress.

I left my house, which is on a road on the Camden side of KHR. Plenty of snow still, and an awful lot of grey, frozen slush. Lovely. I stomped confidently in my big workman’s boots, sneering at the fools who had chosen to wear normal shoes. I then crossed the road, to the Brent side of KHR, and realised that there was something different about the surface underfoot. It was gritted. All at once it dawned on me: Brent have actually been gritting all winter. Camden – well, not so much. Suddenly the buses being taken off the roads yesterday made a lot more sense to me. Last night I pontificated to my mother on the fact that SURELY the main roads should all be salted and why on earth weren’t the buses running? However, when each bus is likely to be running through areas run by different authorities, there is no guarantee, if the difference between Brent and Camden is anything to go by.

Seems like local isn’t always better, after all.