Concrete Pencil: Light relief

Not that I didn't try to persevere, although much as I loved striding past the Tower in the snow on the way to Gateway, the extra half-hour it added to my day started being a bit of a drag.

So I had to take the Jubbly. With its absurd distance from desk to train. With its queues at the bottom of the elevator and its silly perspex protector doors and its grey and lemon colour scheme and its human drivers.

And it meant changing at London Bridge, with its Everest of staircases and colony of midnight mice (Northern Line northbound at last Tube: 20 at least.) And the queues in the morning. And the people. People on the DLR are just nicer. It must have some sort of civilising influence, to be above-ground and to be moving slower but arriving quicker.
In short, it's been hell. So praise the almighty.

I remembered it was back on February 1, though judging by the lack of crowds others didn't. (Either that or I'd got so used to crushing on to the Jubilee that moderate DLR traffic seems like a holiday. Or my fellow DLRers were so impressed by the JLE, as we used to call it, that they are sticking with it. They are welcome to it, the fools.)

So on Monday: I proudly got off at Bank for my short change from the Northern.

And there she was. Lewisham. Going in no minutes. The Train Captain held it for the few of us just coming down from upstairs. (They're just nice, the DLR people. How come they're so nice?)

And I was in the tunnel. And I was out, aloft above western Docklands, looking down on the cab carwash and Cable Street and Limehouse Marina and that nursery and Dockmasters House.

We did the turn around West India Quay rather than go into it - which I still find strangely exciting - and then I was beneath Norman Foster's great canopy.

Then it happened. My reward, for waiting so uncomplainingly for her return.

I wanted, on my way to work, to pop downstairs and pick up a reasonably-priced latte and a bottle of Evian, from somewhere I'd be chided for not having the right change ready. But I had no cash, so I needed to go to a cashpoint: either, I calculated, Abbey (or, you know, Santander) all the way downstairs. Or Tesco. Downstairs, through doors, up escalator. A shame, because you can see the cashpoints from the platform I was on.

Hang on a minute. Stratford train, coming through. It's a single line between my platform and Tesco. The train stops. I use it as my very own temporary bridge, just as I had always wanted to, for all my 10 years on the Rail.

I don't know why, it just put me in a good mood for the week. Welcome back.