the_central_line impossibility The day has been humid, the mists toxic. The roads are clogged, and my temples are throbbing. The vents above me pump out something they allegedly call air conditioning, but the conditioned air vacillates between arctic and rainforest. My hands are clammy, and the bones in my fingers are cracking at any sudden movement. There are only two thoughts running in ever-decreasing circles round my head - sleep or alcohol. The fact that I want to obliterate my mind with the latter worries me. It's becoming far too regular an option at the end of every week. "Take the sensible option. You're an adult, after all". I wander to the station, through a haze of watery droplets hitting my skin. It's almost soothing. The cars stack up in queues beside me, the grey faces of the commuters heading hopefully towards their weekend, fingers tapping the steering wheel, the faint sound of the headlines and the traffic news slipping through the fingernail gaps at the top of the windows. My mobile phone beeps into life. The obligatory text message from a friend. I'm touched by the thought, really I am. Would I like to come round for a drink? Would I? Of course I would. But my rational side (yes, I occasionally have one) is telling me to refuse. "You're in that sort of mood. You'll be talking drunken gibberish. You'll say something that you'll regret. You'll start on a bottle with a friend, and you won't stop until you've emptied the very last drop. Go home. Now." The barrier won't accept my ticket. It coughs the card up, flashing a red warning light at me. I can hear the audible sigh of the person behind me. I do the British thing and apologise - apologise for London Underground and their technical ineptitude - because that's what we've been brought up to do. We apologise for everything, no matter with whom the fault really lies. I smile to myself, bemused that a ticket crackdown requires approximately ten blue-uniformed staff to stand at the ticket barriers, yet no member of staff to man the ticket office. On the platform, I'm greeted almost immediately by the train I require. Truly, a rare occurence. I step through the sliding doors, and then it hits me. A graffiti-strewn carriage, filled with stale air and the unmistakeable smell of stale urine. The seats are sticky to the touch, and the vents are blowing in the muggy fumes from outside. Drunken city slickers - pissed on god-knows-what at only seven in the evening - sway unevenly at the opposite seats, laughing uproariously at absolutely nothing. The eight minutes of my journey pass at the sort of crawling pace that suits only too well the slow and sultry progress of the day thus far. And it's only when I emerge into the slightly sweeter-smelling air at my destination that I realise . . . 000908 ... . . 060224 ... marked . 060224 ... u24 i really liked that writing. 060224 what's it to you? who go blather from