The Guard, The Charades and The Gate That Was Barred

Let me set the sceeeeeeeene...

T'was a crisp morning on the day of Mon and once more dear friends, the ineptitude of TFL was in full swing.

The Vicky line was out between Victoria and Brixton due to “signal failures at Victoria.” Of all the bungling inadequate half arsed ham-fisted incompetence!! Fucking-useless-empty-headed-fluff-brained-POINTLESS-TURDS!! (internalised I most charitably, with my usual mixture of philanthropy and patience.)

Harry and I decided to get a bus to Elephant and Castle from where I could get on the Bakerloo line.

Oh if only t’were that simple… but as we are all painfully aware, the garden path of life is rarely straightforward and consequently the occasional snail of fortune will invariably be squished under the boot of circumstance.

Upon reaching the Bakerloo line platform, I heard the cheerful announcement that "normal service has resumed on the Victoria line."

Not severe delays, or even minor delays. Oh no. NORMAL FECKING SERVICE.

Bastards.

My hangover, which had been so easily dissipated by our sojourn into the fresh, unsullied morning on the look out for the 415 bus, reprised itself like some insane Mafioso with a vendetta of the cruellest retribution shooting my skull up from the inside.

Having finally staggered onto the Central line for the last leg of my epic journey, once more the nasal whinings of the TFL tosspots could be heard above my mp3 player as we stalled in the middle of a tunnel…

Defective train at Marble Arch.

Yes.

“I’m sorry ladies and gentlemen, we’re not sure how long we will be held in this tunnel. There is a defective train at Marble Arch and we will be held here until the platform is clear…”

Fifteen minutes later we finally got moving again. But this was not to be the final sting of the proverbial bee, oh no.

On arrival at White City tube station, I made my way to the North Gate entrance of the Television Centre. This entrance has several obstacles to overcome:

(a) The outer gate which you must use your pass to open, both from outside and inside...
(b) …followed by those revolving jobbies with the metal bars, which again you use your pass to get through.

The first gate was already open…it’s a bit of a grandpa gate which takes a while to close; someone had obviously just beeped through meaning that it was still standing open. I walked through the pre-opened gate and tried to beep through the revolving doors, but for some reason my pass didn’t work. As I was trying to beep through again, I heard the gate behind me slowly grating to a close. Uh oh... I tried my pass at the outside gate, with the same result (i.e., NONE!)

No security guard in the adjoining hut. No other BBC colleagues coming through. Can’t beep out of the gate, can’t beep through the revolving doors.

Fuck.

…It took me about five minutes but I finally managed to flag down a guard who had returned to the security hut.

Picture this: I’m banging on the window to alert his attention, he’s trying to open the window so he can hear me but having little success (the window was taped shut on the outside... something which he clearly hadn't tumbled to…) and I’m leaping about, pointing at my pass and making chopping signals with my hands, trying to indicate that it’s broken.

I then spent some time (with some truly imaginative gesticulations) trying to communicate that he couldn't open the window, to which he kept shrugging and pointing to his ears (translation: I can't understand you bitch, quit jumping around like a loon.)

Eventually he had an overdue attack of the smarts and decided that whilst our game of "spastic charades" was indeed entertaining (at least to the little group of pedestrians who had gathered at the gate to observe the scene) it was, in terms of resolving matters, proving to be fruitless.

So he came out of the hut and spoke to me face to face. To give him credit for perseverance (and very little else), it took him an extraordinarily long time to take this rather obvious course of action... I suppose he didn't like the idea of being beaten by a window.

As soon as he had admitted to his physical inferiority to inorganic products of fusion, I was let out and allowed to go through to the main reception, where strangely enough my pass worked fine. Of course it bloody did.

All in all, a truly comedic morning. So, to wrap this up ladies and jelly spoons, this concludes the exciting episode of:

"MY GAME OF CHARADES WITH A RETARDED GUARD"

... and ...

"MY ARSE OF A PASS AND THE GATE BOLTED FAST!"

Thank you.