It’s 11pm, as I leave a certain broadcasting centre in West London. Time to go home. I take the tube; partly for cost reasons, and partly because of a rather nasty case of claustrophobia. The larger tube trains don’t set that off, you see. Either way, taking a taxi home after every late shift isn’t an option.
I get on the tube, and sit down. To my right are three people. None of them are wearing a mask. But hey, I’ve been the person saying that lung issues can be invisible, and that we shouldn’t leap to conclusions about people. Maybe they’re all exempt. I sit back with my book, and try not to think about it.
I’m soon at my interchange, and I quickly change lines. Annoyingly, my next train is at a different platform to normal; I have to run up some stairs. My lungs protest – I have some nasty scarring from pneumonia back in 2016 – but I manage to make it with about half a minute to spare.
We move off. At the next station, somebody comes aboard and sits in front of me. They’re wearing a mask. Good. I concentrate on my book. Until I suddenly become aware of somebody else sitting to my right… without a mask. But, y’know. I have lung issues myself – I manage to wear a mask, but it can be uncomfortable at times – but you wouldn’t know it to look at me. Maybe they’re exempt.
My stop. Thankfully. I can relax a little. I walk briskly out of the station… and into a group of people playing football with a plastic pint glass, and yelling. Well, we’re outside, masks aren’t really required, are they? I pick myself through the group – a little too close for comfort when there’s a lot of them, but whatever – and head for home.
But as I get to the traffic lights, two people cut across me. They’re not wearing masks, either… and they’re heading directly for the pub opposite. “You got your mask?”, asks one to the other.
The other bursts out laughing. “No!” And off they trot.
And that was my journey home from work tonight. A journey made by a key worker, who has zero opportunity to work from home. A journey made just at the point where a second wave of Covid has frankly already started. A journey made by someone who already has lungs which are shot to hell and back.
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By the way, they were all men.