Fear on the Tube

It’s quite a horrid place at the best of times, but travel on the London Underground has become really more fraught than ever now. This article from BBC News Online is an excellent summary of how people are feeling, and how odd the situation can become.

I have a particular problem to face this coming Friday – I need to go from home to the office, and from there to Heathrow to leave on holiday for 2 weeks – large rucksack needed to transport clothes, laptop, inline skates etc. My concern is that the security guards at the office are going to freak out when they see someone with a huge rucksack approach, and am then going to have to go through everything I have in the bag in the absence of a bag scanner. And as for how people are going to behave in the Tube?

We have to be careful – sure. But how much paranoia can we allow ourselves?