Good news for regular users of Euston station in London! One day they will die. Then they won’t have to go to Euston station ever again. Most Observer readers have probably been to Euston station at some point in their lives but I do advise any of you who haven’t to stick that fact on the list the next time you count your blessings. It’s horrible. Its architects have managed to design a place compared with which arriving in Birmingham seems nice.
Nevertheless, humanity being such a relentlessly self-defeating species, this nasty building bizarrely suffers from a phenomenon known as the “Euston rush”, when it becomes even more unpleasant, and potentially dangerous, because there are so many people there. So many thousands of people desperately trying to be in Euston station for thousands of different reasons of their own. But also, in a way, the same reason: they go to Euston station in the hope of leaving it as soon as possible. So a glimmer of sanity there.
And last week there was even better news than the sweet release of death when Network Rail, which owns and runs the station, proudly announced that the Euston rush was “on its way out”. Slightly confusing of them to use an exiting metaphor to refer to a problem at least partly caused by people exiting. But I get the point. They’re saying it’s going to happen less.
But why? Are the public coming to their senses? Is gen Z’s heightened feeling of self-worth starting to prevail? Perhaps people are deciding they don’t want to spend any more of their lives squeezing into this bleak building like crazed pilgrims into a macabre cathedral but without the promise of salvation or even the reasonable chance of a coffee. But no: that wasn’t what Network Rail were announcing at all. Their idea is that the Euston rush will be eased by letting people on to the trains 20 minutes early.
This seems a bit shit. The solution to the crushing horribleness of being in Euston station is to persuade people to be there 20 minutes longer than they have to. Why should they volunteer to get up earlier every morning to go and sit on a stationary train to stare out at the platform and watch the strip lights flicker and the rusty canopies drip? Will they be compensated for their time? Is it for this experience that we pay such astronomical prices for our train tickets?
Some people will do it, though. Many of us have a madness for doing things early that the modern age is happy to indulge. You have to get to the airport at least two hours early because otherwise the security staff won’t have enough time to suck every last ounce of anticipatory joy out of your holiday experience. Please begin queueing as soon as you can to get the full benefit of strangers in black uniforms implying you might be a suicide bomber merely because you made the wrong gamble about whether this was one of the days they make you take off your shoes.
Beat the Christmas rush by doing all the present shopping in September and then wrapping it early so you don’t have a panic on Christmas Eve, with the gift receipts included, and then, actually, now it’s wrapped, you may as well just give it all out so that’s done. Then people can exchange it for what they really wanted in good time so that when it comes to Christmas there is nothing left to do but sit.
Except food! How do we get ahead with food? Well, thanks to the internet, invitations from supermarkets to book your Christmas delivery slots come earlier and earlier, so we can start worrying about the late December availability of pigs in blankets even as we attempt to relax in the carcinogenic sunshine while contemplating what time on Tuesday we should leave for the airport in order to make Wednesday’s flight.
Why not book next Christmas’s delivery while we’re at it? Then you won’t have to worry next summer. People are already reserving their 2025 turkeys – you don’t want to end up with a scrawny one full of antibiotics. You need to put your name down for one now, even before it’s hatched. Quickly think through the Christmas guest list: a couple of elderly relations may have died by then but it’s always nice to have some cold on Boxing Day… If we count anyone over 80 as half a person… plus a bit extra… sod it, let’s go for the six kilo. In fact let’s get it all done: work out the full Christmas lunch list and order it for the next 30 years – what does it matter if the puddings keep turning up after you’ve died yourself? It all comes off the estate before inheritance tax.
It’s never too early to start planning. There’s a staff shortage so try to avoid busy times. Make your requests early, gradually and, preferably, in alphabetical order. Book a table online. We’ll need it back after 90 minutes. The menu’s on the website so you can text through your order in advance and then, if you’re running late, we can eat it for you. Then it’s done.
Thanks to smartphones, these are all things the people turning up 20 minutes early can be organising as they wait for the train to heat up, and listen to the intermittent beeping of the automatic doors, and feel the carriage get fuller and fuller around them and the windows get covered in condensation from the sweaty panting of the less foresighted, and therefore probably Covid-bearing, so that they can’t even look across the platforms and see fellow early arrivers crammed against their own train windows sending out save-the-date emails for the birthdays of children as yet unborn and then, seeing as they’ve still got five minutes, starting to plan their own funerals so that they can just get ahead on this stuff and book a nice grave somewhere easy for people to visit – and in fact there’s an app for getting flowers put on it automatically – and then, instead of going home one night, just head there and lie in it. All ready, everything done, finished.
