I know, what was I thinking ...around here people usually throw themselves in front of trains at Balham.
I was in the front carriage of a train in 2014 when somebody thew themselves under a train. When I was a student in 1985-88, there seemed to be a lot of night-time incidents of that kind on the Victoria line (why that line - were the incidents distributed uniformly across all lines ?? ) .
Anyone who commutes into London from Croydon knows that there's a disproportionate amount of what the pre-recorded message describe as "incidents" at Balham, and that's been the case for many years - which is why, if there's a choice, I commute to London Bridge as that doesn't go anywhere near there. As for the trams, even though they've been a fixture in Croydon for fifteen years now, it's remarkable how often people don't check and just step into the road directly in front of them - and I don't mean the blind spot on Crown Hill, I mean the road leading down from East Croydon station where you have a clear view of a good couple of hundred yards in each direction. When I was studying in Sheffield there weren't a couple of dozen cases of people blundering in front of trams every year, yet in Croydon there is.
Is there something physical/structural that makes that station a magnet, or is it just cultural like Beachy Head (widely associated with the act so go there) ??
When I worked in London and had to commute from and to Ashford in Kent every bloody day it was always on a Friday evening when we had the 'jumpers'. Just when you wanted to get home for the weekend. It made it very difficult to feel sorry for them. What''s wrong with Monday morning?
Sitting in a cafe in Terminal 4 eating a £12.95 plate of haddock and chips washed down with a couple of pints of Guinness at £4.95 a pint. With prices like that i'm sort of glad i'm leaving. Tasty though.
you should have gone into any reasonable-sized Tesco en route and bought about 4 pints worth of bottles for 6 quid. <every little bit helps>
Have you ever tried getting through security with four pints of Guinness? When you get stopped and knock them straight down you get a personal security chap following you every where to go. The same thing happened to me at a Stranglers concert a few years back. Me and a mate took a gallon of cider and had to knock it back at the door. We got followed all evening by straight dressed women with radios sticking out of their handbags. Needless to say, neither of us scored but we tried like he'll for the crack.
Oh you would have had to have had your meal in whatever eateries there are before the security zone (dunno what said facilities are like in T4) .
Granada TV have just shown the draw for the 1992 Rumbelows Cup Q-F on Saint & Greavsie. Jimmy Greaves drew the home teams and the away teams were drawn by er, ............the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump The first tie drawn was Spurs v Norwich Bizarre.
Simply put, it's a station where you have a better chance of having a train to throw yourself in front of. Given the majority of trains that pass through Balham don't stop but are speeding towards one of Victoria, Gatwick or Brighton, and that there's two platforms serving three lines at the station, if someone is determined to end it they have a better chance of doing so at Balham compared to somewhere like Battersea Park where are much slower.
Well now I just feel sorry for the bloke... http://shop.tottenhamhotspur.com/product/spurs-soldado-t-shirt/bt10aw13?TRE00011
