if there's one thing I hate...

...it's people who use my doors on the train. Yes, MY doors. The ones I specifically use. Okay - yes, a regular London Underground train has around 26 sets of doors, but everyone has their own door. It's the one that opens onto the exit and gets you out as quickly as possible. London Underground knows this. They know passengers have these little foibles. They even have a name for it: critical doors (there's also critical seats, but that's another story). Critical doors are those doors everyone wants to use, and the reason LU asks passengers to "move along the platform and use all available doors to board the train". In my case, it's the set of Northern line doors that pulls up right underneath the train indicator on the ceiling at Charing Cross. Because when I get out of those doors at Embankment, I can walk straight onto the escalator out of the station. This means I don't get stuck behind the slow, stupid, and generally ignorant herds who like to shuffle along platforms and corridors as if the rest of us have nothing better to do. (Sadly, cattle prods are cumbersome and probably illegal.) The trouble is, some of these people think they have a divine right to use my personal double doors. To add insult to injury, when the train pulls in at Embankment, they don't shoot out of the train and up the escalator like a bullet from a gun (as I do, with not inconsiderable athleticism). They slowly, arduously dismount from the train, like the Queen getting out of a horsedrawn carriage. They then pause in the doorway to arrange themselves. And finally, they shuffle forward. In the meantime, fast-moving bods trying to get from A-Z (like me) have swarmed off the rest of the train and got ahead of me. Those doors are mine. Yeah, the one's underneath the train describer at Charing Cross, going south. Don't even look at them. I sincerely hope this is the last time we have to talk about this.

if there's one thing I hate... is a new, regular column, the sole purpose of which is for me to vent my spleen.