Dead lates, followed by dead earlies, followed by more dead lates... *groan* Still, a few interesting snippets that I really should have written about earlier:

I've now been out on the platforms for six months... as evidenced by the fact that I have to be re-familiarised with each station now before I can work it. Station familiarisation must be done every six months and involves one of the station supervisors taking you round the station and ensuring you know the layout and where important things like the Staff Assembly Points, fire extinguishers and tea kettles are. Obviously this is quite in depth the first time you do it, but when you've been working at a station fairly constantly over six months anyway it's a bit less crucial, and only the important things are covered, rather than having to point out the mess room and everything that's covered the first time! When signing on for work we have to write down the date we were last familiarised, and for the past six months, I've had it easy: having done all seven familiarisations in one day, I've had only one date to remember. Now, they're scattered all over the place!

I'm still waiting for Occupational Health to call about the medical that I may or may not need. This waiting is almost worse than waiting for the results of the interview and assessments in the first place...

Last night I had a young girl throw up in the ticket hall; I was kicking myself because as she came through the gate with her dad she was making an odd noise, but I thought it was a cough - had I clicked I *might* have got her to the staff toilets in time. Still, it wasn't too bad; I put whiteboards up around the mess since I had no other wet floor signs or anything, and then got the girl a drink of water and a chair to sit on for a while. Unfortunately we had no cleaner on station so the supervisor had to call for one from a different station, which meant it was quite a while before the mess was cleaned up. Not long after the incident I went on my break and apparently the girl's mother came down while I was in the messroom and asked the CSA on the gate to thank me for helping - it's always nice to be appreciated!

Monday night I was at Oakwood and ended up on the platform for quite a lot of the shift because some cabling to the OPO monitors - the screens the driver uses to see when it's safe to close the doors - had been damaged and there were no images. The mirror doesn't cover the whole length of the platform well enough to make it safe to rely on it alone, so I was down there from about 17:20 to 18:00, and again from 19:00 to 22:00... an hour off for break, back down again at 23:00, and finished with the last train into Central London at midnight. During the first stint I didn't wave many trains through because an incident at Arnos Grove - apparently a customer with a knife! - held all the westbound up for a while. I had a nice long chat with the driver stuck in station and we found out more about the incident from the train radio than we did from anywhere else.

The weather was cold but bearable until it started to rain at 21:00, bleh. I was also chilly because I'd dressed for a night in the ticket hall and heated box - short sleeved blouse, skirt and socks instead of tights since most of my tights have holes in and I haven't bought replacements yet. I did have my blazer but my large overcoat was in my car - parked at Oakwood, but I didn't bother getting it out and find it a hassle to wear anyway because it's so frelling huge on me. Of course, even once the waving out was done, I was still down there every ten minutes or so to tip out stablers. I just hope I haven't got a cold now...!

I had a heart stopping moment when, while answering a passenger's question about alternative routes given the Victoria Line closure, I glanced up and saw someone on the staff only side of the grey platform end barriers. I started heading down there but he walked out nonchalantly. I asked him not to do it again and he was obviously drunk and barely made it onto the train that showed up a moment later without falling over. I felt a bit queasy because if he'd fallen over there, or decided to go wandering on the track, things could have got very messy.

No doubt there's plenty of interesting things that I've forgotten to write about. Tough!