An announcement on the tannoy at West Ham station as we slog across the bridge between the main rail platform and the Jubilee Line cautioning people not to run and jump anywhere in the station. Burdened as we are with two heavily laden wheelie suitcases with hefty bags perched on top (and a shopping trolley for all those extra things we might find a use for back at the flat) and looking around at all the other passengers determinedly trudging for A to B, or B to A, heads down, no nonsense, mindless commuting, this strikes us as a superfluous comment.

Knowing of someone who was killed in an escalator accident, I know that it isn’t.

Nevertheless, it conjures an image of a happier world in which it would not be necessary. One in which passengers leap and dance across the concourse with safety and impunity like the cast of Fame or the Jolly Fisherman, frolic in and out of the lifts, bound along the corridors – while always keeping to the Left of course – like a corps de ballet – and land triumphantly on the platforms like Simone Biles after another Olympic Gold winning performance. All journeys by dancing parkour.

The Jolly Fisherman (now the mascot for the town) from the 1908 “Skegness, its so bracing” poster by John Hassall for the Great Northern Railway. Joie de vivre in the rain.

On the platform of the Hammersmith and City line, a very short man is wearing a black hoody emblazoned with the slogan “overcome your fear of heights”.

Outside the Ya Hela dessert place on Kingsbury Road, a group of heavy set, balding mustachioed geezers hunched over coffees; one of them looking like he’s picking his fingernails with a screwdriver.

A little further down an old Chinese lady is laboriously and slowly crossing the road, pushing a huge rectangular shopping trolley that almost comes up to her chin and is fully laden. A bloke approaching on a moped, rather than slow down or weave a little to his right to avoid her, beeps at her – presumably on the presumption that she is a disguised athlete who can just skip out of his way. J offers her some help and she smiles, as people do when you see them.

The new double decker bike shed outside Kingsbury station doesn’t get a lot of direct use, but since its been up, its guarantee of a place to lock your bike has meant that the extended stands to its East have been far busier and there has often been a herd of Lime bikes parked brightly in the space to its West. Lime bikes seem to be getting a lot more use now, and I haven’t seen any of them dumped carelessly across paths like I used to; campaigns to get them banned because of that having fallen thankfully flat. Proof that, as with so much in life, the key to success is having some reserves.