On Friday the annual travelcard on my Oyster card ran out. I actually debated with myself whether to cash it in when lockdown came, but you don't get the full amount back and I was still using it from time to time, and it didn't seem unthinkable that we would be back to some level of normality in a few months (a few months being one of those moveable feasts - a few months from now, and six weeks later a few months from then, and so on).
It saw a bit of action over the summer when the museums opened up, (the Kimono exhibition) and a couple of bus trips up the hill to Sutton High Street and over to Nonsuch Park; precisely two forays into the office where I also returned and picked up new library books, and also over to Southfields where I have a cousin whose garden I could sit in and drink wine, in that sunny period when we were allowed to sit in other people's gardens.
But mostly it lay dormant while I walked. I started shopping at the small Co-op and the Polish shop Pawelek with the nice bread, both of which I can comfortably do in my lunch break. Less often I took the slightly longer walk into Morden town centre to the chemists and the Sainsbury's after work. I ordered a veg box every week - something I'd thought about but never actually done as veg takes a while to prep and cook and it was easier to come home and have pasta and tinned tomatoes or soup or something.
And now my travelcard has conked. Apart from the remaining £5 top up - which I haven't used up yet - my Oyster is redundant. I can use my debit card if I need to go anywhere, and there is almost nowhere that I need to go.
I wonder will I ever get a travelcard again? Even if (fingers crossed) the vaccination program does mean that we can move more freely, breathe more easily, open shops and schools again, I can see office workers like myself being told to stay at home anyway. So many of us are turning in our work quite efficiently as we are, and the people who do have to be physically present (social care staff, builders, librarians, cleaners, etc) can be more safely distanced from one another both at work and also, importantly, on public transport, if we aren't clogging it up.
In a way I'm sad. I liked having a travelcard. It was like the key to the kingdom, the freedom of the city. You could look at the tube map and know you could travel anywhere within the grey band of Zone 4 (in fact, after his divorce my brother and I took trips out to the some of the edges of the tube map. Uxbridge and High Barnet and Upminster) without paying a penny more.
I need never go straight home from work. Could wander as far as Clapham or Notting Hill or Waterloo in the summer, pick up the tube or any of hundreds of buses, dip in and out of shops on the Kings Road for Christmas shopping, practice my 'life' drawing in the V&A galleries on their late night openings, go for drinks with friends or family.
I also liked the clean, uncluttered design of the Oyster, the blues and whites and distinctive TfL rondel. I kept mine in a leather card wallet with a window in it so it could be seen, along with my library cards and coffee shop cards - things I only needed from time to time and which wouldn't 'card clash'. Other things, of course, which I rarely use now.
No comments:
Post a Comment