The kids were spending a bit of time with the grandparents. A chance for them to be spoilt with all the capricious demands and unusual meal requests. They had probably forgotten what an angel I was as a child and needed reminding just how wonderful small children are.
This time the Grandparents thought it wold be a good idea to take the kids on a day trip to London. Now they are a bit older and can walk unaided and for more than a few minutes with out asking for an ice cream.
Obviously going into London they have to take public transport, which is a bit of an adventure in itself.
We think they had a great time in London. The Science museum, fast food, a bit of treat shopping, what more could the kids want.
Strangely, when they came back things were a bit quiet and the Grandparents were looking a bit sheepish.
“so, how was the day?” I asked inquisitively.
“oh fine.” was the initial response from Gran. Grandpa had made a rapid disappearance and was nowhere to be seen.
“well, we might have had a little incident on the way back” Gran was sounding nervous.
“oh. what happened?” I had noted that everyone was back so nothing too serious could have happened. Surely. Although there was that time when they had to get the life guards at the beach one time they were looking after the kids one summer (that’s another story)…
“well, everything is fine now. and number #2 only has a few scratches”
“and it was really the Underground’s fault” Gran was starting to shift the blame.
“hmm. So what exactly happened?” I was curious.
“the platform was really badly designed”. And very dangerous.” Gran was getting a head of steam up.
“and what did number2 do…” I was trying to prompt Gran
“it happened so quickly, it was difficult to tell how it happened. It really was a very dangerous design”
Piecing together the bits and pieces from all present it appears that everyone was waiting at the platform. the tube train doors opened and as everyone got on the tube number2 managed to fall between the platform and the train. And got stuck.
Evidently there was a fair amount of panic while everyone tried to pull number 2 from the tracks before the tube started off again. But she was very stuck. Eventually the underground staff and emergency services managed to extract number 2.
So if you are ever on the underground and hear one of those messages over the tannoy about a delay due to a passenger incident. It might be an unfortunate child who didn’t notice all of the warnings.