I’m going to lodge a claim against Transport for London for PTSD. I am scarred and officially traumatised. Not to mention the victim of ageism and probably anti-Semitism!!! It could take me years of therapy. Here’s what happened. It’s SHOCKING.

Last weekend my ‘old git’s free-travel, all-you-can-eat, anywhere in London pass’ stopped working. A Catastrophe of massive proportions. Anyone who has this fantastic gift from the Mayor of London will know how wonderful it is, every single time you use it. And it had cracked and no longer opened the gate. So I showed it to the TfL person who smiled nicely (bit patronising really, that smile, when they realised I was THAT old) and beeped me through, telling me to get a replacement. As I commute every day, this was repeated many, many times. Sometimes with a ‘oooh, you can’t use that, we’re not supposed to let you through’. What, is there a fucking prison for over-60s with broken cards, a holding cell at Liverpool Street until their new cards arrive??? But basically, I’m entitled to free travel and they all get that. Until last night.

Oddly the ‘your new travel card is on the way’ came on Thursday, but the card itself is yet to arrive. So last night we went to Kings Cross for a ‘discussion’ at Jewish Book Week, though its been renamed to something more pretentious now involving literary this and literacy that or some such bollocks to let us know how intellectual we all are. Anyway, I pitched up the big fat TfL butch thing (no judgments, obviously) who didn’t smile. She said ‘you’re not allowed to travel with this!’, and took it off me. “DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKING OLD I AM???” I shouted, and tried to look old and feeble. Which, obviously, was impossible with these levels of gorgeousness. So she applied ‘the letter of the law’ and told me to pay up. Bitch. And as I ‘tapped’ my Amex card, working out the gain in air miles, I felt my mental health slipping away, my (almost) 68 years bearing down on me as she persecuted me. Mercilessly!!!!

So I went out immediately, whilst in traumatised and unstable state, and bought a ridiculous new car!!! One that bears the esteemed bonnet badge: MID-LIFE CRISIS!!! Because it’s impractically small, unbelievably fast, exceptionally pretty and impossible to use on a ‘bad back’ day.

And I think TfL should pay for it. Because ‘she’ made me do it. Even though I paid my deposit 6 hours before I had the trauma. So that’s not really the point.

I’ll show you when I pick it up next weekend.

Very happy Sunday, other than the tube travel.

A xxxx