Spotted on the journey home...

There are three things about my journey home on Friday which stick in my mind:

1.  In a stretch of terraced housing next to the Clapham-Woking line, there are four houses in a row with near-identical trampolines in their gardens. There are maybe another five or so trampolines distributed amongst the remaining houses in the terrace.
2. Outside Woking station, there is a bright orange machine which on its side proudly declares itself in large lettering to be a "WET SPOT MACHINE".
3. Walking down to the underpass outside Guildford station, I found myself confronted by three youngish women with monster-sized buggies. They walked three abreast. With the mammoth size of the buggies, there was not sufficient room for me to get past.

The first observation struck me as a powerful demonstration of the force of "pester power". I can just imagine the sequence of events, conversations, tantrums and capitulation that resulted in the insidious invasion of trampolines throughout this terrace. It doesn't take much creativity - one family gets a trampoline, the kids next door pester their parents, meanwhile the family over their other fence have succumbed and bought their sprots a trampoline, leaving Mr and Mrs Bloggs in the middle with kids telling them at every opportunity that everyone else has a trampoline, wearing them down over the course of a month or six, until the emotional blackmail, hunger strikes and threats of phoning Childline all became too much and a trampoline appeared in the garden whilst the kids were at school. Kids learn quickly. Similar things happens a few doors down. And so on, until there's a rash of trampolines taking over a neighbourhood.

There's not much to say about the WET SPOT MACHINE... I wonder whether it makes wet spots or cleans them up. It makes me laugh, and there's precious little humour to be had on my commute home, so the WET SPOT MACHINE is rather dear to me. I do find it fascinating that it needs to explain what it is on the side. Think about it - when was the last time you saw a sewing machine that said "SEWING MACHINE" on the side? Or a random piece of industrial machinery which declared its essence on itself in large lettering? I actually cannot think of a reason why anyone would need to write WET SPOT MACHINE on the side of the machine, except to give people like me a chuckle on the way home. And for that, I thank them. I should like to nominate them for an honour, except I don't know who they are.

The three youngish women with their babies on buggies who were terrorising commuters of Guildford by blocking the underpass by walking with their buggies three abreast made me despair for the genetic inheritance of their kids. One of them actually hurled abuse at me for getting in their way. I pointed out rather politely (under the circumstances) that there was no way both myself and the three of them with their spacious and capacious buggies could continue in our desired directions unless they rearranged themselves such that they were not blocking the underpass in piston formation. They were kind enough to teach me some new words and insults before running over my foot and lower leg with (thankfully) the least oversized of the three buggies. As they disappeared, I found myself hoping that, in the not-too-distant future, one of their kids would want a trampoline...