On my journey back to work on Monday morning, I worked out that if there’s one thing I really hate about living in London, it’s people.

Don’t get me wrong - Londoners aren’t a bad bunch. You know those Benson & Hedges or Dunhill ads, where at the end they put a list of places where you can get the stuff, and how the list always comprises of London, Paris and New York? Well, Londoners are certainly better than Parisians (rude and arrogant, especially if, like me, your French is bad and you switch to English after a minute of struggling) and New Yorkers (rude, arrogant and aggressive), though I have to say, the Romans are up there at the top when it comes to being friendly.

Anyway, my particular annoyance with people in London is more aimed at the morons who dawdle in the tube at peak periods, oblivious to the fact that regular tube users just want to get from A to B as fast as possible.

Take Monday. My flight from Geneva was delayed, so by the time I got to London it was well past 9am. I sprinted up the escalator at City Airport to get the DLR going to Bank. That was fine, because most people wanted to catch the same train so we were all going at the right pace.

The problem started when I got to Bank. It was bloody annoying going from the DLR to the Central line, because there was a lovey-dovey couple who insisted on:
a) walking two abreast in a narrow space (GRRRR!!!)
b) walking at what I call the pengantin pace, ie the pace at which brides and grooms walk during their wedding. (Double GRRRR!!!!)

I mean, really.  How dare people block the corridor and walk like pengantins during rush hour?! And it’s usually tourists who do this, although some are learning - for instance, yesterday morning an unusually aware mother shepherded her two young children to the side to allow commuters to sweep past her family.

Then there’s the whole pengantin thing.  This isn’t confined to just the tube, oh no.  Tourists walk so bloody s-l-o-w-l-y every bloody where.  I can understand it if I’m at some tourist hotspot like Covent Garden or Trafalgar Square, but you know, London’s pavements are used by Londoners too, and most times they want to walk around as quickly as they can, and not dawdle behind some gawping tourist! (Having said that, some Londoners are just as bad!).

So I’ve now come to the following conclusion: people are just plain annoying, and it’s people who screw things up!