Every morning, five days a week, I am faced with a somewhat agonising decision. Each day, as I pass through Ash Vale Station, with at most two minutes to change to the stopping service to London Waterloo via Woking, I must decide whether or not it’s worth picking up a copy of Metro.
There are several factors I must take into account: what’s on the front cover? Does it pique my interest? Do I have room in my bag, amongst the textbooks, stationery and other trappings of a college student, to carry a freesheet? Is it a slow news day? Is the train departing in ten seconds and counting?
Most of the time, the answer is sort-of, yes, no and no-but-with-no-time-for-complacency-quick-grab-it-now-and-dash-up-the-stairs-to-Platform-1. For all its faults, Metro is a decent paper: it usually regurgitates some semblance of facts without trying to slip in political propaganda, and provides a reasonably broad range of stuff to read through or skip over as you please. And it’s free, so you can’t really complain.
That said, there is one major flaw: the news is always at least one day late. Most of the time, this isn’t too bad, although we’ve had incidents in the past (such as the Balloon Boy situation) where the article was written before the story’s climax (or deus ex machina, in this case.) The commuters of Britain knew Falcon Heene was safe and well (and probably used by his parents as an attention-whoring pawn) as Metro screamed about the fear for the little boy’s life.
Today, though, this lateness played an altogether more beak role. While eating breakfast this morning, I was idly listening to the radio, registering in passing the sad news of the death of charity microlight pilot, Martin Bromage, whose body was later recovered off the French coast.
It is, of course, a tragic case that Mr. Bromage’s attempt (and life) were cut so short, so early in the voyage – and it is perhaps doubly cruel that he was raising money for Help for Heroes in the process. However, after flinging myself out of the front door, hopping on the bus, waiting for half an hour for the first train and rushing through Ash Vale Station’s subway, I couldn’t help but note some grim, ironic humour in this item which greeted me as I opened my hastily-grabbed copy of Metro to page 20:
Oh dear.