I lose my travel card. Again.

It was the very height of rush hour at London Bridge, thousands of commuters giving it the bum's rush at the ticket barriers. There's a slow inevitability to getting off your train and out of the station - you try and point yourself in a certain direction, but you're going wherever the crowd wills you. You're carried along on a surge of clackety heels and pointy umbrellas, arms useless, legs flailing.

On this particular day we were moving towards the exits with unusual relish, perhaps they were having a coffee morning in the City. I got to the ticket barrier and did my thing - I always maintain that I'm amused by simple things, and ticket barriers are one such thing. I feel discriminated against by the transport providers of London that the ticket always has to be put in on your right hand side - I'm left handed, it slows me down - but I gain some small sense of fun out what is ordinarily a dull transaction by seeing how quickly I can get through. In my head it's like an F1 pitstop - feed in the ticket, pull it out of the other side, quicken through as the gates open.

This time was an average visit, not my quickest, but I didn't fall over. What confused me was getting an orange ticket out of the slot - my travel card is white, one doesn't expect these things to change colour during such a simple transaction. I thought perhaps I had dropped my ticket, picked up the wrong one from somewhere, been mugged for my monthly I'd just bought in return for a piffling day ticket, or something similar. I was getting upset, quite panicked - I've already lost one ticket this year and been told (I think quite unjustifiably) in no uncertain terms that I can only get one replacement ticket in a 12-month period. Shysters.

I make my way to the back of the crowd from whence I came, forlornly scanning the floor. I don't quite understand what is going on. I am anxious, shaken - I still have £90 to go on this card which I really don't have to spare. I'm running late, I can't see my card anywhere. I look up, I see a man in an orange jacket opening up the gate and waving around a small white piece of card that looks suspiciously like my own travel card. I trot over, grab it off him and give a short foreign man his week's pass that I have been clutching for the past what can only be a minute.

I am still shaken, but I have not lost my travel card. Life goes on.

P.S. Happy birthday, Mum.