Upwardly mobile

On the day: 
07/11/2012 

On the way: 
The elevator arrives, a great equaliser. 
Together they have stood, together they have waited, whatever the surface world may hold - a long walk or a Lexus; a rent or a residence; a family or a flop-house - they're all at the mercy of the illuminated arrow and its progress up and down the display panel. Oh, let it point at me. Please let it point at me. 
So the lift lands and the loose tangle of people tightens into a knot around the doors as its load disperses out of its other side of the steel box. 
Finally it is empty and the doors open up but the knot holds firm as it drags its constituent bodies shuffling into the steel box - five, ten, twenty, maybe thirty as one, unified in a common understanding: we are all human beings together and by the force of our fellow-feeling we will achieve our purpose, to rise to the surface where we belong. 
When from the tunnel bursts a figure, the first fresh off the incoming Tube, legs pumping, black coat flapping, left arm flailing, right hanging onto a bouncing, brown leather bag, racing to reach the lift before its doors close. 
He's there, he's made it, he stops, he sees the human cordon at the very edge of capacity. It's a line of oblivious backs - there's a green coat, a couple of black ones - and one face, the girl in the cream jacket with the flicked out golden bob, standing side-on and looking out over her bag shoulder. He smiles to himself, the smile of a man who knows he's beaten but he's competed well. 
She sees... nothing. 
The doors close, separating the upwardly mobile from the moribund, the elevated and the overlooked, and the lift disappears up the shaft, a great divider. 

On the pod: 
Rain On The Scarecrow - John Mellencamp 

On the front page: 
America decides (The Times)