don't look up
london's underground is not for the weak
From the moment you step inside, you can sense the dread: the screeching, the sweat, the flickering lights. No this isn’t the hook for a new indie horror about to be picked up by A24’s production team, but instead it's the reality of London’s tube between 7:30-9 AM Monday - Friday. A.k.a rush hour.
Whether you’re one of the chosen ones traveling on the newer, snazzier lines like the Elizabeth or the Overground, or stuck on the Central, Victoria, Bakerloo and Piccadilly like the rest of us unfortunate souls - the tube unifies this city, one dusty carpeted seat at a time. If you dare, that is.
It starts as soon as you enter the station. The steps down fail to give you an insight into how bad things are going to get. At the turnstiles, you have 5 seconds to pick the card with the balance not in the negative to tap in - hoping today the light doesn’t signal red; Like a neon sign pointing directly at the cartoon money bag in your hand that disintegrates to dust on the spot. When green means go, you squeeze through with your cute handbag that could fit a monitor to go along with the laptop in it. Plus a potential 5 more lip products totalling 10, which clink together at the bottom of the faux leather as if the bottles of alcohol you tried to sneak past your mam back then.
The escalator down to your platform may make you feel faint, depending on where you find yourself on the scale of heights. When I first moved to London, I couldn’t look up on my ascent when I got to Liverpool Street on the Lizzie line. I didn’t know escalators came in that size. Now they’re fine, as long as I stand on the right hand side so the God fearing folk who like to run up and down can do that to my left. I really need to know what they do with those 10 seconds they save doing that.
Waiting on the platform is the second worst part of the ritual. Sometimes, you’ll be held in a pen outside of the platform if you frequent Highbury and Islington, as if a gaggle of geese wearing Rains backpacks. Other times you get free entertainment, be it the usual mice fighting on the tracks at Oxford Circus or people fighting 1 metre above. As the due in minutes slowly go down, preparing to get on the train seems less appetising than potentially having to referee for two amateur MMA fights at once.
Doors open. Choose left or right. Wait for the 20 school kids to hop off in single file like time is not money. Politely push, not shove. That’s how the dance usually goes as you board. You likely won’t get a seat during this time. Instead, you line up like sweat marinated sardines, hands almost touching sans romantic tension on the pole that you definitely shouldn’t touch. Germs taste better than the Lino you would surely eat otherwise.
If you can grab a seat, some may consider you lucky. That is if you don’t mind: the manspreading epidemic, the invasive eye contact (for some reason it’s always worse when you’re seated), the is-he-holding-his-phone-weird-or-is-he-recording-me internal debate, and seeing some circa 50 year old businessman that will no doubt get off at Bank play Candy Crush or it’s variants in your peripheral. There’s also the (mostly) terrible adverts which you will be in the front row seat for, namely (you’ve guessed it!) the one for those vitamins with the one from The Saturdays on it (an iconic British 2010s band if you’re not from around these ends). I’ve seen it roughly 200 times and still couldn’t name the product.
Being in London’s version of the Wild West makes you need to breathe in for 5, breathe out for 5 more than any other environment here. When I remember to do this, I simultaneously remind myself that Dr Ben Croxford of UCL compared a 20 minute tube journey to smoking one cigarette. Deep breaths, just not too deep, okay? And in the moments when the auditory overwhelm is about to peak and I turn to focus on the noise canceling ability of my headphones, that screeching I mentioned rears its ugly head. Nails on a chalkboard. Foxes shagging. The bin truck outside when you’re hungover. All sounds I would take hearing any day over that Victoria line wail. If you’re not living in London and can’t believe it could be so bad - train drivers are currently planning to protest over the noise, as it reaches an almost deafening 135 decibels (which is the same level as a jackhammer). Can Loop air plugs help with that?
When you scuttle off and out of the station like the cockroach this city wants you to be, you cannot help but thank whoever is up there for the gray sky, pollution and central London’s piss alleys because in comparison to what’s down there, it could all be a lot worse.
XOXO
Leah