The London Underground is a fucking hell-hole where people forget they are human and become animals that would gladly stamp on the skull of a kitten to get on a train. It is an exercise in turning OFF akin to being a trafficked child prostitute encamped in Turkish bricklayers camp. We look into middle space and think of something we'd rather be doing (eating a plate of baby shit mixed with burned hair), or worse, we read the Metro.
Agreed? Good.
One of the things I thought about whilst journeying one day was all the different places one can travel while in the train carriage and then I decided to rank them. The best place you can sit – to the worst place to stand.
1. Sitting against the glass partition. So one can lean on the glass.
2. A seat.
3. The leaner at the end of the carriage.
4. Standing by the middle doors leaning on a pole.
5. Standing in the middle of the aisle - in front of where people sit.
6. Standing at the ends of the carriage.
I hope this clears things up for you all and if we see each other on the tube and we have our headphones in lets just agree not to talk to each other and just get through the trip as fast and as painlessly as allowed.
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Sitting at the end of the seat row against the glass is an alright spot nowadays, but in the 80s any pane of glass on the tube was always dripping with puffy clouds of Afro-Sheen. Which I believe the cleaners at the depot would scrape off at the end of the night and use to grease the axles of the train itself. This was London Underground policy between the years of 1984 and 88, and explains why, since the wet-look perm and the Jheri Curl were consigned to the history books, modern day tube trains squeal so much when they go round corners.
ReplyDeleteStanding at the ends of the tube carriage isn't the worst place.
ReplyDeleteThe worst place would be in the driver's carriage. Because then you'd be a tube driver. Which would make you poor. And your wife wouldn't like you very much and your kids would hate you because you couldn't afford to buy them the latest games console. Which would upset you. Turn you to drink. Followed by drugs (Cannabis to LSD to E to Coke to Crack to Meth) That you can't afford. So you'd have to become a rent boy to pay for your new found habit. Which would make you go insane. And cause you to shave your face with a broken pint glass. So, you see, standing at the ends of the carriage ain't so bad.