The Northern line tried to boil me alive this week.
On Monday, I was going to Old Street station like usual to get to class and noticed that the train to King’s Cross was taking far longer than usual. Normally, the trains arrive every few minutes, so you won’t have to wait very long after you get to the platform. But I was waiting, and waiting, and waiting… and still, the train hadn’t arrived. More passengers poured onto the platform, and soon there were people filling up almost every inch of the place. Then, an announcement: the Northern line has been severely delayed due to a signal failure at Stockwell. Surely, this can only be a delay around Stockwell, right? Moments after the announcement, the train screeches onto the tracks in front of me and the horde of passengers.
The train is practically about to burst. People are pressed against the windows, squeezing between bags, backpacks, arms, legs, coats; it seemed like there was hardly even room to wiggle a finger.
I was going to be late to class if I didn’t catch this train, so I preemptively moved towards the yellow line at the platform edge. A few passengers get off, sweaty and sighing with relief as they exit the car. By some TFL miracle, I manage to squeeze into the end of the car, feeling guilty as my backpack definitely smacked someone’s small child in the face. The doors slide shut and the train moves on. People everywhere are sweating, the scent of skin, perfume, cologne, and the musty seats all mixing together to form the lovely TFL signature scent on steroids. For the next two stops, I think I finally understood what it was like to be part of a seafood boil, as the seafood. Just like crabs and shrimp and prawns and lobsters, the people on the tube don’t speak and just suffer through the cramped heat in silence.
When I got to King’s Cross, I think I was fully soaked with sweat, from only a two-stop journey. Splendid! And I didn’t even make it to class on time. When I walked into the lecture five minutes late, my professor asked me if I was doing okay. She was justified in her observation; my face was shiny and my hair a mess. This is what TFL will do to you.
Though the London Underground is the most expensive public transit system in the world, it is known personally victimizing its riders with delays and disruptions exactly when it’s the last thing you need. The Northern line is a problem in particular, since it’s actually the busiest line out of the 11 (Weird, right? I would’ve thought it was the Central line, since it’s supposed to be “central”, and all…). Would highly recommend looking up “TFL Status” and checking if there are any delays or disruptions along your usual route in the morning before you need to be anywhere, lest you be caught waiting and waiting and waiting for a train car might try to suffocate you to death. Or, just take the bus.
When you aren’t worried about being steamed by people’s body heat in a stuffed tube car, you will have the leisure to look up and see the stops on the line and some advertisements along the upper portion of train cars on the tube. Poems will sometimes replace the ads on tube cars. I wouldn’t consider myself a poetry person by any means; I developed a very sincere hatred for Robert Frost in high school because of his overwhelmingly simplistic rhymes and themes (“two roads diverged in a wood and I / took the one less traveled by”, seriously? I could write that, so why are you so famous, Robert?). I still find the selection of poems on the Underground to be fairly entertaining. I think my favorite one I’ve seen was this one on a Victoria Line train (I forgot to take a picture of it on the train, but here it is):
I’m going to do the thing that everyone hates about poetry and find an underlying meaning when there appears to be none. I thought this poem was funny in a way that makes you feel like you are slowly going insane like the author. I too, am fond of “am I bananas?” But I think this poem is more about making do with what you have; by rearranging “I am a poet / I am very fond of bananas”, you get a lot of combinations that do still make sense. I interpret this as making things to do with what you have, rather than finding things to do all the time. You might be in the same area most of the time, either going to/from class, buying groceries, etc. But there is always something new to do that exists outside of recommendations from TikTok or generating ideas with AI (I’m actually a pretty big AI hater. If you can’t make a grocery list or draft an email or find things to do without ChatGPT, you have the survival skills of a banana). It could be as simple as just taking a different route home, maybe stop at an interesting cafe or shop along the way.
I’m going to be wandering around Switzerland and Spain next week, which I am very excited about. Currently, I’m writing this as I sit in Heathrow Terminal 5 waiting to board my flight to Geneva. Au revoir, tschüss, and adiós, for now.
Thanks again for reading!
Alexandra
