Generic Pretentious Post Title about Railways
Strange tales today from the office regarding the weekend...something bad has happened in the staffing ranks. I cannot give a full account because it would not be Right. But the ingredients are enough to give the right flavour here; a gun for sale, a loan shark, six burly men and an ex-member of staff who owes a lot of people a lot of money. Threats have been made, doors almost kicked down.
And things are going to get uglier before they get better. Soon the police will be involved...but for now the dark focus of these weird events has gone off sick today with a possibly contagious illness.
But I am insulated in this office away from all that...all I have to suffer is the bureaucracy involved. It is unfortunate, then, that this office is actively making me sick. At the same time every day, around eleven, I feel like shit and have to go find myself some fresh air. Now what the hell is going on here? This happened all last week and now this week. Above me there is an air conditioning unit that pumps out recycled air, and I have to assume it is taking in some air elsewhere full of some bad substance that, for some reason, is released to the world at the same time every day.
One thing is for sure, and that is the existence of a dark underbelly round these parts. An entire subculture of intimidation and desperation that remains mercifully out of reach to us office types, but is a visible presence in the ranks of the station staff. Theft and corruption stalks the gatelines and the company is unsure how to tackle the situation except to hope the bad ones are weeded out over time.
And there is something about the railways that makes these observation obvious...the atmosphere is tangible, the crumbling viaducts over sodium-drenched city roads, the ugly steel spaghetti lashing together distant stations, iron grey boxes at the side of the rails drenched in silly macho graffito tags...
Somewhere, somewhen, miles away and in a quite separate dimension, there is a notion that rail travel is romantic. This does not tally with my experience. Certainly not in London, where stations are surrounded in vicious spikes and endless spirals of barbed wire, topped off with a hundred soulless cameras watching you picking your nose and scratching your balls. Subways beneath the rails are ponderous and twisty and full of drunks. Paint, slapped up to cover previous graffiti, is now peeling and covered in its own bad scrawls. And in the main stations a million dead-eyed commuters dance around one another all cursing that stupid old dear who decided to travel across London with a hundred suitcases during rush hour.
I am one of those dead-eyed commuters. And I have narrowed down all the bad experience to one square yard in the whole of the network...the one point, the evil locus, the focus point of all that is twisted and wretched. A small area that sums up everyone's lousy thoughts and horror stories shared over a beer that night. It is the square yard that forms the junction of the corridor in Victoria Station – just after a tiny two-gate gateline -- that splits one way to the Victoria Line and the Eastbound District / Circle Line, and the other way to Westbound District / Circle Line. It is impossible to pass this point. A pile-up of tourists, pensioners and idiots will sit there in a huge seething mass of bad humanity, all clueless and utterly unaware that anybody else in the world exists. To them, only their minor dilemma matters, so there they sit and stare at the signs, whilst a thousand people scream their name in futile protest..."fuck off! Get the fuck out of it, you halfwitted turd fuckers!" And the bloodbath begins. With any luck...
Well. I seem to have hit one of my own nerves there. But seriously...if you were unsure what route you needed to take, would you not take a couple of minutes to study the map...perhaps doing this whilst waiting for your next train instead of mouthing off how long you're having to wait? Would you not give the damn thing a tiny bit of thought? You would and you should.
On the other hand, if you were on a motorway and were unsure whether you should take the next junction, would you screech to a halt in the middle lane, get out and spread the atlas on the bonnet? No, because you're not a complete nitwit.
Railways do bring out the worst in people. Even now, after years of neglect and utter contempt from the top regarding the system, we find ourselves surprised at what fresh hell we have to put up with every day. So we get tired. We get passed the point of sighing heavily and staring pointedly at our watches. We get passed the point of "accidentally" shoving slow people on the stairs out of the way. We get passed rolling our eyes like washing machines on the final spin. And we take a deep breath, rub our hands together, and write a really stern letter, goddamn it.
And occasionally we get a free 7 day travel card back in compensation, and we are happy again. Until tomorrow, of course.
And things are going to get uglier before they get better. Soon the police will be involved...but for now the dark focus of these weird events has gone off sick today with a possibly contagious illness.
But I am insulated in this office away from all that...all I have to suffer is the bureaucracy involved. It is unfortunate, then, that this office is actively making me sick. At the same time every day, around eleven, I feel like shit and have to go find myself some fresh air. Now what the hell is going on here? This happened all last week and now this week. Above me there is an air conditioning unit that pumps out recycled air, and I have to assume it is taking in some air elsewhere full of some bad substance that, for some reason, is released to the world at the same time every day.
One thing is for sure, and that is the existence of a dark underbelly round these parts. An entire subculture of intimidation and desperation that remains mercifully out of reach to us office types, but is a visible presence in the ranks of the station staff. Theft and corruption stalks the gatelines and the company is unsure how to tackle the situation except to hope the bad ones are weeded out over time.
And there is something about the railways that makes these observation obvious...the atmosphere is tangible, the crumbling viaducts over sodium-drenched city roads, the ugly steel spaghetti lashing together distant stations, iron grey boxes at the side of the rails drenched in silly macho graffito tags...
Somewhere, somewhen, miles away and in a quite separate dimension, there is a notion that rail travel is romantic. This does not tally with my experience. Certainly not in London, where stations are surrounded in vicious spikes and endless spirals of barbed wire, topped off with a hundred soulless cameras watching you picking your nose and scratching your balls. Subways beneath the rails are ponderous and twisty and full of drunks. Paint, slapped up to cover previous graffiti, is now peeling and covered in its own bad scrawls. And in the main stations a million dead-eyed commuters dance around one another all cursing that stupid old dear who decided to travel across London with a hundred suitcases during rush hour.
I am one of those dead-eyed commuters. And I have narrowed down all the bad experience to one square yard in the whole of the network...the one point, the evil locus, the focus point of all that is twisted and wretched. A small area that sums up everyone's lousy thoughts and horror stories shared over a beer that night. It is the square yard that forms the junction of the corridor in Victoria Station – just after a tiny two-gate gateline -- that splits one way to the Victoria Line and the Eastbound District / Circle Line, and the other way to Westbound District / Circle Line. It is impossible to pass this point. A pile-up of tourists, pensioners and idiots will sit there in a huge seething mass of bad humanity, all clueless and utterly unaware that anybody else in the world exists. To them, only their minor dilemma matters, so there they sit and stare at the signs, whilst a thousand people scream their name in futile protest..."fuck off! Get the fuck out of it, you halfwitted turd fuckers!" And the bloodbath begins. With any luck...
Well. I seem to have hit one of my own nerves there. But seriously...if you were unsure what route you needed to take, would you not take a couple of minutes to study the map...perhaps doing this whilst waiting for your next train instead of mouthing off how long you're having to wait? Would you not give the damn thing a tiny bit of thought? You would and you should.
On the other hand, if you were on a motorway and were unsure whether you should take the next junction, would you screech to a halt in the middle lane, get out and spread the atlas on the bonnet? No, because you're not a complete nitwit.
Railways do bring out the worst in people. Even now, after years of neglect and utter contempt from the top regarding the system, we find ourselves surprised at what fresh hell we have to put up with every day. So we get tired. We get passed the point of sighing heavily and staring pointedly at our watches. We get passed the point of "accidentally" shoving slow people on the stairs out of the way. We get passed rolling our eyes like washing machines on the final spin. And we take a deep breath, rub our hands together, and write a really stern letter, goddamn it.
And occasionally we get a free 7 day travel card back in compensation, and we are happy again. Until tomorrow, of course.
posted by Jamie at 8:01 PM
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