If you’re going to live in London you’ve got to quickly pick up your pace and I mean quick. There are always things zooming past. Stand on any of the bridges in London and think. There is Air traffic passing above you every 2 minutes, over ground trains bustling towards the various stations, buses and cars whizzing by, below you commuter boats are transferring commuters and a few layers under the water the underground train connects London through its many tunnels.
In my first days in London I separated people into two categories. The bus/train kind and the underground kind.
You see when I lived a safe distance from anything Tube-like in Dublin I affectionately called the tube “The Suppository” because in comparison to the size of the underground trains in Brussels, Paris, New York and Athens it seemed like something you can put up your arse.
“I can touch the ceiling in it and I’m tiny”, I would always say to my friends while explaining the issue I have with it.
I didn’t realise that all these little funny stories where helping my Claustrophobia get more “deep” rooted. Or should I say my Deptho-Claustrophobia. (A fear of enclosed spaces deep in the ground – It’s my own creation, don’t go looking it up.)
When I finally got here I went through a phase of trying to get used to it, because everyone kept telling me that I would get everywhere fast.
I noticed that people look at each other in a specific way on the Tube. They look at each other in the eyes and smile slightly. Sometimes the smile even spreads down to their lips and lifts them. It’s the kind of smile that says: “I feel it too but it’s quick, what alternative do we have?”
So I kept on being positive about it and trotted down steps that went on for far too long. All I could hear was a little inner voice saying: “What are you doing? Humans aren’t meant to be so far underground. I washed the voice out with a jolly affirmation I had made up that went: I can do anything, I can do anything, I can do anything, which I sang to a tune that could belong in the Sound of Music. (It had other words but I don’t want to embarrass myself too much)
While I was waiting on the platforms I imagined myself as a little moving/bleeping creature in an electronic game. There I was, walking up and down the platform, many floors down, trains passing above me and below me as I bleeped away.
While in the compact train all my senses were heightened. I felt the turns and the dips; I became too aware of it slowing down and calmed down a bit when it accelerated. I knew the movements of the journey on the Circle Line by heart. Breathing was for when we got to a station.
The wall right on top of the window of the train was my issue. Everything else I could deal with. “If it stops, how do we get out? How much air do we have? Will I scream or will I be able to keep it in?
No, no forget it. “I can do Anything, I can do Anything, I can do Anything”.
Of course as is usual in life, if something concerns us wildly, we may not talk about it to others; we may never utter a word about it; the stories find us as if we are magnets that attract just what we don’t want to hear.
Everywhere I went a horror story about the Tube manifested itself.
People in my new work place rushed into the kitchen to wash their face saying: “God it’s warm down there. I nearly passed out”. My cousin’s flatmate regaled me with a story of being stuck underground on the Piccadilly Line for 50 minutes.
And finally it happened, the thing I most feared happened to me.
I left work one Friday wanting to get to the South Bank quickly. I told myself (in a very stern voice) that I needed to get over this rubbish and should take the Northern line to London Bridge so I can get to South Bank in ten minutes flat.
It was only a 4-station journey so I repeated my mantra over and over and started making my way down the escalator. As I got on the train I thought: so far so good, you can do this! Well done.
No sooner had we left the station when the train stopped, it just stopped. I was reading the Metro and I just kept on looking at a picture of Jennifer Aniston in really fancy frock thinking: “You can do this! This is ok!”. When I had finished the article next to the picture and the train still hadn’t moved I started looking around.
I looked at a nice lady standing opposite me; she must have sensed my unease (either that or I was shacking like a leaf and didn’t realise it) because she smiled at me reassuringly. I thought that maybe I should lie on the floor and cry or scream like children do when they want attention but I pitied my fellow passengers. They all looked like they’d just finished a hard day of work and this would do nothing for their mood now, would it?
So I kept it together and after about 10 minutes the train moved and we got to the next station. You would think that any sensible claustrophobic would get off at that point, right? Wrong!
Oh, no I was challenging myself. I repeated my mantra: “I can do anything” and told myself that lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place. So I remained on the train and continued my journey to London Bridge, I was still going to get there fast and that’s all that mattered.
And yes, you guessed it as soon as we were full way into the narrow tunnel the train stopped again. I’m not going to bore you with the emotions I had which were pretty similar to the ones narrated above with a bit of extra zing to them as it was the second time in twenty minutes that I was experiencing the same test. When the next ten minutes passed and we docked at the Bank Station platform I walked out of the train and up the maze that leads to the surface shaking from head to toe. My inner child asked my stupid insistent adult why we were being put through this. Was there some point to this? My decision was made!
I must be one the very few people that doesn’t take the tube in this city but I have found many over ground trains that get me to the centre in ten minutes flat, I’m happy and I don’t try to find inner peace in the eyes of my fellow passengers.
In his book “Slowness” Milan Kundera writes: The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.
Maybe the lesson I had to learn in order to enjoy myself in London was that the city might have a fast pace but I needed to slow down to enjoy it. There is so much to see, why would you want to risk forgetting any of it?
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