out of the same window the same scenery and then the same tunnel walls, their sides corrugated with dusty black cables. And every day, of course, there were games to be played which never failed.
The first of these was getting a seat: which was a far from boring business. Frankly, I never cared much where I sat on a train; but I did enjoy sitting where other people wanted to sit. This was the day’s first subversive action. Some of the old fuggers who got on at Eastwick actually had favourite places: favourite carriages, favourite sides, a favourite spot in the knotted string rack for their bowlers. Frustrating their contemptible hopes was a fine game, and not too hard, since you weren’t forced to play by the adult rules. The pinstripes and the chalkstripes always forced themselves to get their favourite place without appearing to care where they sat, yet casually sticking out their fatty hips and metal-cornered attaché cases in an attempt to grab pole position. As a kid you were obviously a rule-free beast whom self-restraint and the laws of society had not yet forced into not grabbing what you wanted (or actually, in this case, not grabbing what you didn’t care whether you had or not). So as you waited for the train you would lurk around uncertainly, changing your place on the platform to put the wind up the old fugs. Then you might make a dash for a door as the train came in; even break all the rules by wrenching a door open before the train had stopped.
The coolest thing of all to do – though it took a lot of nerve – was just to beat some old turd to his favourite seat and then, as you saw him settling resentfully for second-best, get up casually and flop down in some obviously less desirable area of the compartment. Then you stared at him knowingly. Since they rarely owned up to their desires, but clearly knew that you knew them, you won twice.
The tricks of travel were learned early. How to fold a full-size newspaper vertically so that you could turn over in the width of one page. How to pretend you hadn’t seen the sort of women you were expected to stand up for. Where to stand in a full train to get the best chance of a seat when it began to empty. Where to get on a train so that you got off at just the right spot. How to use the no-exit tunnels for short-cuts. How to use your season ticket beyond its permitted range.
These preoccupations kept you limbered up. But there were fuller experiences to be had as well.
‘Don’t you ever get bored?’ Toni once asked as we were adding up the months and years of our lives we had spent on trains. He only had a ten-stop ride round the Circle Line: uneventful, all underground, no chance of rape or abduction.
‘Nah. Too much going on.’
‘Tunnels, bridges, telegraph poles?’
‘That sort of thing. No, actually, things like Kilburn. It’s Doré; it really is.’
The next half-day, Toni came to try it out. Between Finchley Road and Wembley Park the train goes over a high viaduct system at Kilburn. Below, as far as you could see, lay cross-hatched streets of tall, run-down Victorian terraces. Half a dozen television aerials interwoven on every roof implied a honeycomb of plasterboard partitioning beneath. There were few cars in that sort of area at that time, and no visible greenery. A huge, regular, red-brick Victorian building stood in the middle: a monster school, infirmary, lunatic asylum – I never knew, nor wanted that sort of precision. The value of Kilburn depended on not knowing particularities, because it changed to the eye and the brain according to yourself, your mood and the day. On a late afternoon in winter, with the egg-white lamps faintly beginning to show, it was melancholy and frightening, the haunt of acid-bath murderers. On a clear, bright morning in summer, with almost no smog and lots of people visible, it was like a brave little slum in the Blitz: you half expected to see George VI poking around the few remaining bomb-sites with his
The first of these was getting a seat: which was a far from boring business. Frankly, I never cared much where I sat on a train; but I did enjoy sitting where other people wanted to sit. This was the day’s first subversive action. Some of the old fuggers who got on at Eastwick actually had favourite places: favourite carriages, favourite sides, a favourite spot in the knotted string rack for their bowlers. Frustrating their contemptible hopes was a fine game, and not too hard, since you weren’t forced to play by the adult rules. The pinstripes and the chalkstripes always forced themselves to get their favourite place without appearing to care where they sat, yet casually sticking out their fatty hips and metal-cornered attaché cases in an attempt to grab pole position. As a kid you were obviously a rule-free beast whom self-restraint and the laws of society had not yet forced into not grabbing what you wanted (or actually, in this case, not grabbing what you didn’t care whether you had or not). So as you waited for the train you would lurk around uncertainly, changing your place on the platform to put the wind up the old fugs. Then you might make a dash for a door as the train came in; even break all the rules by wrenching a door open before the train had stopped.
The coolest thing of all to do – though it took a lot of nerve – was just to beat some old turd to his favourite seat and then, as you saw him settling resentfully for second-best, get up casually and flop down in some obviously less desirable area of the compartment. Then you stared at him knowingly. Since they rarely owned up to their desires, but clearly knew that you knew them, you won twice.
The tricks of travel were learned early. How to fold a full-size newspaper vertically so that you could turn over in the width of one page. How to pretend you hadn’t seen the sort of women you were expected to stand up for. Where to stand in a full train to get the best chance of a seat when it began to empty. Where to get on a train so that you got off at just the right spot. How to use the no-exit tunnels for short-cuts. How to use your season ticket beyond its permitted range.
These preoccupations kept you limbered up. But there were fuller experiences to be had as well.
‘Don’t you ever get bored?’ Toni once asked as we were adding up the months and years of our lives we had spent on trains. He only had a ten-stop ride round the Circle Line: uneventful, all underground, no chance of rape or abduction.
‘Nah. Too much going on.’
‘Tunnels, bridges, telegraph poles?’
‘That sort of thing. No, actually, things like Kilburn. It’s Doré; it really is.’
The next half-day, Toni came to try it out. Between Finchley Road and Wembley Park the train goes over a high viaduct system at Kilburn. Below, as far as you could see, lay cross-hatched streets of tall, run-down Victorian terraces. Half a dozen television aerials interwoven on every roof implied a honeycomb of plasterboard partitioning beneath. There were few cars in that sort of area at that time, and no visible greenery. A huge, regular, red-brick Victorian building stood in the middle: a monster school, infirmary, lunatic asylum – I never knew, nor wanted that sort of precision. The value of Kilburn depended on not knowing particularities, because it changed to the eye and the brain according to yourself, your mood and the day. On a late afternoon in winter, with the egg-white lamps faintly beginning to show, it was melancholy and frightening, the haunt of acid-bath murderers. On a clear, bright morning in summer, with almost no smog and lots of people visible, it was like a brave little slum in the Blitz: you half expected to see George VI poking around the few remaining bomb-sites with his
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