Warming Up

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Tuesday 14th January 2003

More tube tales.
I was on the Northern Line heading North (although despite its name it does travel in both directions). We got to Clapham Common and there was a bit of a commotion further up the train.
It was some scrawny, rat-faced, screeching teenage girls (the only one I could see clearly looked like a slightly more sophisticated Tasha Slappa) larking about. There was some kind of spree going on. And it became apparent that one of them had pulled the train alarm. There was an audible sign of resigned frustration from my fellow passengers. A sigh which clearly communicated the sarcastic rejoinder “Oh ha ha, how amusing. That hilarious prank will result in an unnecessary four minute delay to our journey. I am so glad you did that.” The sigh does the same job, just better.
The girls kept screeching, but now one of their number was being mildly berated.
The rest of us sat, occasionally catching someone else’s eye and exaggeratedly raising our eyebrows. Or maybe doing a little shake of our heads.
Except the bloke next to me who was engrossed in an Arsenal football programme.
The train had obviously stopped in the station because of the activation of the alarm, but it seemed like ages before anything happened. Thank God it wasn’t a real emergency or we’d all have been dead before anyone arrived.
A long time into this ages, the man next to me, suddenly looked up and noticed we’d stopped moving. “What’s going on?” he asked the middle aged lady who was sitting directly opposite me. Why he talked to her, I’m not sure. He was addressing her so specifically that I wondered if they were together. But they can’t have been.
“They’ve pulled the alarm,” she replied.
The man seemed confused. “So why aren’t we moving?” He had a Northern accent. He was clearly from out of town.
“They’ve pulled the alarm,” offered the woman, raising her eyebrows and shaking her head at the same time. It was as if she was a bit annoyed that his ignorance had forced her to communicate with actual words. He carried on asking strange questions, which the lady attempted to answer, but the one that stuck in my mind was “Do these trains have drivers or do they operate automatically?”
Who doesn’t know that tube trains have drivers? Who wouldn’t realise that they run badly enough as it is without entrusting their operation to some kind of futuristic robot-driver or central computer? How could he even question that?
Had he been transported through time? Did he come from a past where such long, hollow, metal snakes that burrow underground would indeed appear to run by their own volition? Or possibly from a future where trains have independent thought and their own personalities (which would all be some shade of grumpy bastard)? Or did he come from Newcastle, where unbeknownst to me the Metro system is entirely automated?
What kind of a question was that for a grown man to ask? What does he know that I don’t?
Eventually the driver ambled up to the carriage with a broad grin on his face, flirted a bit with the girls and then headed back to drive the train.
Or at least, that’s what I’d always assumed that man at the front was doing.
But maybe he’s just there to feed the hollow metal snake when he gets hungry.