My Love (And Hate) Letter to London Underground

Growing up in the far-flung depths of North London – so far-flung that residents argued if they were actually in London at all – I am well accustomed to using London Underground, where trains rush back and forth through the venous tunnels of the city.

This network is known to all Londoners as 'The Tube' (pronounced "choob" by everyone but Americans who persist in saying "toob").

The tube station in my home town is down a large hill, scattered with newsagents, pubs and a revolving roster of failing restaurants.

About halfway down, the station sits, like a punctuation mark in the land, embedded in a groove, hidden from the road by trees and trenches.

I have childhood memories of descending the steep station walkway to the ticket hall and boarding rickety wooden trains with my parents in the '80s, as we travelled into central London as a rare treat or a necessary evil.

It was a magical experience, I was fascinated by the number of people in one tiny carriage, the roaring noise of the tunnels and the gritty smell of brake dust in the air. I loved the patterned colour seats and dangling handles along the carriage ceilings that wobbled as the train shook; the same handles I would later swing on as a teenager before they removed them altogether in 1996.

My infrequent childhood tube rides soon morphed into regular weekend travel as pubs, clubs and girls lured my friends and I into the city, pre-drinking on the train, the excitement and nervousness filling the carriages and our teenage hearts.

The tube had become a lifeline, our hedonistic gateway to freedom.

These were the pre-contactless tap-and-pay days which meant entrepreneurial teens would hawk travel cards outside station entrances that they’d fished out of bins or picked up off the street. It was commonplace to get asked politely for your travel card by a wiry youth when you left the station at your journey’s end.

I recall haggling with one of these youths selling travelcards for £3, half the price of a new ticket from the machine. I insisted on paying a pound less, and we went back and forth on the price for some time. He was stubborn and refused to shift on the price he had set for himself. In my frustrated defiance I went to the machine and bought a full-priced ticket in front of him. It was an ignoble victory, but a victory nonetheless. That was the golden age of fare-dodging for you.

In my early twenties, I began using the tube to get to band practice on weekend mornings. This was a whole different tube to experience as drunken revellers were replaced by gormless tourists and sprawling families with wandering children.

These occasional travellers lacked all tube-sense and committed the most heinous commuting crimes, such as standing at the top of escalators, not moving down the carriages, blocking the train doors as they gawp at maps and worst of all, walking slowly in the station corridors.

By the time I disembarked at Tottenham Court Road, the carriage was always packed and no one had the energy to deal with my bulky guitar, heavy pedal case and fold away trolley, least of all, me.

Navigating through the tube with heavy equipment was always testing. A girl once walked into me from behind, as I tottered left and right carrying various objects. She told me to "watch where I was going" when I was as mobile as a turning ferry and had simply forgotten to wear my shoulder-adjustable rearview mirror that day.

It was some time into this routine when I landed myself a job in East London. It was only a matter of time of course; the city pulls everyone in from its satellite towns, the lure of money and opportunity too great to ignore. My Londoner gold medal came through the post as I graduated to a fully-fledged commuter.

Suddenly the tube went from familiar friend to an oppressive, bell-tolling, work-bringing, bastard.

Efficiency on my travels became the call of the day. I grew obsessed with the best places to stand on the platform in the morning and the routes I planned to shave mere seconds off my daily commute.

This is what happens when the tube becomes a huge chunk of your life. With a two hour commute each day and band rehearsal at the weekends, I was clocking up a good twelve hours a week in the tunnels.

Stations became familiar, almost homely. The flow of human bodies when changing lines was something to be studied, understood and ultimately beaten with short cuts and passages that read ‘No Entry’ but led exactly where you wanted to go. Take that, Transport for London.

Though as much as you use the tube, it also uses you.

I became bitter and angry, any minor indiscretion or delay whipping me into furious anger.

One time the Northern line was delayed and I sat for an hour between stations. The next day, in absence of any standard apology posters that would normally appear after such circumstances (I obsessively checked) I phoned up to complain. I demanded that the head of the Northern Line himself rang me up to apologise "since he couldn’t manage it in simple print." Yes, I was that guy. This was a battle that raged for three months, sprawling over a dozen phone calls until I eventually lost my fighting spirit and let it go.

People say Londoners are rude, but I protest. I think we are the most patient and polite people in Britain. The conditions in which we travel are worse than cattle, yet most of the time we smile, say excuse me, give up seats for pregnant women or the elderly and apologise a lot to each other for merely existing and therefore taking up valuable real estate in the tube carriage.

A Londoner’s tolerance for travelling 45 minutes sandwiched between a sweaty man wearing noisy headphones and an even sweater man who smells of old beef, is superhuman. We smile, nod and suffer in silence as all good British people do.

Well mostly. The odd confrontation is inevitable, normally when trains are delayed and everyone stews inside and tuts under their breath.

Once, during a heaving rush hour at Bank station, a businessman and a student began pushing each other across the open carriage in a pre-fight display of aggression. A circle formed around them, not out of interest, just out of the need to escape the fracas (because we all just needed to get to work and this nonsense was tiresome). What added to the drama was the scream of a woman as if it was a Hitchcock movie when the fight spilt onto the platform.

Another time I glanced over at the paper of a man sitting next to me. “Don’t fucking look at my paper,” he said. I told him to calm down and we squared up, face to face. Everyone was watching, pretending they weren’t, hidden behind their own papers and Kindles. “Yeah?” he said. “Yeah!” I replied. “I’ll fucking butt you into oblivion. I’ll butt you!” he shouted, his glaring red face an inch away from mine. Suddenly I wondered what on earth I was doing as I was clearly out of my depth. “Well, yeah,” I said, then turned around and looked forward, defusing the situation. He did the same. Order was restored. To be fair, no one wants to be butted into oblivion. The train carried on for a few more stops and as a random commuter disembarked, the aggressive man took his paper and gave it to me. “Here’s a fucking paper!” I took it and responded “Well, thanks” in a half-aggressive tone. We then sat for a few more stops, both of us pretending to read our papers until the journey ended.

It was very British.

Ultimately, I grew tired of the commute. I had spent a decade travelling to and from work and another decade before that for weekend activities. I moved out of London in 2016 and found a job which meant I could drive to work through country roads and feel the low sun on my face in the mornings. It felt amazing.

Yet, despite the delays and ludicrous crowds, I loved the tube. I loved the tourists pressing the open button on the doors and expecting them to work, I loved the northern commuters talking loudly about how they can’t believe the crowds as they’re crushed into a Victoria line train carriage heading to Oxford Circus at 8am. I loved the genuine, euphoric excitement that I felt when using the London Overground line for the first time, as I was able to walk the length of the train without any carriage doors stopping me. I loved sitting at the front of the driverless DLR trains and I even loved the surprising sadness at saying goodbye to the old, pokey Tottenham Court Road station so it could make way for its glass and steel upgrade.

I know I’m not alone. The tube is like a club, a secret society that is below ground, those who aren’t party to its goings-on can't understand the Stockholm Syndrome us regulars feel - or felt. We all endured together. Sure I hated the queues, the crowds, the trudge every single morning, but these days I miss the tube like as I would miss an old friend. Well, perhaps like an old friend I secretly hated.