In August transport around the city becomes bearable, if a trifle stifling. It had me foxed this morning, no jostling on the underground and I even got a seat. Then a discarded newspaper carrying a bank holiday traffic chaos story put me in the picture. News of traffic chaos, when it isn't me, puts my mind strangely at ease. As I'm swept out east on the Central line, feeling more relaxed than usual, I remember hitch-hiking out of Cornwall, probably on this very weekend thirty years ago, and walking most of the way along the A30, buffeted by wave after wave of passing caravans, not a lift to be had.
This friend and I had the crazy idea that it would be great to set off on a roadtrip one summer with nothing but the clothes on our backs, and a couple of bulging rucksacks. We slept in the open in giant plastic bags, waking up with slug-matted hair outside Exeter. I'm glad those days are behind me. Like most youngsters, I was desperate to escape the tedium of an ordered life and take my chances, that is, my chances. I find more freedom in planning and order now.
The train pulls in to Pudding Mill. The Kings Yard Substation is one of my favourite buildings on the Olympic Park. It isn’t a big cheese like the Aquatics Centre or the Velodrome but it has other worldly characteristics, in a Blake’s 7, or Dr Who kind of way. The main building has a periscope tower with a jaunty plume of smoke, like a pony tail at the top, it’s not clear if the projection is meant to be a viewing platform but it should be. The substation itself has honeycombed walls, which makes it look Arabic, and it’s all the colour of dried blood, which is exquisite.
I've offered to cook for eight on the weekend so after crawling around on scaffolding all afternoon it’s good to make my escape from the Park and head off to Bethnal Green, in search of a Mexican food shop. “A beautiful shop” says an old suited queen, directing me on my way. It turns out to be a bit too beautiful for my liking, I wanted shelves bending under the weight of sacks of maize, plaits of drying chillies up in the rafters and the smell of it all hitting you in the doorway. Instead I got trendy ethnic cushions and ceramics, overpriced Day of the Dead knick knacks and a pile of tinned chipotles.
Ho hum, it isn’t easy getting to the bottom of things these days, everybody is out to maximise profitability, increase revenue streams and turn ordinary things into luxuries – with a price to match. You can’t blame them, if people are stupid and wealthy enough to pay, that’s their lookout. Thirty quid and a few tins later, I’m on the tube again, for Paddington. It’s sweltering down here, someone once speculated if the conditions were up to European livestock transport standards. I doubt it. It’s busier too than it was this morning and there’s a signal failure on the line.
Great. I’m standing behind the yellow line at Oxford Circus when I hear the news holding my laptop bag, fluorescent jacket, hard hat, and two bags of shopping. It’s incredible that we’ve managed to put men on the moon but are unable to produce a public address system which remains intelligible at a tube or train station. I’m tapping my reserves of energy and patience by the time the train rolls in. I could have taken a different route if I’d understood the announcement broadcast when I alighted from the Central Line.
The doors open and, incredibly, on a Bank Holiday Friday at rush hour, with a delay, there’s a seat available as I get on. I’ve done this trip a few times so I know where the doors line up on the platform and the seat is mine for the taking. I press forward but am cut off by a skinny city suit prodding on his Blackberry. I’m too late and stand there, flatfooted, with a sweaty face, looking like a festival goer hiking in with all my kit. This dude slips neatly into the seat like he hasn’t been sitting down all day, all of 30-years-old to my 50, no luggage, cool as a cucumber.
What am I going to say? “Excuse me, but I think that’s my seat?” No of course I’m not, because it isn’t, so I’m bloody well going to grin and bear it. It’s too much to expect people who fight all day for a bit of space, status, control, a piece of the pie, to imagine they’re going to assimilate hierarchies of need as they move from place to place. If you can’t take the heat, old man, get out of the kitchen.
At Paddington I find the kitchen door. Many times I have entered the city through this portal and felt the buzz, and known it was good, but now I just can't wait to leave.
