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All Saints

All Saints DLR Statin by Fin Fahey

Picture by Fin Fahey: All Saints DLR Station

“Our church is named after Saint Matilda,” says Eliza, smug. “She was a queen, and she used to sneak away to pray, and she weakened the political power of her country through her excessive charitable donations.”

“Well our church is named after Saint Peter, and he was an apostle, and he holds the keys to the kingdom of heaven.”

“Papist,” Eliza says.

“Am not.”

“Are so.”

“My church,” says Sarah, “is named after Mary.”

“Mine’s named after Saint Lawrence, and he was roasted alive.”

“Mary’s better than roasting.”

“Is not.”

“Is too.”

“Papist!”

Charles is tiny, smaller at nine years old than the others at seven. “We’ve got Saint Dunstan,” he says, proud, and they turn to him.

There are fashions in saints, just like everything else. For hundreds of years Dunstan was England’s favourite: a quick-witted musician with a seat beside the king, just enough rumours of witchcraft to make him dangerous, celibate only because God punished him with swelling tumours when he demurred. He pulled on the devil’s nose with a pair of tongs; stags and Canterbury were by his side. And yet by the beginning of the nineteenth century he was a minority taste for the old and the unfashionable, for outdated worshippers still using their 1790 Lives of the Saints.

“Dunstan,” Eliza says, while Sarah and Jerome fall in behind her. “He’s the worst.”

When they’re finished Charles washes himself in a puddle, hiding incipient bruises behind streaks of mud. He doesn’t cry until next Sunday, when he collapses into tears at the door of St Dunstan’s; his parents hurry him through as he tries to pull away.

The Sunday after that he doesn’t cry, but he sits on the long bench with his eyes cast down, never looking up at the walls around him. In the evening he scrawls designs for a new church. He asks for an up-to-date Lives of the Saints, and his parents, startled into guilt at his piety, cut back on candlelight until they can afford it.

Charles reads it page by page; he scores each saint on holiness, miracles, fame and death. Inspiration comes one night in a dream as the saints dance before him, kind, holy, virtuous, determined, shot, stoned, impaled.

Posted in Docklands Light Railway. Tagged with , , , , .

By Holly
January 12, 2009

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Aldgate East

Aldgate East by enlatado

Picture by enlatado.net: Aldgate East

Two million people crowd the stations to watch the very last train pull away on its very last journey. Bands play, hawkers sell glowstick halos in all the colours of the tube map; the electricity is switched off for the last time, and a parade marches down the centre of the line.

After families and photographers have gone home, the teenagers descend with the sun: onto the track, into stations, shouting out until their voices are just overlapping echoes. They wear torches on headbands, and when they kiss on empty platforms the light bounces from advertising screens too old to salvage. They scrawl graffiti across them, and across the walls and fences and each other’s backs, and they laugh.

They’ve always tagged next to railways, and they don’t remember why. The lines are dead, the trains are gone, the transport police are patrolling the hoverway, and for a few weeks euphoria carries them through; but the danger was always part of the drive. There’s no audience now either, except the homeless and the urbex crawlers. Millions of commuters are safe above their heads, carried along by whirring silver tubes, windows giving on sunlight and advercloud. Something’s missing.

Cassidy’s the first to figure it out. It takes her a week, walking the lines with the others, wondering what’s gone wrong. Once she’s decided what to do, though, she doesn’t hesitate: she starts where the last train finished, phone held high, a stack of three amplifying speakers clamped to the front. Streaming clanks and whistles peal out, a cacophony of sounds from the tube’s last hundred years, randomly recombined: mind the gap, the last train has left, the gasp of doors as they open, the beep as they close, the burr of a thousand rushing footsteps. In front of her the others scatter, clambering over fences and hurtling out of the way while she runs as fast as she can, straight down the line and toward the city centre.

Posted in District Line, Hammersmith & City Line. Tagged with , , , , .

By Holly
January 9, 2009

2 comments

Aldgate

Aldgate Tube Station sign by Jovike

Picture by Jovike: Aldgate Tube Station

They walk out of the station. “Well, presumably there was an old gate,” Damian says.

Aleesha smirks. “Actually no,” she says. “It’s from all-gate. Because it was open to everyone, nobody shut out, nobody forced to pay a toll.”

“Surely that defeats the purpose of having a gate in the first place,” Damian says.

Anselm nods. “In fact,” he says, “it’s from ale-gate.”

“It was a gate made of… ale? I don’t think that would work. I know food standards have risen a lot over the last thousand years, but—”

“Because of the inns and taverns that surrounded it,” Anselm continues unruffled.

Damian reaches for a mobile. “Okay,” he says, as the internet filters slowly down from the sky, “apparently it’s, um, does anyone know what a noil is? Apparently it’s a short fibre left over from combing wool or spinning. And, uh, this area used to be a big centre of spinning, so there were noils on the ground everywhere. And after a while the n disappeared. A noil gate, an oil gate, Aldgate.”

They’re silent for a minute. Damian keeps reading. “Huh, it says oranges used to be called noranges and the same thing happened there.”

“Weird,” Aleesha says.

Anselm frowns. “Sounds a bit unlikely.”

Damian snaps the phone shut one-handed and holds it up. “The internet has spoken. Do not question the internet. Additionally, the internet says it’s time for cake.”

Deep underground, Uldig shifts, starved, restless, not quite asleep. Keep the dirt pressed tight, they said; build heavy on the ground above, walk through the gaps every day to keep it packed down. Never forget the incomprehensible appetite of the creature, or what it did.

Posted in Circle Line, Metropolitan Line. Tagged with , , , .

By Holly
January 7, 2009

10 comments

Acton Town

Acton Town sign by Nicobobinus

Picture by Nicobobinus: Acton Town Station

The windows in Acton Town stretch all the way to the ceiling, so far above ground that there must be space for anything: a trapeze display, a pyramid of elephants, another tube station, thousands and thousands of balloons. One day Terrence works out exactly how many thousands, and it would be enough to lift the whole building, tunnels and all, pulling it free from the tubelines and floating it into the air.

The next morning he brings the first balloon and lets go. It’s red, and it bumps off the lights on the way up. The ceiling is so high that the staff don’t even try to get it down; it’ll fall on its own soon enough.

It doesn’t, though, and a week later Terrence brings in another. A month after that and the cluster’s big enough to draw attention; half a dozen pictures turn up online, and a girl with a green tartan skirt and a HAPPY BIRTHDAY 4 YEARS OLD! balloon of her own gapes as she looks, then lets go. Her balloon bumps upward too, and hits the ceiling, and stays there.

After a few years Terrence gets a raise, and starts bringing in two balloons a day. By now the sunlight through tall windows is patterned at the top, glowing playground-bright, shifting slowly through the afternoon. On Fridays he brings five, to make up for holidays and weekends.

After another year he makes it into Time Out, and suddenly it’s a cheap way to spend an hour with your kids: take a balloon to Acton Town, let it go and make a wish. By the time he retires, tall youths have to duck to get through the turnstiles; parents reach up to take a balloon from the mass for giggling toddlers.

Three years later, a week before calculated take-off, Terrence dies in a traffic accident. He feels only relief as a breath slides away and he recognises it as his last; he’s been worried for half his life that he got the numbers wrong, all those years ago, and he hasn’t ever dared to check.

Posted in District Line, Piccadilly Line. Tagged with , , , .

By Holly
January 5, 2009

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