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Bond Street

Bond Street at night.

Picture by Dan Cunningham: Bond Street by night

Tavistock has the sunglasses and the heavy coat of a man who enjoys his job, but the sunglasses are there to hide his tears. He bought the coat one Sunday afternoon, hoping to supplement his thin skin; it works, a little, when he’s on a good shift.

This isn’t a good shift. When he parked outside the station he wasn’t prepared for just how bad it would turn out to be. The busy shopping streets can always be hard, but it’s three in the morning, empty streets and cloudy sky. He was expecting a quiet night. Instead, it’s the worst he’s seen for months: a Mongoose, a Merlin, a couple of mountain bikes that should never have been brought into the city in the first place. And behind them, nestling behind a protective Litespeed, there’s a tricycle. Not again, Tavistock thinks, chest hollowing out; please, not again, not tonight. The tricycles are always the worst.

He cuts the bike locks slowly, walking each new prisoner back to the van on its own, gripping the handlebars firmly but never too tight. The delays buy him nothing except the chance of harsh words from Ludgate when he gets back to base. As he works his way down the lamp-posts there’s no reprieve, no harried owners running up at the last minute. Just the burr of occasional cars, ther headlights casting strange shadows through the spokes of the decreasing ranks of the bicycles; that, and the sound of his own relentless work.

Two dark figures turn into the street, then cross to the other side. They probably think he’s a thief. Perhaps he is: there’s the imprimatur of the law to tell him he’s doing the right thing, of course, but his heart says otherwise, night after night. And tonight more than most.

There’s only the tricycle left, now. What’s it even doing here? Who leaves a tricycle on Bond Street in the middle of the night? He wipes his tools clean, buying it another few minutes; but still, nothing.

Back at the Tower he rattles over the drawbridge. Ludgate’s waiting.

“Another fruitful night, I hope?” Ludgate, too, looks like a man who enjoys his job. His gloves are black, to hide the grease.

Tavistock shrugs and starts unloading. “Busier than I was expecting,” he says.

“Good,” Ludgate says. “Well done. And another Raleigh! Well done indeed!” He takes out his jeweller’s loupe and squats, looking closely, spinning the free wheel. He purses his lips; after a minute, he stands. “Take it straight to the turret with the others.”

Posted in Central Line, Jubilee Line. Tagged with , , .

By Holly
March 9, 2009

3 comments

Blackwall

Canary Wharf seen from Blackwall.

Picture by chodhound: Canary Wharf at Dusk from Blackwall DLR Station

They’re waiting at Blackwall Station, and the nearby buildings of Canary Wharf are the strangest things.

“Do you think they count as skyscrapers?” Tandie asks, counting fifty storeys on the big one. That must be more than enough to qualify; and yet it’s so thick and right-angled that it looks short.

Most of the buildings went up when she was two or three, she knows, and they could almost have been modelled on her own contemporaneous plastic cities: squares and rectangles sat on top of each other, higher and higher, rooves coming all of a sudden when the blocks run out. Smooth surfaces, uninterrupted walls. In the dusk, with city lights and the setting sun reflecting from windows, even the colours are duplo-bright.

She can see, if she looks away, buildings that aren’t so strange. A tapering church spire; fashionably curved offices; an old warehouse. But back in the distance the square buildings sit, every one facing the same direction, lit and unlit windows making up a single grid.

If it was really the city of her industrious toddlerhood, the trains would be blue with bright red wheels for the carriages; the only trees would be palms, with four green leaves apiece. There would be My Little Ponies roaming the streets, peering in through fifth-floor windows with painted eyes.

“I never had duplo,” Marisha says. “Or My Little Ponies.” She used to play in her parents’ second-hand shop; if a city had grown in parallel to her toys, it would be full of the steel girders of old meccano sets, houses shaped like 50s biscuit tins, triangular rooves like old books propped open. Piles of shoes, broken bicycle parts, inhabitants dressed in a jumble of paisley and tartan and lace and purple spots. Bridges like toast racks. Churches modelled on badminton trophies from 1932.

“Ah,” Tandie says, and nods. “Shoreditch.”

Posted in Docklands Light Railway. Tagged with , , .

By Holly
March 6, 2009

2 comments

Blackhorse Road

Mosaic showing a black horse.

Picture by practicalowl: Blackhorse

Joseph and Ambrose Sainsbury live on Blackhorse Road, a few minutes’ walk from the station. There isn’t a lot of passing trade; but then, turret clocks are a fairly specialised market, and as such are rarely purchased on a whim by people who just happen to be passing a turret clock shop.

The sign by the door shows a church tower, but of course their clocks also find a home at railway stations, atop town halls and factories, occasionally out by a distant country house. The Sainsbury brothers do not, however, deal with mantel clocks, grandfather clocks, cuckoo clocks, egg timers or — most especially — watches.

Joseph Sainsbury is the talkative brother, and he explains this rule to several aspiring customers a week.

“I accept,” the girl says, “that watches aren’t your area of special expertise, but the problem has arisen before and I’m assured that it’s a very simple fault. Mr Timbleton was able to provide a remedy in minutes.”

Her coat is green; her tone is stubborn. “In that case I suggest,” Joseph tells her, “that you take the watch to Mr Timbleton.”

“If Mr Timbleton were not now dead, I most certainly would,” she says, but Joseph has already stepped away from the counter. He holds a large cog up to the light and squints. The girl waits expectantly; but after he turns the cog over and continues to squint, she sighs and leaves.

Joseph had expected more of a fight. He puts the cog down, on a back shelf out of the way; he has in fact very little idea what to do with it, or with the springs or the escapements or the bells that line his shelves, or with any mechanical device. He keeps the shop tidy; he looks after the books; and he arranges new commissions. The clockmaking itself is Ambrose’s concern.

Lunch is another of Joseph’s responsibilities; he’s in the back room carving a very large ham when someone comes into the shop. It’s the girl again, carrying a box under her arm.

“Good afternoon,” Joseph says. “Have you decided to replace your unreliable pocket watch with a fine Sainsbury Brothers turret clock?”

“No,” she says. “I already have a turret clock. It’s broken, and I’d like you to fix it.” She puts the box down on the counter, and then lifts out… a tower: pointed roof folded from brown paper, sides made from the torn covers of an old three-volume novel, string, ragged pages. Near the top, wobbling slightly, held in place by the twisted loops of its chain, is the watch.

Joseph laughs. In the time it must have taken her to build the tower, she could surely have had the watch fixed elsewhere by now. But she tilts her head back, and it’s a challenge: go on, you can’t turn it away now, Mister Too-Good-For-Watches.

“I’m afraid,” Joseph says, “I still can’t help you.”

“Mr Sainsbury,” the girl says, “I was under the impression you dealt in turret clocks. I have brought you a turret clock.”

“Yes,” Joseph says, “I can see that. But I don’t deal with the clockwork myself, you understand. All the family’s physical dexterity is invested in my brother.”

“I’m very happy for your brother to fix the clock. I have no preference among Sainsburies, I assure you.”

“No. But… perhaps you’d better come with me, and meet him.”

She picks up the tower gently, and lays it again in the carton. “That sounds like a very god idea.”

Joseph shouldn’t be doing this, but the tower is so precarious and wonderful; he can’t turn her away without an explanation. He leads her through the corridor, and out into the yard behind the shop.

Ambrose is sitting on the ground, cross-legged, leaning over his workbench. The bench is significantly taller than Joseph.

“Oh,” the girl says.

Ambrose looks up, a fourteen-foot pendulum poised delicately between his fingers. He blinks, startled, and his eyelids are vast and slow.

Posted in Victoria Line. Tagged with , , .

By Holly
March 4, 2009

1 comment

Blackfriars

Blackfriars underground station, mostly empty.

Picture by hanuman: Down in the tube station

Kenneth makes a sandwich last thing every evening, on a benchtop lit by overflow from the hallway: the kitchen’s fluorescent light is too bright for him after ten o’clock. He uses leftovers from dinner and bread from the freezer, then wraps the sandwich in cling-film. In the morning, he picks it up as he leaves for work.

He eats it at the station, waiting for his train.

Which is, of course, a violation of Tube Rules. When you’re crushed this close to a thousand strangers you have to forget that they’re real, that they have thoughts and intentions and physical processes just like you; you have to forget your own physical processes as well, if you can, subordinating them to the juddering movement of the whole. The few travellers who don’t realise, drunks and children and misplaced retirees from first-class cross-country sleeper cabins, are the only violations. From someone like Kenneth, his shirt ironed and his briefcase old-fashioned, the messy lunch—before most people have eaten their breakfast—causes a stir. A mild stir, of course; an extremely mild stir, so mild that it’s only barely distinguishable from no stir at all. Tube Rules again. But Kenneth notices.

He feels slightly guilty about it, especially when the platform isn’t too crowded and he can see people glancing at him sidelong and then looking away. He thinks of a new excuse every morning, preparing himself for confrontation. He’s a spy; his breadcrumbs and straggly lettuce drop in morse code, communicating secret messages to Primary Control through the CCTV cameras. He’s taking part in a psychology experiment; he’s been assigned to Blackfriars, but there’s someone like him at every station, biting into sandwiches across the city, monitoring reactions at stations both crowded and empty, from leafy outer zones to the bustling centre. He’s part of a Pret a Manger advertising campaign. He’s a food taster for the Prime Minister, testing fresh sandwiches and rushing them direct to Downing Street, certified poison-free (except he’s on the wrong platform for Westminster). What sandwich?, he could say, throwing it onto the tracks. Or: my wife died five years ago today; she always loved this station, and sandwiches, so I eat this in her memory.

Or the truth, of course: “I’m hungry in the morning, but I don’t have time to eat before I leave home; I feel uncomfortable using the kitchen at work; I like sandwiches, I don’t like fruit, toast doesn’t last overnight; ritual comforts me.” Or, perhaps better still, he could just look confused and walk away; if anyone ever does confront him then their violation of Tube Rules will be far greater than his own. Popular opinion will be silently but unmistakably on his side.

He doesn’t need to worry about it, but worrying has become part of the ritual too; a daily excuse to go with his daily bread. Sometimes he wonders whether he’s going to run out of ideas, sooner or later, but each morning he stands there and unwraps the sandwich (clingfilm into his pocket, to be disposed of once his journey’s over and he leaves the No Bins Zone of the underground); and he always thinks of something. I’ve got birds to feed at the other end of the journey, he thinks, and I need to generate crumbs. Or: I need the clingfilm to plug a hole in my shoe. Or: I brought it to share, I thought someone else might want half, but nobody ever, ever asks.

Posted in Circle Line, District Line. Tagged with .

By Holly
March 2, 2009

No comments

Bethnal Green

A woman standing by the Bethnal Green sign, seen close-up.

Picture by Slushpup of Bethnal Green station

The shop sells extortionate rainbows: swathes of pure colour at sixty pounds apiece, or a knock-down £400 for a full spectrum of seven.

Cam and Eliza don’t have four hundred pounds. And Eliza doesn’t have, or so it seems to Cam, a conscience.

“Don’t be such a worrywart,” Eliza says, running the back of one hand along undulating indigo. “It’s fine. You’re allowed to steal silk.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not technically the case,” Cam says.

“Well, maybe not technically,” Eliza says. “Technically it’s against the law to eat a mince pie on Christmas Day.”

“You know that’s not true, right? Remember that big conversation we had about ain’t-the-world-zany newspaper articles? There’s also no real formula for the perfect hemline.”

“Technically you aren’t allowed to drive without a seat-belt on,” Eliza continues, unperturbed.

“I don’t drive without a seat-belt on. I don’t drive at all.”

“Technically,” Eliza says, “you aren’t allowed to illegally download Battlestar Galactica.”

Cam remains silent.

“Silk is like bittorrent,” Eliza says, triumphant. “Everyone does it, nobody really cares. Massive history of theft, right? Silkworms smuggled out of China in hollow-tipped walking-sticks, industrial spies stealing newly-designed looms. Rival manufacturers sneaking into each other’s factories to get a glance at the hot new fabric patterns. At the start of the nineteenth century there were twenty thousand weavers around here, and what do you need that many weavers for unless your silk keeps getting stolen?”

Cam is trying to refold the scarves and doesn’t respond, but Eliza just picks them up and shakes them loose again, red, orange, yellow. “Silk theft is the cultural heritage of Bethnal Green,” she says. “This is why we had to come during the week, if you go into a silk shop on a weekend you can’t move for all the shoplifters.”

Cam gives up on the folding and looks around the shop. It doesn’t appear to be bustling with thieves at the moment. There’s the woman at the counter, and a man examining stacked cushions in one corner; and there’s her, and Eliza, who is speaking really quite loudly now.

“It’s intrinsic to human nature,” Eliza says. “Make something gorgeous and expensive that you can fold down into a tiny little ball, and of course everyone’s going to steal it. Magicians pulling silk handkerchiefs out of their sleeves, yeah? And then pushing them into an egg till they disappear? That’s a metaphor.”

“Okay, fine,” Cam says, “whatever you say, everyone does it, I don’t want to have this argument. But you know what else I don’t want to do? Steal scarves for you.”

Eliza folds her arms. “Spoilsport,” she says, pouting slightly.

“You look ridiculous,” Cam says. “You look like an alpaca.”

Eliza pulls her bottom lip in and bats her eyelashes.

“You still look like an alpaca.”

“Oh, come on,” Eliza says, wriggling petulantly and pulling Cam around to face her. “They’re so bright. They feel so smooth.” Her voice changes, a different tone of half-whisper: “And if we had seven scarves, I could try out the dance of the seven veils…”

Cam pulls her arms free and turns around, leaves the shop. The woman at the counter seems to glare suspiciously as she walks out.

She’s halfway down the street when Eliza catches up. “No need to get in a huff,” Eliza says. “It was just an idea.”

Back inside the shop, the bearded man looks quickly behind him, then takes four cushions and pushes them down his trousers. He thinks he might have overdone it, waddling past the woman at the counter, but she’s busy swallowing her seventh silk tie of the day and she doesn’t notice anything odd.

“We can probably just use teatowels from the pound shop, anyway,” Eliza says, as three black-clad figures vault over her head and roll to their feet on the roof opposite.

Posted in Central Line. Tagged with , , , .

By Holly
February 27, 2009

No comments

Bermondsey

Someone sitting in Bermondsey tube station.

Picture by Larsz: Bermondsey underground station

Aisha works in the Department of Architectural Futures (London Division), which is based just west of Exeter. Her job is to catalogue Deprecated Constructions, the disordered mass of buildings that were proposed but never built; so she walks the loop of the Great Victorian Way, deveops a reference system for office blocks, lies with her eyes closed beneath the unmoving wind turbines at the Citygate Ecotower.

The buildings are empty and silent, slotted together with narrow corridors between; put wherever they’d fit by inattentive curators who organised them sometimes by purpose, sometimes by period, sometimes by colour or size or architect’s name or ceiling height or cornice shape or pure chance. Aisha’s been working on a catalogue for three years, and even now she sometimes rounds a corner to find herself looking at a building she’s never seen before: glass turrets, marble columns, visions of the future circa 1950, sea-shells embedded in red brick.

The head of the department comes to visit occasionally, and every month or two there’s a postgrad working on a thesis who needs access to some doomed building or another; usually Wren’s proposal for a new City of London, occasionally the Albert Memorial Tower.

Aisha likes the students. She likes their hushed awe as she leads them down the aisles; the way they reach out, astonished, to run their fingertips along the buildings that she knows so well. It’s hers, this empty city. She’s picnicked in its maintenance basements, surrounded by ladders and pipework that will never accumulate the grime of functionality. She’s danced a clumsy Charleston on its wide chimneytops. She’s run through its motionless amusement parks, vaulting into the bottom gondola of a ferris wheel and then leaping out the other side, setting the whole thing swinging, creaking with the only sound for miles.

She’s very happy.

And every now and then she heads over to Pending Constructions.

She doesn’t like Pending Constructions. The buildings in Deprecated Constructions are beautiful even when they’re ugly; their impossibility makes them joyful and sad and glorious all at once. But everything in Pending Constructions might still get built, and the whole place crawls with potential life, corridors and offices filled with the transparent shadows of alternate worlds that may yet exist.

She tells Tom Fairbairn, the Pending curator, that being around translucent people gives her a headache; and it’s true, as far as it goes. But she never talks to him about the office block that was meant to sit above Bermondsey tube station, the office block that might still be catapulted into existence; never asks him about what she sees when she visits, though he must have seen it as well.

But not “it”: her. On the third floor of the building, sat beside three grey filing cabinets, her; another Aisha. A bit thinner, maybe, and wearing fashionable glasses; her hair’s shorter, and she’s see-through of course. But it’s definitely her.

Aisha watches her other self answer the phone, write emails, read livejournal, eat lunch, move folders, exchange inaudible jokes with her see-through colleagues. The other self looks happy enough; but sometimes the real Aisha lies awake at night, afraid to fall asleep in case she wakes up in that other world. What happens if the Bermondsey office block is built after all? On the bad nights she goes back to work and sleeps there instead, surrounded by her wind turbines and long empty corridors and winding staircases, her pedestrian bridges all lined up in a row, her growing collection of impractical redesigns for Battersea Power Station, her fairytale spires, her mirrored forts, her brightly-painted bandstands.

Posted in Jubilee Line. Tagged with , , .

By Holly
February 25, 2009

18 comments