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Barkingside

The pedestrian bridge at Barkingside station.

Picture by Sunil060902: Barkingside station looking north

Nobody wants to visit when you live in Barkingside. It’s a long way out for people who live in London; and a long way in for people who live anywhere else, anywhere that isn’t Barkingside. So the Barkingsiders are friendly and say hello to their neighbours; they borrow eggs to bake cakes which they throw away half-eaten, because nobody will come around to help them finish. In summer they ask each other over to rained-out barbecues. They get married and have children to populate their empty living rooms.

It’s been this way a long time, in Barkingside. The people built the station in their long, empty evenings, a hundred years ago. Some of them had been to the city centre, and they’d watched the unprecedented mass of people, sidestepping and swarming and retreating and intersecting; so they disassembled their garden sheds and when there wasn’t enough brick they tore down the corner shop as well. They made a station at the curve of a stony dead-end path that they renamed Station Road. It was red and pointy-roofed, with chimneys on the outside that corresponded to no internal fireplace, and the line they put down was long and straight and went toward the city, and the platforms had curly-edged ironwork; and the people of Barkingside stood there, behind the yellow line that they’d painted themselves, and they waited.

There were trains, eventually. Not often, and sometimes whole years passed where the platform stood empty, but as time went on the services grew more regular. And when the conductor pulled the doors open and nobody stepped out, time after time, the Barkingsiders disassembled more sheds and the older houses and built the Girls’ Village Home and filled it with 1500 pauper girls, infants to near-women. They girls left Barkingside as well, once they were old enough, and didn’t come back.

It’s a nice place, Barkingside. Pathways and trees and flowerbeds; libraries and swimming-pools and schools and churches (the services are well-attended). The pubs have attractive shuttered windows, and locals who call out startled welcomes when you go in. There are picket fences. The paintwork is bright and neat, the cemetery’s lawns are a deep clipped green. The streets are quiet.

Too quiet? Yes, of course. Zone 4 is the dead zone. Nobody visits, and the eyes of the Barkingside people are friendly and bright with hope, sad with incomprehension.

Which is to say: thanks so much for the invite, but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it up on Saturday - boring family stuff all day, you know. Really wish I could be there, though! And have a slice of cake for me, I’ll be thinking of you!

Posted in Central Line. Tagged with , .

By Holly
February 9, 2009

1 comment

Barking

A train with BARKING as its destination.

Picture by jmerelo: Trains were barking

There was an abbey in Barking, and it was called Barking Abbey. It was run by the Abbess of Barking; the nuns were the Barking Nuns. And that’s funny, isn’t it? It’s a bit funny.

Thing is, Barking Abbey was destroyed in 870, and “Barking” was barely a word back then; “beorcan” came in around 850, 900 AD. So there were these nuns, sure, and they were the Barking Nuns or maybe the Berecingas Nunnes or something; but it wasn’t a joke, and nobody stole the “Barking Abbey” sign to hang on their hovel wall and laugh at with their Old-English-speaking friends.

The abbey was founded in honour of Saint Ethelburga, and that was’t funny either because “burger” wasn’t a word at all; even “hamburger” doesn’t come in until the late nineteenth century.

So, the Barking nuns don’t bark, and the guidebooks make this very clear indeed, but somehow nobody pays them much attention. And the mesh of time makes ninth-century Barking remarkably easy to get to from central London, the only day-trip that doesn’t have an ice age or an ocean at the other end. Fortunately the nuns are very tolerant — though the novices look over and look away and giggle and blush on eye contact: such ridiculous clothes! Such strange hair!

Tameka comes to the abbey every May, with a new class each year; occasionally she bumps into herself, a few years older or younger, and exchanges awkward nods. “Stay on the visitor’s side of the rope,” she calls out to the class. “And don’t bother the past! That means you too, Derry. Just pay attention, remember there’s going to be a story to write when we get back to the present. Ben, come back here… Derry, what did I say?”

But Derry’s waving at three young nuns on the other side of the barrier, barely ten metres away. “Ruff! Ruff!” he shouts at them, and waves. “Ruff!”

“Derry!” Tameka says. “Shush!”, but the nuns have already heard. They turn around.

One of them frowns; another one smiles. “Hello, travellers!” calls the third, in heavily-accented Modern English.

Derry’s startled into momentary silence, the nun succeeding where Tameka consistently fails. “Hello,” he says after a moment, almost inaudible, suddenly shy.

The nun walks towards them, while Frowny looks shocked and Smiley giggles; they’re all novices really, Tameka realises, only a couple of years older than Derry.

“I’m sorry about that,” Tameka says slowly; her Old English isn’t up to much, but most of the past-dwellers pick up some modern vocabulary. “Please don’t let us interrupt you.”

“Oh, it is well,” the talking novice says, then shifts her attention back to Derry. “When from?” she asks.

“Go on,” Tameka says after a moment. “Answer the question, Derry. When are you from?”

“Twenty… twentythirtytwo,” Derry says, eyes wide.

The novice is almost close enough to touch, now, just the barrier between them. “Twentythirtytwo!” she says solemnly. “I am glad to be meeting you.”

“Are you… are you a Barking Nun?” Derry says, getting his courage up.

“Barking nun, yes,” she says. Frowny Novice finally follows her up to the fence and takes hold of her arm, tries to pull her away.

“From Barking Abbey?” Derry’s classmates giggle behind him.

“Yes, Barking Abbey.” The novice bites her bottom lip. Tameka can’t quite work out her expression. “What…. what you eat?” she asks.

“Æðelðryd!” Frowny says.

“Shhh,” Æðelðryd says, and looks back at Derry. “What you eat?” she repeats.

“I dunno.” Derry looks around for help, but he’s got himself into this; the least he can do is answer the questions. Tameka watches in silence. “Lots of things,” he says.

“With… with chips! What you eat with chips.” Æðelðryd says.

“What, fish?” Derry’s confused.

“What sort of fish!” Æðelðryd says, very quickly.

“I dunno,” and Derry frowns as Æðelðryd almost bounces. Tameka recognises the expression at last: anticipation. “Cod, I guess,” Derry says.

“Cod!” Æðelðryd says, hushed and exuberant and laughing all at once, “you eat cods,” and her giggles are unstoppable while the other two pull her away.

Tameka sighs. This is why she won’t teach girls.

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

By Holly
February 6, 2009

1 comment

Barbican

A walkway at the Barbican, with two feet at the top of the frame.

Picture by Daveybot: Barbican Walkway

There was woodland here once, a long time ago. Sunny paths led inward, autumn leaves crunched beneath our medieval feet, frost turned the branches silver and snow turned them white and spring turned them grey and green and gold again, over and over. Sometimes there were bluebells. Sometimes there were wolves.

There were no warning signs, or spiked fences. If you lived nearby you knew to stay away, and if you were just passing through then the woodland would let you go — usually, eventually — after a few wrong turns and a little scare or two.

Later, the woodland was cut down and there were houses and offices and shops. People walked through and got a little lost, and then found their way out; or they got a job for a year (studying at night, waiting for their young man to propose, deciding what to do next) and never left again.

Later still it was dark, darker than anything we’d seen since the woodland fell and the first buildings came in its place: windows covered, streetlamps doused, cigarettes stamped out. Sometimes there were air-raid sirens; sometimes the bombs hit, and the houses and offices and shops all fell apart.

And now the war’s long ended and the lights are on again, and new buildings have sprung from the old. There are fountains; there’s a warm glass conservatory with pink flowers and a long spiral staircase. There’s an orchestra and a theatre and tall housing blocks and a Waitrose, and a wide plaza like a satellite dish, and bricks, and trees, and bricks, and maps and yellow lines and bricks.

The raised pathways cross at ninety degrees, above and below each other, and you can see from one to another. Sometimes they lead outward and away. Sometimes they lead downward further and further, but there’s always bright air and clouds when you look over the side.

You’re lost, of course. Everyone here is lost. Pretend you think it’s funny, for ten minutes or so: you can’t find the exit, it must be around here somewhere! It’s like a maze! Look, it’s that corner again, or is it a different one? You’ll pass the Pizza Express from a dozen different angles; you might as well stop and eat something while you can, it’s the last garlic bread for a long long time.

Further up (or further down; the ziggurat structure makes it hard to tell sometimes), you’ll get a view across the whole Barbican, fog-bound at the edges, the city invisible beyond its amorphous edges. The corridors here will cross at stranger angles, and some of them will slope up and then down, gently, like rolling hills.

We’ll find you pretty quickly. New faces are easy to recognise around here. When we ask who you are, what you were doing, you should probably tell us you’re a lighting technician: nobody will know enough to prove you a liar.

Never admit that you were just walking through, just looking around. We’ve been here longer than you, and we’ve heard that passers-by sometimes make it out even after weeks, years. It’s a long time we’ve spent down here, longer for some of us than others; and if we’re hungry enough for escape then we’ll eat you, the closest thing we’ve got.

Posted in Circle Line, Hammersmith & City Line, Metropolitan Line. Tagged with , , , .

By Holly
February 4, 2009

14 comments

Bank

Bank station sign, with the Bank of England in the background.

Picture by slrjester: Bank Tube

William Jenkins is born tall. When he first unfurls his damp pink limbs, his mother laughs in astonishment that she could ever have contained them. She holds him for two days and a night while his father searches all of London for a long enough crib.

They’re not tall themselves, Mr and Mrs Jenkins, and they watch their gangle-legged son as he learns to roll and then to crawl and then to pull himself upright, waist-high to them already the first time he stands unaided. He doesn’t walk until he’s two years old, and clumsily at first, as though his hands and feet are too far away to pay them any mind; but once he notices they exist, he’s quick and clever in their employment. He learns to write early, and does it very neatly indeed — especially sums, holding the tiny chalk in his large hands, inscribing the elegant curls of his numbers on the slate.

He makes friends easily, and at school his height is nothing special; just a gift of easy access to high-branched apples. He goes for long walks with Emmeline Grady, who takes two quick steps for each of his long, lazy strides, and he looks down at the top of her head, biting his bottom lip to stop himself laughing in delight, safe and high where she can’t see.

And he keeps growing, and still it’s never a problem. He gets a job at the Bank of England as soon as he leaves school, sitting on a tall stool at a high table. He’s happy, most of the time, though there’s a few hard months when Emmeline gets married to another, shorter man; and a harder year when she dies in childbirth soon after.

And there’s the surgeons, of course. In good years and bad, there’s always the surgeons.

They knock on his door at all hours; they send him letters. One of them, a cheery-faced man with messy blond hair, offers two hundred guineas for his corpse.

“That’s kind of you,” William says. “I’m not in fact dead.”

“Oh, of course not, of course not! Very much alive, Mr Jenkins, I can see that. And I’m glad of it, too, though admittedly it’s not ideal for my purposes; but it can’t be helped. And I wouldn’t want to help it! I’m very happy to wait, Mr Jenkins, the hospital isn’t going anywhere.”

William is always polite and careful, but for over a decade the surgeon comes weekly, and sometimes it’s hard to stay calm. “I don’t know why you’re so interested,” he says once. “I can’t be very different inside from anyone else.”

“Come now, Mr Jenkins, we don’t know about that until we’ve had a look, do we? Who can say what’s inside your vasty deeps? For all I know you might have any number of kidneys, and in any case, Mr Jenkins, the students do love a freak.”

William stays longer at work to keep the surgeons at bay, arriving and leaving at unpredictable hours; they find the window closest to his desk, and climb a ladder to batter for his attention.

“Mr Jenkins! Open up! You’re bound to die sooner or later, Mr Jenkins, and if we don’t get you now we’ll just get you then! You might as well make some money while you can, because you can’t stop us for ever!”

But he can at least ignore them for a while. He keeps working in the Bank, rising through the ranks of the clerks, and he’s kind and careful and well-liked. When he falls ill in 1797 he comes coughing in one morning, pale and scared; and the head of the clerks touches his cold cheeks and looks at his cloudy eyes, and promises to keep him safe.

“They can bury you,” the surgeon yells in at the window, “but they can’t stop us digging you back up! It won’t be long, Mr Jenkins, your sort alway dies young!”

He does: in 1798, at thirty-one years of age. But the Bank takes his six-foot-eight body and lays it in a seven-foot-six coffin, and buries it in a garden hidden deep inside their walls, very early one morning. His parents stand in the cold and watch, their breath clouding above them. When they leave, the blond surgeon is already there; but the gate is locked behind them with a three-foot key, and there are tunnels and vaults and thick wooden doors on the other side.

Posted in Central Line, Docklands Light Railway, Northern Line, Waterloo & City. Tagged with , , , .

By Holly
February 2, 2009

11 comments

Balham

Looking across the platform to the tube sign on the opposite wall, at Balham.

Picture by Nicobobinus: Balham

When Geoffrey of Belgeham finally receives his copy of the Domesday Book, it says that he owns one and a half ploughs. The other half a plough belongs to the next village over, which has six and a half total, so you’d think there’d be room for a bit of generous compromise; but no. Instead the representatives of the two villages take it in turns to drag the shared plough up and down their border, one half in Estreham and the other in Belgeham, furrowing ever deeper.

One afternoon, Leofric’s had enough. He steers the plough into Estreham fields, and keeps it up for a whole productive afternoon before anyone from Belgeham notices. After that, the plough is always manned by two: one from each village, eyeing the other suspiciously, up and down the border.

The plough digs further and further into the earth as months go by. The edges of the furrow start to shade the workers, both from sun and from watchful eyes. After a while it’s no longer strictly necessary to have a representative from both villages — the furrow is too deep for anyone to lift out the plough unaided — but it’s tradition now, and a pleasant way to spend the afternoon besides.

The problem comes late one autumn afternoon when, sun angling golden above them, Beorhtsige and Deoring find they’ve ploughed too deep and they can’t climb out. They call for help but nobody hears until morning, when Huscarl wanders over from Belgeham and Alflaed from Estreham.

“Have you tried a leg-up?” Alflaed calls down.

“Of course we’ve tried a fucking leg-up,” says Beorhstige.

Alflaed looks shocked: they’re more demure, over Estreham way. “There’s no call for that.”

Deoring shrugs, conciliatory but damp. “Well, we have just spent the night in a furrow. And it did rain a bit. Maybe one of you could get a ladder?”

Huscarl leafs through his copy of the Book. “It doesn’t look like we’ve got one,” he says.

“We’ve got two,” Beorstige says. “Behind the big house. And Ordwig’s son has a rope.”

Huscarl runs his finger down the page. “It’s not listed. Maybe Estreham?”

Alflaed’s already looking through his copy. “We’ve got two hides and a virgate… no… oh, here we go. Hm. Half a ladder.”

Beorhstige swears again, but Deoring looks hopeful. “Half a ladder might do it. We’re not that far down. You could drop it in, we’ll climb up as far as we can and maybe you can pull us the rest of the way.”

They wait three hours for Alflaed to get back: the ladder’s kept right over on the border with Furzedown, which owns the other half. Deoring takes the plough up and down the furrow a few times while he waits, and makes small talk with Huscarl, who’s sat on the Belgeham side with his legs dangling over the edge. Beorhstige sits at the bottom with crossed arms, leaning his head against the dirt wall.

“Here,” Alflaed says, finally returned. “They wouldn’t let me borrow their half, sorry.” There’s half a dozen curious Estrehamians and even one Furzedowner behind him.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Deoring says, setting the plough down; and then he ducks beneath the shower of falling rungs.

Posted in Northern Line. Tagged with , , , , .

By Holly
January 30, 2009

3 comments

Baker Street

The tiles at Baker Street, with tiny silhouettes of Sherlock Holmes

Picture by oxborrow: Close up of the tiles

I had left my office for lunch, hoping that a leisurely walk in the park might set my mind at ease. Instead the brisk wind and the burr of the traffic left me all the more agitated. It was perhaps for this reason that, on my return, I failed to note that the door had been been unlocked during my brief absence.

My oblivion was short-lived. There, in my own chair, was a tall young man with dark hair and a large, hawk-like nose.

“Doctor,” he said. “I have a question for you.”

At first I thought him one of the neighbours, or perhaps a local stallholder come to seek assistance with some small digestive difficulty. My title has on occasion caused confusion.

“I fear,” I told him, “you are under a misapprehension. I am not a medical doctor. My speciality is—”

“Yes,” said he, “I’m aware you are no medical doctor. From the pattern of wear on the keyboard of your desktop computer I can see that you type most habitually in English, and that you make generous use of the semi-colon. A doctor of English or History, then, perhaps? But no historian nowadays can afford to ignore the impact of economic considerations upon the period of his investigations, and both the pound and dollar sign on your keyboard are all but untouched. English, then, I should say late Victorian.”

It was an extraordinary guess, but it did nothing to mollify my concern at his presence.

“I’m afraid,” I said curtly as he pulled out a pipe, “that this is a no-smoking building.”

“And polite, too,” the young man continued, “unwilling to ask me not to smoke on your own behalf; yet the ashes on the ground outside indicate that you have a smoker in the room below, and the Neighbourhood Watch adhesive notice on his window suggests that he would not flout the rules. I am quite willing to refrain from smoking, but I pray you not to disguise personal preference as your landlord’s regulations.”

My astonishment at the accuracy of his perceptions vied with distaste for his familiarity and his unauthorised entry. “If you are not here for medical advice,” I said sharply, “perhaps you would tell me just what it is that you want.”

“Why, a job!” he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “From the trappings of your office I can see that your business is a profitable one — consulting on costume dramas, I should guess from the pattern of dust on the shelves and the knot of your tie. Yet you derive no delight from the task. There are no personal possessions along your mantel, no kettle on the sideboard. This office is, to you, simply a place in which to carry out your day’s tasks, a place in addition which you long to leave behind. Surely this indicates an overburdened mind, an excess of work pressing upon your spirit; and yet I can tell from the thick grime on the windows and your restraint in the face of an intruder that you will go to no lengths to find an assistant yourself. It is for these reasons, Doctor, that I offer myself to you. I can see that you doubt, but I promise you, I have made a close study of your character in these last few minutes, and when you have had time to think it through you will be sure to accept.”

I stared, dumbstruck. The impudence! And yet… the acuity!

“On the understanding that this is the case,” the young man continued, “my question is this: how much can you pay me, and when would you like me to begin? From your expression I can see that the answer to both is a satisfactory one. I shall therefore see you on Monday. I require only a small desk; I will bring my own chair.”

Posted in Bakerloo Line, Circle Line, Hammersmith & City Line, Jubilee Line, Metropolitan Line. Tagged with , , , .

By Holly
January 28, 2009

No comments