Underground,
Overground and Wandering Free
The
British London Underground can be a rather isolating experience, -
well to be
honest all Metro based networks can be - what with the mad descent
into the bowels of the earth, culminating with being herded into a
claustrophobic vessel and fired through a shaft of darkness, rather
like a loaded bullet shooting along the barrel of gun. But, there is
an even greater and more subversive element at work here, a unique
social environment, where the prevalence is towards a younger class
of travelers. These particular human corpuscles – HOMOglobins –
coursing through the system, DE-oxygenating it along their way, seemingly providing a hormonal and colourful energy for the network to thrives upon,
as if a
regular transfusion of this vibrant life force was essential to it's
constant running. On my recent excursion into the dark side, I
couldn't help but notice that there was a distinct lack of passengers
over middle age – or as I prefer to call it... the age of dissent –
taking advantage of this form of transport, in a scene reminiscent from a subterranean version of "Logan's Run". Perhaps they simply
desert the city at the weekend, preferring to head out into the
country to satisfy their wild side, or take advantage of those
weekend getaways that try to encourage us that there is more to life
than the daily drudgery of it all, and at affordable prices. But,
whatever the reason, I could only see young people, sharing my lonely
passage into the unknown – I knew where I wanted to go, it was just
trying to find the damnable place that was proving to be beyond my
grasp.
Only
the disembodied voice supplied by the PA speakers, supplying any
sense
of
reason or shared communal direction, urging the masses to “ Mind
the age gap, and keep flowing on the left side,” as if fearful that
anyone stopping may congeal the general circulation. He who hesitates
were in danger of being washed along with the current flotsam and
jazz buskers, without any hope of parole or assistance from anyone
with a native tongue or living within at least a 50 mile radius. All
the off-season traveller had to fall back on was the myriad of
hieroglyphics – mockingly masquerading as line information -
adorning the platform walls offering only faint hope and growing
feelings of inadequacy, and the even more confusing overlaying
sketch-o-graph prints, that a child of five could work out, so long
as they had the IQ of Stephen Hawking – apparently Einstein's, a
secret rail enthusiast, was close to completing his greatest work, a
treatise on the simplification of a unified underground network, but
stopped suddenly when he realised that it was just easier to prove
his theory of relativity, and that dark matter was probably best left
in space.
In
conclusion, I can only surmise that underground travelers fall into
two main classes, those who are busy living life and those who know
how to enjoy it.
May your fares always be shorter than your journey.
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