The Central Line to Hell
For those not familiar with the various snakelike lines on the London Underground, wiggling and jiggling betwixt each other like dancing cobras in anticipation of entangling in a beautiful love-making, the Central Line is the shit one. To give some context, the Central Line is an underground train line that runs all the way from East London (shit) to West London (somehow more shit), living in South Central London and having no desire to traverse between the two, I manage to avoid it for the most part. The lines I commonly use are the Northern and the Victoria, both of which transport me to the centre, both of which are unremarkable at doing that job, which is exactly how public transport should be. As long as it gets you where you’re going without a stranger talking to you, that is a damn fine train line, setting aside the obvious fact that you are being forced to inhale as many pollutants as TfL can conjure up without speccing into alchemy.
The moment you step onto a Central Line platform, with its trademark red trim, you know something is amiss, there is something about the hollow-eyed look of its regular passengers waiting around you, like zombies with more life draining out of them by the minute. Even as you stand there for 5 minutes, the joy seeps further out of them. If you find yourself at a Central Line platform next to a skater boy with a backwards hat on that you think is pretty cool, by the time the train arrives he will have solemnly turned the brim of his hat to face the correct way at some point without you even noticing. Girls with pink hats and multicoloured leggings that had a smile on their face as they waltzed off a District Line train will turn up to the platform wearing grey suits and mumbling about the end of the financial quarter.
If you stepped foot inside one of the early 90s carriages that lurch back and forth between Epping and Ruislip you would understand why. The other lines can get quite grimy and dirty, it’s the nature of being underground, but the state in which the Central Line carriage doors you face turn up, you would swear they have gone through a car wash that an ape with a particularly bad diet has been has been defecating in ever since they ran out of soap. The interior, while much cleaner, can’t help but give you a distinct sense of dread. Every Underground line is obviously underground, but it almost feels like the Central Line is trying to remind you of that, like it is purposefully imbuing you with the feeling that you will never see the sunlight again and you should have told your mum you loved her when you last spoke. This is accomplished through the inexplicably black-tinted windows and blood red railings to hold onto that mean that whenever I’m on a Central Line train, I’m very aware that I have descended 1% of the way down to Hell.
I think what irks most though, is that there is something very “New York” about it. Not to disparage the Big Apple as I’ve never been there and seen it first hand, and I think that gives me an image of it as the nadir of metropolitan life. The streets appear to be filled with nothing but pimps, walking along with their canes and fancy white hats, just begging for an excuse to slap you for acting out of line. The sewers overflowing with mutants and crocodile-men, with testosterone jacked up to 11. Sure, they’re going after Spiderman, but if they happen to come across me on the surface, what are they gonna do? Let me go off on my merry way? And so when you do start to consider the big metal boxes that they call train carriages, rattling along, ready to fall apart like skeletons, it is in the context of a city that has completely gone to shit and is just waiting for, in the words of Taxi Driver, a real rain to come and wash all this scum off the streets. In that context, you can’t help but view the humans as a herd of cattle and the subway as the grim slaughterhouse that they willingly walk into every day. Like the Central Line, it is dingy, dark, and full of zombies. I wouldn’t take a New York style underground train any more than I would eat a New York bagel or New York style assault a woman. It’s not in my nature to participate regularly in those kind of things.
On a recent journey in London, I got on, ordinarily enough, at Oxford Circus, expecting my usual unassuming tube journey. With my earphones in, nodding my head along to some lo-fi indie pop made for girls. I brushed past the elderly woman hobbling over to the seats with her zimmer-frame and grabbed the last empty one. Entering my mind palace to keep the trying conditions from upsetting me, a group of youths had started chainsmoking next to me and I was worried one of them would offer me a ciggie, I opened my phone. No luck. We are under an almost lethal amount of concrete and lead, no chance of any signal down here. I put my phone back into my pocket…
…
…
I try my phone again. Yep, just as I suspected, still no signal. I finally give up and resort to staring around the carriage. All around me are lost souls, all grey shoes, grey hair, grey faces. I must be nearly there now. I got on at Oxford Circus, we’re at Bank now, what’s next? Liverpool Street… Bethnal Green… Mile End… Hell… wait what? That can’t be right, that’s not even the end of the line. I look down, people probably think it’s weird that I’ve been looking up so long, I’ll seem like I’m not from here. No one else thinks it’s weird that Hell is on the tube line. Maybe I’m seeing it wrong, wouldn’t people be panicking? I look back up after long enough that it now seems like it could just be a casual glance again. Yep, “Hell”. It’s still there. Fuck it, I don’t care if I look weird, I rub my eyes and check again but it still hasn’t changed. What is going on? We’ve reached Bethnal Green now and nobody else has noticed that this Central Line train is apparently heading to Hell. The train is stopped, I have to get off now, surely. But I can’t make my mind up and the doors are closed again before I know it. The train leaves the platform and chunters on and on, it feels like it’s going downhill, that can’t be right. There’s no way this real, it must have been some teenager having vandalised the carriage map, but it can’t be! It’s the same colour and typeface, there’s not even a sticker covering what was there before, hang on, what was there before? Was it Denmark Hill? No, that’s the Overground. I remember now, it was Goodge Street! No! That’s on the Northern Line! Maybe it’s always been Hell after Mile End, I guess I don’t go on this line regularly enough to question it, and no one else thinks it’s weird. We’re approaching Mile End now and I decide I’ve got to get off, even if it’s right, I don’t want to be going to Hell, I was supposed to meet my mate at Westfield Shopping Centre. I stand up as the train slows to a stop, definitely getting off, definitely getting off. The doors open and I slink off along with a few other Londoners inevitably on their way to see Mile End’s famous Community Garden or the statue of Clement Attlee. I stop for a moment, this doesn’t seem right… my CityMapper app definitely said to stay on this train for more stops than this, I don’t wanna be stuck at Mile End and realise that I was supposed to change at Hell after all. But people would think it was weird if I got straight back on now. I hustled over to the next carriage along to get in before the doors close, hopefully no one here has noticed that I was already on this train. I sit back down and take in my new, albeit nearly identical surroundings. The railings are still red, the windows still black, the train sets off again and begins to pick up speed, the train is making a horrible din, it’s ear-piercing! It almost sounds less like normal train mechanisms and more like the screaming of tortured souls… hang on- that man sitting across from me isn’t a man, he’s an imp! I was wondering why he was cackling fiendishly and rubbing his hands! I assumed he had just completed the Metro Sudoku. Oh God! That was a fire we just went past! And another! We must actually be going to Hell, no wonder none of my friends have gone this far on the Central Line! The train is slowing, no, please no. It slowly grinds to a halt, the imp across from me stands up, actually quite a short fellow I can’t help but notice, and scurries towards the door. The electrical doors slide open automatically and I dread to think what is on the other side of them. I steel myself, clench my fist, and get up. Just as I am about to reach the door I see a pair of horns poke into the carriage, then a cheeky smiling face, almost devilish, he peeks the rest of his head in and I see the goatee, it’s the Devil! Lucifer himself!
“Welcome Cal! I trust you had a good journey.”
“No, it was shit actually, I had to change at Oxford Circus and there was a fault with the doors on the next tube so I was waiting on the platform for about 20 minutes.”
“Well, you’re here now, that’s the important thing, and don’t worry, you won’t be taking the Central Line again for a long, long time.”
He puts his arm around me and escorts me off, down a fiery set of steps, finally I was off that fucking train.
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