THE INSPIRATIONAL COMMUTE NEVER CHANGES
Ask any Londoner what he/she thinks about the capital’s train services and you’ll probably get a mouthful of expletives. Most of us have stood in overcrowded carriages during the morning and evening rush hour wondering why we suffer this daily agony. There’s nothing more annoying than being jostled by bad-tempered, unsmiling people who like you are simply trying get to or from work. So, what can you do about it? Wait for the next train (which might be even more crowded), or just grin and bear it?
Chris Moss’s Smoothly from Harrow, which takes its title from a poem by Sir John Betjeman (“the bard of Metro-land”), is a genteel tribute in verse, cartoon, and prose to the bulldog spirit of the 21st century commuter. As a commuter you’re part of the 860,000 people who take the train into London every day, or the 400,000 who brave the subterranean darkness of the Tube. Yes, the morning schlep to work can be an ordeal but there’s always a silver lining behind every cloud if you’re prepared to look for it.
Take for example David John Moore Cornwall, aka John Le Carre, who wrote his first novel Call for the Dead during his commute from Great Missenden to MI5’s Marylebone office. Look hard when you stare out of the window and you might see primroses growing near the railway tracks, or the common bramble that “moves in to conquer any ground that humans dare to rearrange”. If there isn’t any flora or fauna worth looking at then check out your fellow travellers, some of whom might be unwitting “commuter caricatures”. Most of us have met “Rebel Without a Tie” , whose been doing the “Maidstone-Victoria run for years but still can’t quite believe it” , or smiled at the “Newley weds”, the “self-satisfied couple recently upscaled from Streatham to suburbia”, while at the other end of the scale there’s “Textin Innit”. Who he you might ask? Well, “E likes 2 tap all d way 2 de fkin Loo init.”
If it’s any consolation history shows that getting from A to B in or around London has never been easy. Spare a thought for Henry VIII. In 1512 when a fire destroyed his Palace at Westminster, the “poor” king was forced to re-locate his digs to Greenwich. Henry spent nearly two decades commuting up the Thames to London, Richmond, and then Cardinal Wolsey’s palace at Hampton Court…which the wily monarch later incorporated into his real estate portfolio!
The daily London commute has a lot to answer for, but we might as well get used to it. Let’s face it, there’s no other alternative!
Reviewed by Juliette Foster
© Archant Community Media Limited used under limited licence
