I spend a lot of my time on trains, I always have. I used to take the train to school almost every day. Now I commute into London from my hometown for work. I’ve always been that person at a party who has to have one eye on the clock to make sure I catch the last train home. Commuting has turned me into a certified Bag Lady - I’m always lugging around a rucksack or two tote bags and a coat or a suitcase. I know the shortcut to get out of the Victoria Line at King’s Cross without having to walk through that horrendous tunnel. I know the best carriages to enter for whatever exit I need on my regular routes without even consulting CityMapper.
Sometimes this thing happens to me when I’m on the Tube. It’s only ever on the Tube though, not trains or buses and I think it’s because of the way they’re set up. On the Tube, unless you’re on a manky Bakerloo line train with seats that haven’t been washed since my mother emigrated to this country in the 80s, you are forced to face one another. As I observe and people watch, this phenomenon overcomes me sometimes where I look at the faces of my fellow commuters and feel an immense sympathy and fondness for them all: the young woman (because it’s always a young woman) who gets up for the old man using a walking stick or the pregnant lady. The dad wrangling his kid back into a push chair or the construction workers who get on withdry knuckles and paint on their jumpers. The middle-aged lady in her commuting trainers with heels in her bag playing Candy Crush or one of those other weird games you get advertised on Duolingo.
Maybe it’s that fact that we all look weary but we’re all still trying to get somewhere anyway that gets me so mushy. It’s trite and overly sentimental but I think a lot about that one Fleabag quote. “People are all we’ve got”. It’s a simple truth that overwhelms me sometimes; to think that every single other person is dealing with their own personal joys and horrors but we all still wake up get on the train and go about our day and exist with one another.
Other times I feel more cynical. I try and guess where people will get off based on what they look like, what they’re wearing, what books they read. I judge the books they read, turning my nose up at the Colleen Hoovers and nodding approvingly at the Ottessa Moshfeghs and RF Kuangs. I attempt to identify the “real” Londoners from the blonde, middle-class gentrifiers from Fuckinghamshire who complain about “dodgy” areas of London when what they really mean is they maybe saw a group of Pakistani men outside a bus stop and decided they felt unsafe. I manage to conveniently forget that I am a middle-class woman from Fuckinghamshire. I am not blonde though and that is what makes all the difference. I rate myself in perceived attractiveness against the other passengers. Asking myself: am I in the top 3 hottest passengers on this carriage right now? When I’m on the District Line with all the Sloaney girly girls probably not but on the Victoria Line with all the salt of the earth commuters, sometimes.
There’s something romantic about a long train journey. I’m not sure if I think this because Before Sunrise is one of my favourite films or if Before Sunrise is one of my favourite things because I think this. I find that some of my clearest memories are from some long journey or another. I still smile to myself remembering the jokes between my sister and I on a train from Kaduna to Abuja when we went to Nigeria last year, or when I was 7 and my mother took me and my best friend on a day trip to the British Museum and she asked my mum, quite loudly, what sex was. I can think of all the beautiful sunsets I’ve seen out of a train window and tried to take a shaky photo of, and remember how I held in a wee all the way to Edinburgh to see my friend at a concert because I refuse to use train loos, or the time I audibly gasped at a plot twist in the book I was reading on the train from Koblenz to Paris a few years ago. All these memories are made more, somehow, by their transience and the fact that I am either going somewhere which is exciting or I am coming home which is always a comfort.
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Some Books I’ve Read Recently:
One Day by David Nicholls (2009)
I read this after watching the Netflix series (heinous, I know!) which was lovely. I thought this was a gorgeous tale of how lives can intertwine over decades from a single chance encounter. It’s a deceptively simple device that Nicholls uses to tell this story, that the narrative revisits Dexter and Emma who met on the last day of university on the same day each year. While at times as a reader you can feel cheated that you’ve missed 364 days of context, Nicholls manages to fill us in quite skillfully as we follow Dexter and Emma’s will they/won’t they friendship for 20 years. Ultimately, I found this book quite sad lol. Not least because of the big sad thing that happens in it but also just because life doesn’t pan out for these characters how we, or they for that matter, thought it would. All the potential and excitement of the early 20s has burned out and fizzled by the time the characters are pushing 40 which, though I’m sure realistic, was a bit depressing.
Sunset by Jessie Cave (2021)
This had been on my list to read ever since it was published and I finally got round to it. Following a pair of sisters, Ruth and Hannah — Hannah is radiant and has her shit together and is everything Ruth wants to be, Ruth is creative and aimless but together it’s them against the world. Every summer they take a budget holiday together but this time tragedy strikes and Ruth must navigate a new normal. Although themes of sisterhood automatically hugely appeal to me and I found that there were a few moments in here of stark, moving quality, I was surprised that this book didn’t massively do it for me. I really enjoy the author’s podcast so it’s a shame but I just had this sense while reading it that it was a book that had been written, if that makes sense? Like it was almost aware of itself and maybe felt a bit trite at times but maybe that’s just because grief is such a universal experience that we often are forced to revert to cliches in the end.
True Biz by Sara Novic (2022)
Another one that’s been on my list for a while, this book follows two students and their headmistress at a deaf boarding school in Ohio: February, a CODA (Child Of Deaf Adults) is the headmistress of the school attempting to keep the school safe and open in the midst of budget cuts; Austin, the school golden boy who proudly comes from a long line of deaf ancestors is coming to terms with the birth of his hearing sister and Charlie a stubborn and rebellious transfer student who had never met another deaf person before. This book was a heartfelt love letter to and fascinating insight for me personally into Deaf culture — a coming of age story of political awakening, the power of community and disability rights. While I found the ending a little abrupt, I’ll definitely be thinking about this book for some time to come.
Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados (2020)
I read this a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it so felt like picking it up again. An ode to party girls everywhere, Granados’ 21 year old protagonist Isa Epley has recently moved from London back to NYC to live with her best friend Gala. Both immigrants without all the ‘right’ papers they are stuck working menial cash-in-hand jobs, selling clothes at a market stall, life-drawing modelling making just enough money to pay for that night’s drinks and cabs and generally being Young and Charming in the Big City. They are joined by a revolving door of old acquaintances, friends and strangers who they endlessly bump into and spend debauched evenings with, providing Isa with fodder for her oft-alluded to diaries. Back in 2021 I described this book as “What if Ottessa Moshfegh wrote an episode of Broad City?” which kind of holds up tbh. It’s refreshing to read something in this loose ‘careless/carefree girls behaving badly in the big city’ genre from the perspective of a protagonist who is not rich and white and I think this time around I had a lot more appreciation for the subtler political themes and how the precarity of Isa and Gala’s situation was a direct result of their socioeconomic and immigration status.
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What I’m Currently Reading:
In an attempt to switch my brain on and read more non-fiction I’ve been reading Algiers, Third World Capital: Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries, Black Panthers by Elaine Mokhtefi (2018, Verso Books) which is the author’s first-hand insider account of Algerian Independence and Black Panther’s exile in Algiers. American-Jewish born, Mokhtefi found herself rubbing shoulders with revolutionaries after moving to Paris in the 50s and getting caught up in antiracist and anticolonialist struggle. I’m enjoying reading this as Elaine Mokhtefi has had a such an interesting life. It’s a bit slow-going but I think that says more about my attention span for non-fic than the book itself!
I’m also listening to the audiobook of The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide by Steven W. Thrasher (2022, Celadon Books) which I' am finding absolutely fascinating. The book is an exploration of how viruses expose the fault lines of society. Thrasher uses real-life case studies, anecdotes, media analysis and scholarly expertise to make his case and the result is an accessible, passionate, compelling and much-needed deep dive into how viruses intersect with social oppression to disproportionately affect the most marginalised communities. It’s rare that relatively straight non-fiction like this grips me but I find myself itching to get back to listening to it when I’m busy doing something else so I’m excited to keep reading.