'exit here for Buckingham Palace'...(i look round for the Queen!)...this is the first carriage at the end of the platform so it's not quite so crowded as the others... no one speaks though most people are almost in body contact... and nearly everyone is reading... and avoiding eye-contact... the air is just breatheable... the ventilation must have improved (since, since?)... and the noise is quite excessive (probably above speech interference level)... a few people have closed eyes... a man with a bouquet feels with his hand to find out if it is getting crushed... a woman takes out a mobile phone and her thoughts are probably elsewhere...
'the next stop is Swiss Cottage'(like all the announcements this is very clearly enunciated)... i get ready to get out...
'please mind the gap between the train and the platform'...i walked from the train and straight into a supermarket... intending to get 2 items and emerged with 25!... and now some of them are already eaten and their packaging is already disposed of (perhaps incorrectly)...
...this is the city life that more than half of the people in the world (and perhaps the liveliest half?) are willing to pay extra to endure and to enjoy... (with or without the city forest that to me makes so much difference)... and much of it is happening underground or in interiors without windows... more and more...
More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul; less than All cannot satisfy Man.from William Blake, 'There is No Natural Religion' (second series, about 1788), in Blake, Complete Writings with variant readings, edited by Geoffrey Keynes, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 1989, page 97.
...i think that commuting in the rush hour is living death, and so is standing in a queue (or even sitting, as in a phone queue imposed by a call centre)... to design for such is surely robbery... of life itself...
...but nevertheless i accept it, and even like it, city life! (how come?... there's more to this than is evident in what i have written so far...)
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