going underground

I was never a punk/mod/rocker/Paul Weller fan (don’t pretend you’re surprised), but The Jam’s Going Underground is one of my anthems. I like the the idea of going underground, not just literally but also as something to do with subversion, the Velvet Underground, hidden networks, samizdat, Dostoevsky, resistance, and outwitting authority.

[Horizon Line (2017) Darren Almond, Bond Street]

I also love the Tube in London and everything to do with the stations, posters, typefaces, lights, and moquette. So I signed us up for a C20 Society tour of five of the new Elizabeth Line stations. Apparently it is the the most popular walking tour they have ever done; this was the fourth and there’s a long waiting list. And who wouldn’t want to glide up and down escalators taking in the sheer vastness of this project, the seemingly endless platforms, the diagonal lifts, the curves, the calm, the sheer class of it all.

We started at Paddington and, like moles, surfaced at each station, sometimes walked to another entrance to the same station, then burrowed back down, and so on until Liverpool Street. And that was only five stations on the line, so there’s plenty more going underground to be done; I especially want to see the yellow escalator glass at Canary Wharf, the Chantal Joffe artwork at Whitechapel, and the pillars at Woolwich with a tiled motif in the colours of regiments originally based at the Arsenal site.

There is a feeling of being swept magisterially into, along, and out of the Elizabeth Line;

the corners are like funnels draining the platforms of people, the art installations are enormous, working on the assumption perhaps that most people barely notice them, there are repeat patterns everywhere (circles and holes on walls, in lights, glass,

[Tottenham Court Road]

and in the semi-abstract dot maps which really do require you to stop and attempt to work them out), the signposts are like old-fashioned fingerposts (or gibbets)

[Farringdon]

Although we moved through at pace in a group, I did manage to collect all sorts of details which combine to make the Elizabeth Line an amazing installation of pleated, folded, wavy, and honeycomb concrete ceilings, shiny surfaces, and futuristic spaces.

[Farringdon]

I’ve liked the Tube since my first proper visit to London when I was thirteen. One of the most vivid memories of the trip was sitting on a Tube train going to Kensington High Street to make the pilgrimage to Biba. I had never seen such a brilliantly eclectic mix of outfits on public transport, clothes which hadn’t yet reached Manchester, let alone Stockport, and oh! the platform shoes. I couldn’t take my eyes off them, they were so high, so dramatic, so not sensible black/brown/navy.

Since then, I’ve done a lot of commuting and travelling on the Tube even though I’ve never lived in London. I brought London at home with me, though, in the form of full-size posters, including this one:

[Kay Gallwey, 1987]

plus copies of some of the brilliant Poems on the Underground which have enhanced many a squashed journey over the last thirty-five years:

This was the favourite of our three when they were little and prone to squabbling, but now its seems to be particularly apt in relation to our actual, grown-up, political leaders.

Elsewhere, we went to see the Chris Killip retrospective at the Photographers Gallery with a room full of images of the Isle of Man in the 1970s.

What really struck me in the amazing portraits was the number of people wearing hand-knitted garments. Virtually all of them, young and old, were pictured in cardigans, jumpers and vests in various degrees of complexity and states of repair.

It’s a lovely collection of knitwear; impressive in terms of local skills, but also a kind of last huzzah for this sort of practical knitting before cheap knits became widely available in the shops. And before decent wool yarn became so expensive that it made knitting workwear and school jumpers unviable. Still, a nice reminder of hand-knitted jumpers made by my Nana who knitted fast and furiously but without a pattern or any recollection of the length of a grandchild’s arm, so that the rolled-up excess made getting your duffel coat on rather difficult.

Finally, thanks for the excellent comments which are always interesting, amusing, and informative.

Happy Sunday!