Underground
Steve de Vos
People
who are worth knowing believe that the writer (I) is over familiar to a
psychotic level with the underground system and that the tendency to sermonise
on the trains is disquieting to say the least. But nevertheless how can one be
quiet about the restaurant that goes round the circle line between the hours of
12:00 and 14:00 (for light lunches) and 18:30 and Midnight (for pre-theatre
meals etc) and in the process causes so many contradictory comments in these
incredibly divergent social groups. The restaurant is not advertised but it has
a small but discerning clientele. The authorities maintain a audible silence
that is extraordinarily uncomfortable and only the fast moving murmurs of the
travellers has eased the way.
It is not possible for an innovation like this to be limited to the
privileged elements of the city for long, eventually the others begin to move
into the vacant seats in the carriage. It is only to be expected that Paris,
Berlin, New York and even Shanghai (inter alia), begin to learn about the
experience that goes so far beyond mere gastronomic science. The idea must have
come from some restauranteur, probably Terence Conran, since that priest of food
was awarded the first class food franchise released to complete media silence in
June. The design and layout of the restaurant is just like an ordinary railway
restaurant. But it is the food that is transcendent, though the price is
transcendent as well, except of course at the end of the evening when coffee and
liqueurs are sold at a comparatively normal price. But these details are
sufficient to select a discreet range of customers
The experience has been repeated many times throughout the ages. Most
noticeably in the dubious pleasures that aristocrats gained in their illicit
contacts with the lower classes amongst other doubtful elements, like Lulu in
Limehouse or was it Whitechapel in the late 19th C and not forgetting of course
popular songs extolling the virtues of street life and sexual adventuring. The
contemporary bourgeoisie never has to travel underground for they (normally)
travel in expensive cars, planes and always in first class, unless they are
deliberately slumming, so they have discovered something which until now had
been almost been hidden from them in the worlds of the other classes. At the
moment when the workers have given up on social and political demands for
equality and a voice in the public realm in order to get their hands on the
steering wheels of cars and to sit entranced before some American imports on
satelliteTV. In the process giving up what little free time they have.
Consequently is it possible to be horrified when the moneyed and time rich
classes turn their backs on things that are threatening to become commonplace ?
Searching for a territory that brings them closer to the workers in the search
for the extraordinary. All this whilst intellectuals look on bemused and with a
cynical twist of their lips. For they see that the mobile restaurant brings the
class as close to the workers as possible without actually allowing any contact.
But to say that to the restaurant owners is impossible since they would
reject such statements emphatically. For them the only thing that is needed to
step into the mobile restaurant and to be served is money, all else is mere
opinion and illusion. It is they state, a well known fact that many of the
people who travel on the underground are really extremely wealthy, just as there
are many people who live on the street who really have lots of money. The
restaurant management of course shares these sentiments and agrees that the only
thing required to gain entrance to the restaurant is money, plus good manners
and of course good deodorants. The selection of a good clientele is of course
especially difficult because we are dealing with the underground public spaces
and you can hardly have doorman dressed in gold braid and a top hat to filter
out the undesirables. Consequently the clientele is directed in such a way as to
ensure them easy entry, although the restaurant management has never succeeded
in hiding there fear whenever the train stops and they have to open the carriage
doors. To filter the restaurants clientele from the everyday train passengers
the management tells the clientele where to stand, when to wait there and at
what station to gain access to the mobile restaurant, mostly they only open the
single door at one point along the carriages to ensure that they give directed
access. The operation must take place without any obstructions at all, so the
special restaurant guards act in concert with the platform guards and prevent
access to the carriage by forming a human wall thus preventing evil anarchists
or indeed innocent tourists from entering the restaurant on wheels. The
customers know where the door will open through the encoded daily notice that
appears in The Times newspaper which states when, where and what today's menu
will consist of. They are also aware of the necessity of enduring a short wait
within the underground public sector. It is quite common for the clientele to
arrive with dark besuited security guards who discreetly wait for the mobile
restaurant to arrive. The precise stopping point changes every day or so. To
prevent information leaking the information is re-displayed on the platform
dot-matrix indicators to direct them to the correct sector of the platform, it
is only when they get to the station that they will know if the direction of
travel will be east or west. Of course this system is expensive and bears all
the signs of paranoid psychosis but of course this is the primary psychological
illness of the ruling class. The management cannot use a more direct system
because they need to avoid the street people who use the underground system as a
place to live standing around the carriages as it stops, hoping for scraps or
staring at the carriage like moths around a flame which might arouse their worst
instincts.
Whilst the lunchtime train just goes round and round the circle
line, the evening train containing the a la carte passengers can travel on
longer trips out to Amersham, Stratford or some other strange and diverting
places, occasionally it has been known for the train to head south of the river
into the spaces beyond Clapham Junction, all of these trips being made solely
for the edification of the customers. As they travel through different segments
of the underground system seeing, usually for the first time, the diversity of
stations. Besides which the act of sending the trains down different routes
enhances the important element of security, in the light of the potential
reactions provoked by jealousy which may be spawned by the repeated seeing of
the restaurant train. Those who eat on the train agree that sitting at one of
the tables and travelling through High Street Kensington is a wonderful and
occasionally helpful sociological experience. Sitting, eating and enjoying the
view of the platform through the window enables one to see multiple forms of
destinies and rhythms of hard working and hard living people ready to go to and
from their jobs and homes. Sometimes they just stand obviously exhausted at the
end of the day and at other times they are noisy and boisterous. To enhance the
diners pleasure the management advises them not to study the people on the
platform with too much scientific intent but rather to look indirectly at them
between mouthfuls of food, between sentences, between inhalations of cigarette
smoke. The discreteness the management suggests has the additional advantage of
maintaining the distance between their customers and the other users of the
underground which the restaurant owners believe is an essential factor in the
success of the restaurant train. In addition it helps to ensure that there is no
unpleasant reaction from some misguided traveller standing on the platform who
misinterprets the scientific zeal of the customer. This would be unjustified but
if some person who is uneducated in the ways of our societies misinterpreted the
scientific attitude then unfortunate things might happen. The only people who
they are encouraged to look directly at are those people who are socially close
to them, these people can be easily recognised by the waving and cheering that
the sight of the restaurant train encourages. It has been noticeable during the
brief time that the restaurant train has been operational that the authorities
have become increasingly concerned and begun place additional constables on the
platform. This has been happening because of the authorities fear of anarchists,
socialists and other itinerant activists who might act with extreme jealousy
against the restaurants customers. When the customers leave the restaurant train
they are escorted onto the platform by the restaurant and platform guards, but
the constables courteously escort them from the underground to the surface where
their cars wait for them as previously directed for they always know their
itinerary. This is especially noticeable when the people leaving the train are
in small groups or couples. There are many explanations for these events but
when the underground systems of the world are so prone to violence and have
turned into a veritable haven for the disenfranchised then the judicious
anticipation of the authorities is to be congratulated. Both from the
restaurants customers, but also from all the other passengers in the system who
of course will be grateful for the protection offered to them by the extra
policemen from those who provoke them so greatly, these being the anarchists and
socialists who seemingly haunt the underground. In these circumstances what
chance have the poor ?
Steve de Vos - London August 1997
Underground
Steve, talks to some
salesmen
Introduction to the
Hypertext Novel