What happens in London

I have been saving up things to write about for quite a while and not having time to do it that I thought I would put them all up together and be done with it, but my entry got longer and longer, so I think I will need to break it up. For your reading pleasure, therefore, a montage of experiences of London:

I will start with the place where Londoners seem to spend most of their time: in a pub. I think pubs fill some of the function that a Starbucks might have in the States--but also, where Americans prefer meeting friends for a meal, it seems that Brits are more likely to invite someone just to have a drink (or tea). In any case, the people on my Shakespeare course got the idea that it would be fun to meet at a Shakespeare-themed pub. We did find one, one night, by accident, but since them we've been stumbling across them all over London. There are "Shakespeare's Head"s near Regent Street and Holborn, "The Shakespeare"s in Barbican and Victoria--there are even a few named after characters, like "The Falstaff" and "Othello".

The other most common London experience would probably have to be transport problems. I feel, first, that I ought to preface my horror stories by saying that I am always impressed by how well the public transport here works. Millions of Londoners don't even need cars because the tube, bus, taxi, and trains are so good.

But, with the amount of people who use the tube, problems are bound to happen. One day last term, I was trying to get from where I live, near Elephant and Castle in south London, to King's Cross in north London. I was on my way to a graduate conference at the British Library and had meant to be early so that I could stop by the university to run a few errands. I got on the train as planned, and was happily reading a copy of the London Review of Books when, at the next station, and for an unknown reason, there were so many people wanting to board the train that I thought there was no possibility they would all fit. Fit they did, and though I felt very much like a sardine, I supposed that many of the other passengers would change trains at the next station, Bank, which is one of the busier stations. But just before the train arrived at Bank, it was forced to stop in the middle of the tunnel. The lights flickered as the conductor turned the engine on and off. Everyone tried not to look at one another, not to talk. The heat was immense, and no one could take off their winter coats in the cramped conditions. We were left to sweat for twenty minutes before the conductor finally explained that someone had torn down some of the large paper ads that lined the tracks, and the paper needed to be cleared before the train could move. We were promised a quick arrival.

By this time the heat was so much that people were having trouble breathing. A girl standing behind me suddenly decided that she needed to get to the vent for some air and somehow managed to push and climb to the end of the car. A man in the middle chose to vent his feelings by cursing and yelling, and a boy near me, who must have been claustrophobic, began really to be sick. His poor father was trying hard to help him to breathe normally, but it was lucky a woman near them was able to pull out a plastic bag.

After a while the train was turned on, it lurched forward, and stopped. It rolled back. This was repeated for several minutes. On top of everything, the train was broken. As I remember, we were stuck for nearly forty minutes before we could be pulled into Bank, and I think everyone who had been on it must have felt as queasy as I did for the rest of the day.

That's my only gothic tale of transport problems--I promise. I think that day was probably the start of when I began to try to take the bus everywhere. And I'll leave off there, with the promise of pairing my tube story with a bus story soon.