by Luciana Akerlund
London at rush hour. Most people’s nightmare and yet this was the time of day that she looked forward to the most. When she had first moved to the city, she had made a point of only travelling on buses. Not only was this form of transport cheaper, but it gave her the chance of seeing the capital and learning the relationship between the different locations she was travelling between. Her very first trip on the London underground had come two months after her arrival in the ‘Big Smoke’. She had been running late for work, as usual, and had decided to brave the crowds and her claustrophobic fears in order to venture down into the rat-infested belly of the city. The escalators had felt as if they were never-ending and she had been quickly swallowed into the rushing crowd, soon finding herself packed in like a sardine into one of the overfilled carriages.
Her nostrils had been overcome with the smell of coffee, toothpaste and cologne that was emanating from her fellow travellers. Unlike the outside views she was used to from her bus trips, the windows in the underground carriage only gave way to dark tunnels and she had been forced to acknowledge the unfamiliar faces, pressing bodies, and unsolicited contact that made up her surroundings. Her American colleagues had often remarked on the unfriendliness of Londoners on the tube, where the norm was to ignore your fellow passengers and avoid eye contact like the plague. This behaviour exacerbated the surrealness of the moment and intensified the feeling that one was merely like an ant in a city of bustling workers.
Loneliness, the most terrible of human emotions, suddenly overwhelmed her. All the walls she had built over the last few months swiftly crumbled, and she silently began to cry. Being surrounded by countless strangers who routinely ignored one another made her realise how isolated she really was, and not only in the faceless mass of people in her carriage, but in this city as a whole.
Abruptly, in the midst of her sadness, she had become acutely aware of her physical body and as quickly as they had appeared, her tears had suddenly stopped. For there was something unexpectedly comforting about the tactile contact she was sharing with the people around her. She had welcomed the warmth and softness of a woman’s arm to her left and felt safe in the crook of a businessman’s back to her right. She had closed her eyes and savoured what she now referred to as ‘armless hugs’, and when she finally reached her stop she had found it hard to leave behind the coziness of the crowded carriage.
Flash forward 11 months and she is now probably the most content rush hour passenger to ever grace the London underground. There was nothing sexual about her craving for contact with strangers, but rather a naïve need for a familial replacement. The last traces of her hangover disappear as she arrives the entrance of the tube station. She straightens her skirt, takes out her Oyster and scans in through the barriers, the faint hint of a smile playing on her lips as she is engulfed by the rushing crowd.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Chapter 1
by Meg Vaidy
The dull, humming sound of silence was pierced by the shrill scream of the alarm clock on bedside table. 6.03 am. She liked to set it a few odd minutes before she actually needed to get out of bed. It felt like there was more time for a snooze that way. A slender hand reaches out from somewhere within the blue ocean of her duvet and attempted to slap the clock back into silence, knocking over the half glass of water. It went all over the muddy brown side-table, darkening the wood, and with it, the things on the table. Receipts, an ice cream stick, a ticket from the matinee they caught, the remaining few pound coins, drunkenly, yet carefully dropped into a shallow bowl before collapsing into bed. Her mind explodes with new activity, panic, as an aching thought pops up – “and that letter, received late Saturday evening”.
“Shit!” A mad scramble to save the letter from the spreading wetness ensues. The bed sheets tangle around her body and she succeeds in ungracefully flopping off the bed onto her mildly damp jeans. This surprised her, she must have been exhausted if she hadn't even been able to put her jeans away. Rain in London - the wet chill of spitting rain have ruined many a summer’s day. She vaguely remembers sprinting her way home over fresh puddles from where the night bus dropped her off. She grabs the letter and chucks it over to the chair in the corner, where it lands with a squelch. It’s wet. She’ll have to remember to put it out in the sun for a bit with a paper weight; she’s not ready to throw it away yet. She needs to read it again, and then one more time. Her curiously dark eyes, now panda-like in appearance, wander over the remnants of chaos in her room from last night. She’s got to stop these late Sunday nights, she’s getting too old for them. Music is too loud and often just noise, the humid closeness of other people at a club is unbearable. The only good thing about late nights are those hotdogs with juicy onions they sell that are always so tempting, or chips, with extra vinegar. She could go for one of those right now… or maybe not, she thinks as she gets up and makes a dash for the bathroom.
Hangovers. The inevitable result of a night out, they sneak up on you in the early hours of the morning, while you’re passed out and not able enough to put up a fight when a migraine worse than any other threatens. It’s the beginning of the July, and a Monday, officially worst day of the week. She can’t afford to be late again. They already think she’s a bit student-like at work. So her dress sense is somewhat quirky, her experience lacking, and her attitude a bit too laid back for a mature world. She shakes her heavy head; some habits take a while to leave you. Sometimes she truly believes she did travel all last year.
She’s 26 tomorrow, the fifth of July ‘05, her new, improved grown-up life has started out disappointingly uneventful, she could sense it - she wasn’t headed in the right direction. In the bustle of London, everyone on the streets has a master plan. Everyone has somewhere to be, somewhere to go, someone to impress. Where was her somewhere, or someone? She always had a full weekend, plenty to do, plenty to eat, plenty of chatter, but come Monday, it was just plenty of emptiness.
She shuts the alarm off a second time and swallows a Panadol with a gulp of cold water from the tap. She usually preferred to have water from a bottle, or at least filtered, but she really couldn’t be fussy now. Slower than usual motor skills make getting ready in the morning near impossible, and with a big day ahead, she needs her mind to be clear as day. She gets herself presentable for work, glad that her outfit for the day was already put together, hanging in her closet. Hot showers work wonders on tough days, and soon, she’s at the table forcing herself to keep some toast down. As she feeds herself, she sighs to the mirror looming over the landing. Taking one last look at her mop of a mane, she decides it’s a lost cause and walks down the stairs to slip her shoes on. Glancing at her watch, she grabs her coat and bag from the hooks by the door. 7.07 am. Let the day begin, she thinks.
The dull, humming sound of silence was pierced by the shrill scream of the alarm clock on bedside table. 6.03 am. She liked to set it a few odd minutes before she actually needed to get out of bed. It felt like there was more time for a snooze that way. A slender hand reaches out from somewhere within the blue ocean of her duvet and attempted to slap the clock back into silence, knocking over the half glass of water. It went all over the muddy brown side-table, darkening the wood, and with it, the things on the table. Receipts, an ice cream stick, a ticket from the matinee they caught, the remaining few pound coins, drunkenly, yet carefully dropped into a shallow bowl before collapsing into bed. Her mind explodes with new activity, panic, as an aching thought pops up – “and that letter, received late Saturday evening”.
“Shit!” A mad scramble to save the letter from the spreading wetness ensues. The bed sheets tangle around her body and she succeeds in ungracefully flopping off the bed onto her mildly damp jeans. This surprised her, she must have been exhausted if she hadn't even been able to put her jeans away. Rain in London - the wet chill of spitting rain have ruined many a summer’s day. She vaguely remembers sprinting her way home over fresh puddles from where the night bus dropped her off. She grabs the letter and chucks it over to the chair in the corner, where it lands with a squelch. It’s wet. She’ll have to remember to put it out in the sun for a bit with a paper weight; she’s not ready to throw it away yet. She needs to read it again, and then one more time. Her curiously dark eyes, now panda-like in appearance, wander over the remnants of chaos in her room from last night. She’s got to stop these late Sunday nights, she’s getting too old for them. Music is too loud and often just noise, the humid closeness of other people at a club is unbearable. The only good thing about late nights are those hotdogs with juicy onions they sell that are always so tempting, or chips, with extra vinegar. She could go for one of those right now… or maybe not, she thinks as she gets up and makes a dash for the bathroom.
Hangovers. The inevitable result of a night out, they sneak up on you in the early hours of the morning, while you’re passed out and not able enough to put up a fight when a migraine worse than any other threatens. It’s the beginning of the July, and a Monday, officially worst day of the week. She can’t afford to be late again. They already think she’s a bit student-like at work. So her dress sense is somewhat quirky, her experience lacking, and her attitude a bit too laid back for a mature world. She shakes her heavy head; some habits take a while to leave you. Sometimes she truly believes she did travel all last year.
She’s 26 tomorrow, the fifth of July ‘05, her new, improved grown-up life has started out disappointingly uneventful, she could sense it - she wasn’t headed in the right direction. In the bustle of London, everyone on the streets has a master plan. Everyone has somewhere to be, somewhere to go, someone to impress. Where was her somewhere, or someone? She always had a full weekend, plenty to do, plenty to eat, plenty of chatter, but come Monday, it was just plenty of emptiness.
She shuts the alarm off a second time and swallows a Panadol with a gulp of cold water from the tap. She usually preferred to have water from a bottle, or at least filtered, but she really couldn’t be fussy now. Slower than usual motor skills make getting ready in the morning near impossible, and with a big day ahead, she needs her mind to be clear as day. She gets herself presentable for work, glad that her outfit for the day was already put together, hanging in her closet. Hot showers work wonders on tough days, and soon, she’s at the table forcing herself to keep some toast down. As she feeds herself, she sighs to the mirror looming over the landing. Taking one last look at her mop of a mane, she decides it’s a lost cause and walks down the stairs to slip her shoes on. Glancing at her watch, she grabs her coat and bag from the hooks by the door. 7.07 am. Let the day begin, she thinks.
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