III: Mind // The // Gap

hot – screeches – people – noises – smells – funny – sweat – seeps – hot – sweat – stinks – rails – screech – clay – insulated – hot

I can’t move, it’s so sweaty, I’m so sweaty, and the bag is digging into me. Why is it always so busy? So noisy, can’t think, no, no, I can barely breathe, I’m breathing in sweat, soot, oil, germs, the musk of the millions of people that commute home this hot July Summer Day. It’s so hot, I can’t breathe. I’m so sweaty, I should’ve walked to the end of the station, but I just wanted to get home. I just wanted to get home. Why is this bag digging into me? He should’ve taken it off. I wore a linen blouse today, no need to iron it, I should’ve waited for the next train, there’s one every two minutes. I think. I think. I think. But it isn’t just me—it’s all of us, thinking at once, thoughts jammed together like bodies in a carriage. I can’t move, it’s so sweaty, I’m so sweaty, and my bag is digging into the woman behind me, I can’t even check my watch, only 4 stops to go, my shirt is stained, I start to try to loosen my tie, reaching up, my arms close to my chest, wrestling with the button as we ebb and flow with the ricochets of the train’s haphazard movements, I can barely reach up to undo the button and the screeches of the wheels scraping on the steel on the tracks make an ear-piercing noise, everyone winces, the boy with headphones on can barely hear his podcast, the student with wired headphones desperately holding onto his matcha latte, the same matcha latte that probably cost 5 quid, that’s the reason he’ll be doomed to never have a mortgage, the old man with the stick sat down has to adjust his hearing aids, even wearing my noise cancelling earphones seems stupid. God, it’s so damn hot, I should’ve taken my bag off I can barely hold onto the metal bar above me and feel my bag digging into the woman behind me. Oh god why didn’t this man take his bag off? It’s pressing into my tits. I can’t take it off now, no, there’s no roo,m and then I’ll huddle around it like a penguin, except penguins huddle to keep warm, we’re huddling to get home. Why did I move from Hong Kong to London I think to myself as I watch the man with noise-cancelling headphones struggle to undo his top button and loosen his tie, why didn’t he take his tie off? It’s so hot in the underground, it’s hot when you come down the escalators, it’s hot when you walk through the tunnels, you sweat even as the hot screeches of air fill your lungs and blast dust into your eyes, the baby whines, and I think about the MTR, and how in Hong Kong, the city I grew up in you’re sweaty outside, and indoor is usually cool, but summer in London, you’re hot outside, you’re hot tapping at the barriers, you’re hot going down the escalators, you’re hot going through the tunnels, you’re hot when the gusts of wind crash against your sweaty head, you’re hot on the platform, you’re hot on the train, and then all over again but in reverse, it’s like that old English phrase, the one I remember reading in P6, the chapter title from The Hobbit: out of the frying pan and into the fire, yes, that’s it, but not quite it’s like you’re jumping through the frying pan and leaping into the fire, desperate to get home, hurtling a sweaty mess at 100 kmph, oh god by backpack is digging into me, what’s that man thinking about over there. Is he Chinese? Or Japanese? I don’t want to peddle racist assumptions of Asian men all looking the same, but I probably have my own racial bias, or that’s what the HR woman said, urgh what a bitch, I reach up to smell my arms, retching, horrendous scent. This man had better move soon, his backpack is digging into me, at least I’m not wearing a skirt today, otherwise he might pretend to take a picture up my skirt, the pervert! You never know these days, everyone’s a fucking pervert, I can’t even walk home without fearing for myself, I can’t trust the police and if you try and hold a vigil, the fascist pigs will just arrest you for daring to try and hold them to account. Jesus it is hot today, I remember reading an article about how hot the tube gets in the summer, especially the Victoria Line, it said something like EU regulations – well we’ve left the EU now – but it’s still the same, that cattle should not be transported when the temperature gets above 30 degrees Celsius, I think the article said it got to 34.80C on the Central Line the other week,4.8 degrees higher than what cattle are supposed to be transported to. Oh, the irony! The cattle we travel to be slaughtered receive better treatment in hot weather. How many more stops? 5? I wish this man would close his legs; somehow, despite the heat, his legs are still spread, pressing into his two neighbouring passengers. There’s a gap in front of him; nobody wants to stand there. I just want to air my balls, they’re sweaty in this heat. Ew, he’s probably airing his balls, or that’s his excuse, wafting that putrid stench through the car. His fat belly hangs over his balls. I doubt he can even see his tiny penis, and when he goes home to fuck his wife, his wife who is probably fucking his neighbour, she just lies back and thinks of England. His polo shirt, the Fred Perry polo shirt, who still wears Fred Perry in 2025? I remember how in the 90s if you saw a group of lads wearing Fred Perry, you had to avoid them, cross the street, leave the bus stop, what a horrible time. What are we having for dinner mum, I text, I grip, tightly, onto my phone, I see the three dots. It’s so hot today, she replies, I’m thinking picky bits. Oh the joys of picky bits, I’ve just finished a long shift, and I’m having picky bits, I can’t afford to leave home, and I can’t afford London on my salary. I should’ve tried harder in school, but it was funnier to make fun of sir and ignore him when he said you need to get a C. I never got that C and now I’m paying the price, but he’s probably stuck on a tube, like me, so we’re in the same place.

     This is a Victoria Line Service………………………

You can’t hear the announcement, the train screams through the tunnels at 100 kmph, and you can’t hear where the train is going, God. It. Is. So. Damn. Hot. Jesus. Fuck. What’s the time? I can’t check my watch. 3 stops to go, yes, Oxford Circus, Warren Street, and then Euston, then I can get on another train home. London is the worst in Summer, why is it so hot today? I open my phone, it scans my face, it knows it’s me, it’s 5:45, I press Mum, I say on the tube now, it’s so hot, see you soon xx. Why is it so hot? The Victoria Line to Brixton, Brixton what a dump. I remember reading about the murders and riots that went on there in the 80s and how the people there would throw stuff at the police. Why would you attack the people who protect you? And I look at that man, why is he staring at me? Does he think I live in Brixton because I’m black, Jesus, I’m nearly 60 and you can’t escape the racist gaze of middle-aged city workers, it was the same in the 80s when the police would search you for no apparent reason, and we’d protest and the press would call it riots, and then riots would start and then they called it Bloody Sundays. How many Bloody Sundays have there been now? It seems to be the only repeating motif of British history.

………………… to Brixton

Brixton. The railway was first proposed in 1943, just two years after the Germans had mostly ceased their lighting war on London, some party, I can’t remember which proposed a new railway from Victoria station to Walthamstow, trying to connect the major stations: Victoria, Euston, King’s Cross, and St Pancras, we’re moving at 100kmph underground, the heat, mostly generated by the trains and the people in them, is absorbed mostly by the tunnel’s wall, then some is ventilated, and the rest remains in the tunnels, they’re surrounded by clay, the clay warms up, and over time the heat sink formed in the clay has reached its thermal capacity, when they were first built out of clay the temperature was around 14 degrees, now it’s between 19-26 degrees, and the air temperature reaches as high as 30 degrees. God, it is so hot today. I wanna go home to you, there’s nothing worse or hotter than fucking when it’s this heat, our bodies become one, I feel your cunt grip my cock as I enter your eyes open and you breathe out YES! Oh god YES! We match our rhythms, I feel your sweat fall onto me as the wetness of your cunt makes my head engorge, GOD YES! What is the man thinking over there? He looks deep in thought, he’s holding a briefcase, and his glasses are fogged up. He must be deep in thought, oh god it is so hot today. The milk in my matcha latte must be curdling in this heat, I want a pint and then maybe I’ll go home, yes that sounds like a good idea, yes, there’s nothing better than a pint on a summer’s day, it makes you so sleepy, you feel like the dopey wasps getting drunk in the grim last few millilitres left in the glass. I can barely hear my music, just the screech of the trains. They say it’s so hot in the train because of the compacted clay, it’s become a kiln, and we’re all about to burst, you know what happens when you leave air bubbles in wet clay, it bursts. I look around at everyone and think how we’re all suffering, from the old man sat down, who probably votes reform, to the black woman sweating profusely, to the uncomfortable man who’s untying his tie, to the teenagers trying to deafen the screeches of the train, we’re all suffering yes, like cattle to slaughter, it’s like we’ve skipped the slaughterhouse and gone straight into the oven, baked as pies. The tunnel’s acoustics allow the train to conduct our discordant symphony; our voices merge with the piercing ebb and flow of the screeches of steel wheels scraping against steel tracks, accompanied by the faint buzz of 630 Volts, don’t touch it! You’ll die. For sure. It’s hotter today, and what does a higher temperature mean? It means molecules collide at greater speeds, they are in a higher state of excitement, faster speeds mean more collisions, and more collisions mean a greater generation of kinetic energy, kinesis, movement, yes, and how does temperature affect how sound is transmitted? Sound waves are transmitted a greater efficiency and especially on humid days, like today, there is a greater air density, so there are more molecules in a given space, colliding at faster speeds, and thereby able to transmit sound at a much greater efficiency, the screech of the train pierces you, goes through your body and amplifies every fibre of every cell, every goosebump standing to attention whilst your teeny-tiny ear bones crack, faintly, and the tiny nerve cells wither and cry in the intensity of today’s screeching ensemble, you can’t escape the discordant symphony, the acoustics of compacted clay insulates the heat and therefore allows a higher temperature to be maintained forcing our voices to collate to join in unison, we scream with the train’s atonal registry collated with our discordant chorality, a mimetic cacophony, an elegy into the void of the tunnel at one hundred kilometres per hour:

hot! humid! sweat! creep! sticky! stinky! breathe! No! time! hot! humid! sticky! sweaty! breathe! Yes! racist! pig! pervert! ugly! cow! home! nearly! nonce! I love you! fuck! god! fuck! sweaty! bing! alert! Victoria! Line! I love you! I hate you! you’re a pervert! your nose is sweaty! GOD! ITS SO GODDAMN HOT! burps! sweaty balls! stuffy! hot air! breathe! in! out! in! out! in! out! scream! cry! feel! so goddamn! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! hot! 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hot! hot! hot! hot! hot!

Please!

Mind! The Gap!