‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to convey – surely the apposite word – the full extent of my love of the London tube. It’s a love that exists prior to any sense I have of an estrangement from the world – I suppose if I were inclined to all that Freudian malarkey I’d say that the tube is not “other” to me, for it – or possibly she – is no mere transitional object, but my very internalisation of Mother London herself. Let me expand: I grew up about 10 minutes’ walk from East Finchley tube station, and I cannot properly remember a time when I didn’t travel by tube. That said, the first regular journeys I clearly remember were when, aged about eight, I began going to school in Hampstead. My older brother and I would travel the five stops to Camden Town, change to the northbound Edgware platform, and go the further three stops to Hampstead. A more direct route was to take the 102 bus to Golders Green, but while I liked the 102 well enough – and especially the breakneck plunge from the back platform as the Routemaster caromed on to the station forecourt – I loved the tube.’
Read the rest of Will Self’s review of Underground, Overground by Andrew Martin at the Guardian Review here.
