Stuck on a train for forty minutes with a set of proofs about why the trains are late, which is as near as I come to field research
Friday, Somewhere Outside a Station
I am writing this by hand, on the back of a proof, in a carriage that has not moved for some time. The driver has told us twice that we are being held at a red signal and that he will update us when he has further information. He has a kind voice. I believe him. I also believe that he has no further information and never will.
The proof I am writing on is, by a coincidence I could not have arranged, a piece of ours: TfL delays explained.
So I am, for once, reading about a subject while inside it. A critic of battle paintings does not usually get shot at.
The Promise of “Explained”
The title is deceptively modest. “Explained” is a word from the helpful end of journalism. It is what you put on an article about how mortgages work. Attach it to the phenomenon of London’s transport being late and it becomes quietly comic, because everyone knows that the delays cannot be explained, only announced.
That is where the humour lives. In the gap between the official vocabulary and the experience. “Signal failure.” “Customer incident.” “Earlier congestion.” “Awaiting a member of train crew.” These are phrases of great precision that tell you nothing. Each is a small sealed box. You are not meant to open it.
A piece that takes those phrases and solemnly unpacks them, as if for a student, is doing what I think of as the straight-faced method. You do not exaggerate the subject. You simply treat its language with more respect than it can bear.
What the Phrases Mean
In fairness to the railway, most of them mean something real. A signal failure is usually a fault in equipment, some of it very old, on a system parts of which were dug in the reign of Victoria. A network that carries millions of people a day through tunnels built for a city a third of the size is a marvel when it works and unsurprising when it does not.
The staff are, in my experience, patient beyond what the job pays for. The driver now addressing us for the third time did not cause this. He is as stuck as I am, and he has to be cheerful about it over a loudspeaker.
A good piece on the subject keeps that in view. The target is not the people. It is the gap between the grandeur of the announcements and the stillness of the train.
Editing on the Move, or Not
I have done some of my best work on delayed trains. There is nowhere to go and nobody can telephone. A red signal is the nearest thing a London editor gets to a monastery.
What I notice, reading this proof in situ, is that the piece is too long in the middle. I had not seen it at my desk. Here, with a man’s elbow in my ribs and no air, I see it at once. Any paragraph that cannot hold a reader who is standing up, hot and late, is a paragraph too many.
I have marked it. Three boats in the margin. The writer will not be pleased. I shall tell her I edited it under field conditions.
Sentences That Stop
It occurs to me that a bad sentence and a delayed train have much in common. Both set off with confidence. Both come to a halt in a tunnel for no stated reason. In both cases the passenger looks up, wonders what has happened and begins to lose faith in the enterprise.
The causes are similar too. Too much traffic on the line, which is to say too many clauses. An old signal, which is to say a habit of phrasing left over from an earlier age. A fault somewhere far ahead that nobody thought to mention.
The cure is the same. Fewer trains, better signals, and tell people plainly what is going on.
Movement
We have moved. About forty yards. A small cheer went up, the particular ironic cheer that Londoners keep for this, and then we stopped again and it turned into a sigh. I have rarely heard a carriage so united.
That shared sigh is, I think, the true subject of all our transport pieces. The delays are a nuisance. The fellow feeling is the thing. For a few minutes, strangers who would never speak are joined in mild, good-humoured despair. It is the closest this city comes to a public religion.
The Archive
The London Prat has been writing about trains not arriving since 1961, when it was a different sort of train and the same sort of wait. I sometimes look back through what we have gathered under UK satirical news on train delays and British satirical news about commuters, and the remarkable thing is how little needs updating. Change the fares and the jokes still run to time, which is more than can be said for anything else. Our colleagues at Bohiney Magazine cover the American commuter, who sits in a car instead and has nobody to sigh with.
Arrival
Forty-one minutes late. The driver thanked us for our patience, which we had not had, and wished us a pleasant day, which he clearly meant.
I walked the last half mile to the office with the proof in my pocket, the back of it covered in this. I shall have it typed. The three boats stand.
The tea, when I reached my desk, had been made by a kind colleague at the time I was expected, and was therefore stone cold. I drank it. One has standards.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/