Maybe you’ve been travelling since yesterday from half a world away, long haul from JFK or LAX, slightly longer from Singapore or KL, even longer, now totally time-disoriented, from Sydney or Auckland. Or maybe you got up very early this morning to board a plane in Athens, Vienna or Helsinki. Now you’re at Heathrow, rubbing your eyes, and it’s your first time in London. Perhaps you’re there on business, or as a tourist. You will have heard about the Houses of Parliament, of course, and Buckingham Palace, the Tower, St Paul’s, the Eye.
You’ve also heard about the famous Underground, the oldest such system in the world, this year celebrating its 150th birthday. Now you’re below ground, about to board a Piccadilly Line train. And where is it going? The departure screen above the platform tells you. Cockfosters. You step aboard. Digital displays and aural announcements confirm that this train is going to Cockfosters. No matter where on this shrunken planet you started from, now you’re heading for Cockfosters. In the global scheme of things, clearly Cockfosters is a destination of some importance. Planet Cockfosters. London isn’t even in the running.
Wherever you go in the world, you’ll find that names you’d never heard of before, totally insignificant suburbs and minor satellite towns, Cockfosters analogues, Cockfosters wannabes, take on an unexpected significance. In London, if you use the tube, besides being forced against your will to know about Cockfosters, you’ll soon discover the overweening importance of Morden, West Ruislip, High Barnet, Upminster, and Hainault (via Newbury Park), none of which you will actually visit unless you are (a) terminally sad, literally so, or (b) prone to narcolepsy.
It’s the same everywhere else. In New York you’ll similarly be bullied into an unwanted awareness of New Lots, White Plains, Rockaway, and Woodlawn; in Berlin, hoping for a quiet life of U-Bahn pootling, you’ll find your pootlings seriously influenced by Ruhleben, not to mention Alt-Mariendorf, Pankow and Krumme Lanke; in Paris you won’t get far unless you submit to an understanding of the whereabouts of Balard and Créteil, the Porte d’Orléans and the Porte de Clignancourt, Villejuif Louis Aragon and Bobigny Pablo Picasso. There you are, art lovers, you didn’t know his first name was Bobigny, did you. That’s the educational value of the Metro for you. In Budapest, home to mainland Europe’s oldest subway and one of its knottiest languages, you’ll need to learn to distinguish your Újpest-Központ from your Köbánya-Kispest or you’re soon going to be in trouble.
Everywhere you go you’ll come across strange but apparently important words, dominant in local geography, like Westheimer in Houston and Hennepin in Minneapolis, the ubiquitous Peachtree in Atlanta. Destinations on the fronts of buses will warp your appreciation of what really matters: Churchill Square in Brighton, Broad Marsh in Nottingham, Chorlton Street or Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester. Not to mention Plumstead Common and Clapton Pond. If you want to fully appreciate the glories of Glasgow you’ll need to get a grip on a whole load of Polloks. Such are a few of the more subjective toponymic oddities of urban public transport. I bet you wish now that you’d stayed on the train all the way to Cockfosters.
No comments:
Post a Comment