Boiled in the Tin

The tube is a real experience in closeness at rush hour. You think your carriage isn't all that crowded, really, and then you stop at a station and a few people get off, and twice as many get on. And then you stop at the next station.... And only six more to go until your stop!

At some point the driver will announce – with commuters still trying to bend the laws of physics at the open doors – that the train is full, and it’s leaving now. There’ll be another one along in a few minutes, the friendly, hopeful voice says, but those damned souls on the outside know that yet another train with all carriages packed to bursting isn’t going to make any difference.

And what of the damned souls inside? Everyone wants to be near the doors so that they have a prayer of leaving at their stop, but only if people obey instructions – “Please move right down inside the carriage!” – can more be packed in. So eventually your stop is coming and there are a couple dozen bodies between you and the nearest door, and it’s time to negotiate that squishy gauntlet of flesh before the doors open and more of it packs itself inside. Pickpockets do their best work in rush hours, ’cause who can tell if sombody’s touching your butt?!

Rush hours in the summer add a certain subtle dimension of dehydration and heat-stroke on top of all that, and though it hasn't been really hot yet this summer, it will be. And when it's 90-ish F up here, it can get to 115-ish F down there, and rails deform in the heat, and trains stop in the tunnels 'cause they can't move without risking derailment (which happens), and more trains stop behind them, and people who've forgotten to bring water can be in real trouble. Did I mention there's no air-conditioning on tube trains? The ventilation comes from open vents and windows taking in air from the tunnel while the train is in motion. It would be illegal in any first-world nation to transport animals to slaughterhouses in those temperatures. Mooo!

I hear it's lots and lots worse in Tokyo, because the Japanese are better at the skill of turning off that natural human aversion to packing in with strangers long enough to get to work and back. My theory is they enter a sort of commuter trance where the rules are different, and effectively dissociate from the press of alien flesh for as long as necessary. Their trains are really crowded. The persistent thing one hears about Tokyo commuter trains is that someone can have a heart attack and die, and not fall down until the train empties out again. So let's all give thanks that we're not in Tokyo (those who are not), and meanwhile I'll be thankful that I very seldom have to travel in London during rush hour. But that doesn't mean I won't be packing water this summer, ’cause trains get caught in tunnels when it's not rush hour, too.

Crowned Heads

This June marks the 54th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Now I happen to be from a country that doesn’t have hereditary rulers; our royalty are film and TV stars, hastily crowned and easily deposed. But I’m also old enough to remember the occasion of Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne, and even in the U.S., the atmosphere was carnival, with 1950s matrons snapping up commemorative souvenirs, nothing else worth talking about for weeks leading up to the 2nd of June 1953, and everyone gathering around the archaic midcentury television to watch the ceremony in Westminster Abbey. Communications satellites were only a gleam in Sir Arthur Clarke’s youthful eye in 1953, so I suppose we must have watched a filmed and quickly-flown-across-the-Atlantic coronation in the States, but the thrill was palpable.

I lived with my aunt and uncle at the time, and I recall that as my aunt and I settled in to witness history, my uncle found something else to occupy him for political reasons. I was far too young for rebellion in those days, but in his lifetime Ireland had fought a bloody and protracted war, outmanned and outgunned on their home turf, to win independence from English rule. They call those years “The Terror” for a reason, and it had all ended scarcely more than 30 years previously. James Patrick McKenna was immune to the borrowed glamour of British royalty.

I don’t think I gave Elizabeth II or royal families in general a great deal of thought after that, and my only childhood brush with political fame was meeting the president of Turkey, another strange childhood moment from the heart of the desert. So I was rather taken by surprise when America erupted with royalist fervor once more over the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer. I mean you could only escape it by going home and barring the door and unplugging the TV. What it must have been like for the British I can only imagine, but I felt downright assaulted by it 6000 miles away, so my heart goes out to the poor Brits.

The world has changed since those innocent times – either of them – and now the vulnerable young Queen of my scratchy black-and-white images is eighty-something, and Charles has Camilla, whom it would seem no-one likes but him, and Channel 4 is airing tapes of a dying Diana against the express wishes of her sons, and my uncle Jim is 12 years in his grave, a rebel till the end. I have yet to go see guards changing into whatever it is they change to, though there’s absolutely no politics involved – just apathy. I’ll await visitors from the States to give me an excuse to do such a shamefully touristy thing. I hope they don’t take forever to get here…

Going Postal

The first time I went to a British post office, back in 1995, I was amazed to find all sorts of wrapping and packing supplies for sale. Within a couple of years you could buy anything you needed along those lines at any United States post office, but that’s about where the grand U.S.P.S. improvement scheme came to a grinding halt: A little wrapping paper, a little tape, money orders, and the commemorative stamps which are, I suspect, the real post office cash cow.

The British have really nice commemoratives, too, but you’re likely not to notice them over the roar of the amazing multi-service biz that is the Royal Post Office. Although this multiplicity of exciting things to do probably contributes to the interminable post office queues, we do have to remember that the British will queue for anything. They’ll latch on to the tail end of a queue on their way home, nevermind knowing what it’s actually for, and then good manners keep them from asking, and there you are. Sometimes they don’t get home for days.

But that’s not to take away from the heightened levels of sheer stimulation to be experienced at your local Post Office anywhere between Northumblerland and Cornwall. Forthwith: a list, probably not complete, of things one can accomplish there.

Buy and sell any of 70 currencies.

Cash several varieties of government cheques.

Purchase gift vouchers for goods and services from various high street businesses and hotel chains.

Get mobile phone and land line service.

Pay for mobile phone top-up for the top six U.K. mobile providers.

Purchase home and life insurance.

Purchase travel insurance, and travel money cards preloaded with £, $, or €.

Pay household bills.

Recharge your electricity key or gas card (pay-as-you-go utilities).

Send and receive money.

Deposit and withdraw funds, and check your bank balance.

Open a savings account or trust fund.

Buy any of several flavours of bonds.

Rent a car.

Pay several kinds of tax and government licence fees.

Print digital photos.

Apply for a driving or vehicle licence.

Buy a fishing licence.

Buy a phonecard.

Apply for a Post Office credit card

Play the National Lottery.

Apply for a loan.

If I didn't have a perfectly nice room I'd be tempted to move in. It’s not enough that Britain’s postal service has made the U.S.P.S. look like a poor relation who can’t even sell you insurance or Zlotys, but now they have their own Oscars, the Best Post Office Awards, most recently won by the branch in Hungerford Road, Crewe. And I don’t know it for a fact, but I suspect no R.P.O. employee has yet gone on a shooting rampage at work, at least not in Hungerford Road, Crewe. You may be sure I’m going to miss a couple of things sharply about Old Blighty when at last Her Majesty evicts me in September, and one of them will be the Royal Post Office.