Commuting by rail used to be such a simple pleasure. Well, obviously, not a pleasure as such, but it was at least comparatively simple. You’d board your chosen train and, regardless of whether it was the one you actually wanted or not, you could enjoy your journey unburdened by information, help or assistance of virtually any kind. And if you ended up in the wrong place, you could reprimand yourself in the quiet knowledge that you’re an idiot.
These days, within just a few minutes on London Underground premises or pretty much any other rail service in the UK, you will be bombarded with instructions, warnings and announcements. You all know the ones: the mildly informative bulletins (‘There is currently a good service on the Central line’); the public safety reminders (‘Please report anything suspicious to a member of staff’); and the statements of the bleeding obvious (‘Mind the gap between the train and the platform’). It’s as if we are now assumed to be completely devoid of common sense or intelligence and have to be constantly guided from hazard by verbal cattle prods. There is just no escape from the clutter of information.
So I feel a (very slight) sense of joy that the simple, to-the-point ‘Mind the gap’ announcement that used to be heard at a number of central London Tube stations has recently made a return – to the northbound Northern line platform at Embankment, in fact – with a view that it may also replace the more fulsome, idiot-proof instructions at other Underground stations too. Its return at Embankment is, apparently, partly a nod to the widow of Peter Lodge, who recorded the iconic “Mind the gap” warning of the 1960s. Gradually, his voice was replaced across the network during the eighties and nineties by today’s equivalents until it could only be heard at Embankment. After Peter Lodge died, his widow would go to Embankment just to hear his voice – until, even here, progress prevailed.
I assume his work was similar to, if not the same as, the booming ‘mind the gap’ I would hear at Bank station, on the Central line, annunciated in exacting, BBC English. Such was its voice-of-God-like quality that, as my train pulled in from The East, it seemed we were being prepared for an existential chasm rather than the two-foot void between the train and, er, the platform.
In those days, this was pretty much the only automated announcement on the Tube. But those days are long gone. However, I’m not really complaining about this because, by comparison with a Southeastern service into London from Broadstairs, Tube travellers have it easy. Passengers setting out for London from Thanet are obviously considered feckless infants who have spent all their mental credits for the day just by getting dressed, such is the laborious repetition of the bleeding obvious throughout every journey.
Admittedly, our introduction to the automated on-board announcement woman starts well enough. Get on at Broadstairs and she welcomes us with “Thank you for travelling with Southeastern”. (In truth, this is the very least she could say given that we’ve just extended the national debt to use the service in the first place). Entertainingly, some stations, like Canterbury West, come with their own set of helpful instructions: if you want to navigate your way to the cathedral, for instance, you should “alight at the station and follow the signs”. So no need for an ejector-seat or a map, then! And just in case you didn’t quite grasp the task at hand, this explanation is then displayed on the on-board dot matrix signs over and over and over again.
But such local variations from the rule are rare. Generally, it’s just a relentless succession of instructions, warnings and other communications, some more useful than others but each one expressed in slightly more stressy tones than the last. Indeed, the on-board announcement woman might be just the human front for a computer, but I half expect her to finally lose patience with it all, get into a strop and sign off with: “Look, will you all just fuck off to work and leave us alone!” It would at least be short and to the point. And I, for one, would respect her more for it.