This was commissioned by Time Out for an Underground special they were going to run in July 2005. The bombings put paid to the special. I have a suspicion that they did actually pay me a kill fee, unlike others I could mention.
The underground in summer is much like the underground in winter only the customers wear fewer clothes. This is not to be sniffed at, but beyond that the grimy tunnels, corridors and escalators don’t change much from month-to-month, or even hour-to-hour. The staff, of course, don’t have to travel on the trains in the rush-hour where the summer is worst. We only have to stand on the stifling platforms, radio mic in hand, pointlessly repeating what the announcer on the train is saying anyway and observing what the supervisor can see on his CCTV anyway. But we are at least spared the armpit in the face or being crushed up against sweaty glass that we observe our esteemed clientele putting up with. As long as I can remember it's been said that if we transported lambs the way we do commuters, old ladies would be picketing underground stations night and day.
If I do have to travel anywhere while the trains are packed, I’ll make my way to the driver’s cab and beg a lift with him, in spacious and air-conditioned luxury. They’re normally happy to oblige - although its officially prohibited - because they could do with the conversation. Summer for them doesn’t mean much either. They get a small taste of a bright, sunny day – if they work on a line that goes overground at all – before they turn the train around and go back down into the black tunnels with only signal lights for company. In fact the only advantages summer brings for the drivers is that, at stations where the steps up from the platform over-hang the front of the train, they can try and catch a look up ladies’ skirts. This maybe why, on sunny days, you find yourself waiting an inordinate amount of time at certain stations.
On the ticket barrier, the summer is more pleasant than the winter since you don’t have to stand in bitterly cold Siberian winds for hours on end. The evenings fly by, as under-dressed and over-excited ladies cavort about, making it marginally less dull than usual. In the past, when we used to have to wear hats, every summer morning you’d await the Network Control Centre’s decree; if it was going to be hot enough, you could officially take off the hat. Oh the excitement! Recently, however, the underground bowed to the inevitable and made the hat optional at all times.
For the ticket clerks, the summer brings, like the rest of the year, misery. Stuck behind glass they do not get the luxury of being able to stand in the sun under the pretense of working. There are no rules governing how hot a ticket office can get so, unlike when they get too cold, clerks cannot refuse to work just because the windows are steaming up and sweat is pouring from their harassed brows. The air-conditioning units the underground provides are a hit-and-miss affair at the best of times but even when they work there is always the oddball who turns the heater up trying to recreate the subcontinent. The clerk, hoping for an August reprieve from the day-to-day grind of miserable commuters, is rewarded instead with a day-to-day grind of clueless tourists all of whom apparently need a long, in-depth pep talk before they’ll get on an escalator.
The public always want to know when we’re going to bring air-conditioning on to the trains. You see them rise from the bowels of the earth, imprint of an armpit on their face, gasping weakly about heatstroke and inhumanity. Even I used to wonder this, thinking I was the first person to ever think of it. Alas, as I never tire of explaining, air-conditioning is never going to happen. You can blame the fastidiousness of the builders of the deep tunnels, who left barely enough room for the trains to get through. (In fact the most recent trains were originally built too big and had to be scaled down). Certainly, there is no room for the air-con equipment needed. More importantly, even if you could tag a unit on the back of the train (which you can’t, since you have to be able to drive it from either end) the net result would be even hotter platforms and stations, since the hot air has nowhere else to go. Not something which I and my radio mic are looking forward to.