Guess what London Tube: I will not mind the GAP
Note: This piece is a personal and fictional rant of the author and any similarities between it and real facts is a mere coincidence.
I fail relentlessly to accept the engineering logic that railways can come with gaps. Even if I understood how this works scientifically, I just don’t understand why we should be reminded of this gap every freaking day; yes, I am talking about the London tube gap.
Why on earth should a mistake of an officer be thrown to us; the poor commuters! The portrait of officer Duckling Kurtz, now sits in the dusty archive of Tower London Castle, reminding of an unforgettable gap that no soul of a Londoner shall ever forget.
Kurtz who was a very short man was the first man to ever fall in the gap. It all happened when he was taking a break from the wary job of testing signal failures, when a group of mice gathered around him asking for the crumbs of bread his wife wrapped for him. The mice surrounded his feeble body and he lost his balance at the tip of the platform and fell in the biggest gap of Waterloo station.
Ever since this incident, no British man ever forgot the perils of the gap. Some old souls still think it is the cursing trace of Napoleon’s revenge from the British for having to remind the French of their defeat every time they cross Waterloo station; until the statement was mainstreamed all over the tube stations.
One can rest assured “Mind the Gap” is one of those statements that can assure some numbness in your brain in a record time. Scientists have released a new study saying that mindless repetition of “mind the gap” will severely affect the hearing of commuters and on a more serious note will eventually lead into memory loss by 2050. How the sound sleeked tacitly into our eardrums, injuring our hearing, a voice over to be looped for a lifetime!
Had Dante been an English man he might have created a 10th circle for his Inferno’s underground inside the London tube: a perfect setting for a torture of senses where no ear or eye can function properly. Yet, I am still not sure where he would place it specifically; whether between Euston and Camden town stations where the screeching sound peaks at 107.7 decibels or between Westminster and Waterloo where no ear can function properly to hear the secrets of Westminster Parliament.
The Gap and the Moving Dead
When you arrive to the underground, you are greeted by a long orchestra of the tube noise spiced up with the monotonous sound of the gap requiem. Far Worse, the gap extends to the commuters. You don’t only hear the gap; you also see it on the faces of the commuters; a moving silent audience who only sees and listens but never talks. It is a performance of the dead moving bodies; a silent language of utter surveillant eyes.
If your elbow accidentally hits your neighboring commuter while minding your gap — I mean your seat- you will be greeted with a deadly stare. In this situation, you can either pretend you are dead and maintain a poker face or flash out your British politeness with a steady repetition of “sorries” and “excuse me “until the other forgets your existence again.
Countless Gaps
More so, the gap is visual. You can see the writing “Mind the Gap” written in big caps lock between the train and the platform. You can see it in posters around the tube. You can see it souvenired in shops and tattooed on the walls.
Ads around the tube just reminds of further gaps. A queue of numerous ads sits on top of the commuters’ seat inside the tube all competing to catch my eyes. “Tired of being tired”? no that’s not me. That’s what the ad reads; an ad of a yawning lady rests tirelessly on the tube board ever since 1991 reminding the robotic moving bodies that they have no right to be tired of this gap system, only to be neighbored by another ad board of the Poetry of the Underground ; this time it is a poem on the meaning of existence. Two ads sitting next to each other minding the gap between the meaning of existence and buying the next product; an inevitable marriage of existentialists and capitalists.
While waiting for the next tube to arrive, my eyes hit an amazon Alexa ad and I just ask “Hey Alexa, I am tired of this gap. Can you please mind the gap for me?
