I’ve lived in London for six months – I can’t believe what you guys do on the Tube

Whether it’s eating smelly food or refusing to budge when the doors open, the London Underground has its fair share of bad behaviour – but there’s one thing that stands out above everything else, writes Ryan Coogan

The tube is bad enough as it is – try not to make it even worse (PA Archive)

I remember the first time I visited London and had to use the Underground to get around. If you’ve lived here for a while, this probably sounds silly – but the idea of getting in a claustrophobic metal cylinder and letting it hurtle me through the depths of the Earth at unfathomable speeds made me uncomfortable. Even a little scared.

Now, though, I’ve lived here for a few months, and the idea of being scared of the Tube is actually pretty funny to me. I’m a real Londoner now, and I’m happy to report that the Underground isn’t scary at all – it’s infuriating.

Seriously, how do you people live like this? Every day I have to clamber onto a train with the angriest people in the world, as we’re shipped off to places we don’t want to be like doomed sardines.

And that’s not to mention the heat. Where I come from – the North, God’s country – we tend to keep things a respectable nine degrees Celsius. Here, though, it’s been a constant barrage of sweaty, humid warmth. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I’m spending long stretches of that heat in the sweatier, humid-er Tube, pressed up against other sweaty, humid people.

You’d think that being in those conditions would make people inclined to mitigate the horrors of the morning commute as much as possible. But for some reason, half the people in this city seemed to have sworn an oath to make the experience even more unbearable.

Why is it that, when I’m in a rush to get off the train, some of you just stand there and expect me to somehow phase-shift through you? Do you think that I’m a ghost? Do you think that you’re a ghost? You’re not a ghost – you’re a solid human person made of matter, and I’m going to push you if you don’t move.

Why do some of you think that it’s acceptable to eat the most pungent food imaginable inside a sealed metal coffin with virtually no ventilation? In summer, no less? If you’re going to eat something, it better be odourless and have zero capacity for spillage (although why you’d want to eat anything in what is essentially a 60mph petri dish is beyond me).

Occasionally, when a carriage is particularly packed, you might find yourself leaning against the doors. When that happens, the train will tend to throw on its brakes as it pulls away. This is understandable – normal, even. What is neither normal nor understandable is when it happens eight times in a row, as the increasingly frustrated driver pleads with you to stand up straight and bring this juddering nightmare to an end.

Like I say, I’m relatively new to this town, and my experience of the Tube’s many failures is somewhat limited – so I asked a couple of London friends for their horror stories.

One told me that a few days ago, as the Tube doors opened, he was greeted by a plume of weed smoke. Apparently somebody had chosen the very busy, very public London Underground as the perfect spot to unwind, and in doing so had decided to hotbox the entire carriage. Although by way of mitigating factor, according to my friend, “he looked like he was on his way to Notting Hill carnival”. Fair play.

One said that they once politely smiled at somebody, who gave her a disgusted look and immediately fled to the other end of the carriage like she’d waved a knife in their face. Not to feed any stereotypes, but it certainly doesn’t help with the perception that Londoners are bewildered by the concept of politeness.

They aren’t all so whimsical though. One person I know is immunocompromised, meaning that she still has to wear a mask in public. For some reason, though, despite living through a pandemic a mere four seasons of Love Island ago, some people can’t help but challenge her on it – sometimes physically. If the idea of somebody privately trying to protect their health makes you that mad, maybe London isn’t for you. Hell, maybe society in general isn’t for you.

But the one, unifying factor? The one thing every single person I spoke to reported back? “The worst thing, by far, is people blasting their music as loud as they can.”

Music is a beautiful thing. It’s the purest expression of the human soul, and a language that transcends cultural and temporal boundaries.

But if I hear one more person playing their entire Spotify playlist at maximum volume for the entire carriage to hear while I’m just trying to read my book and forget about work, I’m going to lose it. If you want to share your music with somebody, do what the rest of us do – DM them a YouTube link that they’ll never click on, or get drunk at a party and hijack the aux cord.

I don’t know what could possibly occupy the head of a person who decides to blast drill music on their tinny phone speakers for a carriage full of tired, frustrated people who are too British to speak up – probably just cobwebs and narcissism – but it needs to stop. The Tube is bad enough as it is – try not to make it even worse.