Underground Spooks

Underground Spooks

It's Saturday night, the destination you have arrived at is Camden town
and the year is 2007. Please mind the gap and take our guided tour
around the fantastic, newly built station. You needn't worry, there
will be no more trains tonight and all the London Underground staff
have gone home. We follow the exit signs and glide effortlessly up one
of the brand new escalators. I stick some gum onto the crotch of a
ballet dancer advertising a bank. At the top of the steps, you crane
your neck backwards to gaze up at a fluttering pigeon caught beneath
the glass and steel canopy of the roof. Are you wearing your dancing
shoes? Beneath your feet are the remains of Camden Electric Ballroom.
Unsurprisingly, this is the noisiest time of night. This is when the
ghosts come out.

But first let us step into a glassy cavern over-hanging the canal.
Fast asleep on black satin sheets lies the white, form of a sleeping
man. His body is soft and fat like a powder milk baby. We tiptoe over
to him and tickle him under the chin to make him roll back his head. He
obliges and starts to snore, please don't be put off - the money he has
made in property development has made a mockery of his social graces.
He belches and the pong of Foie Gras fills the room. Hold your breath
and move closer to look beneath the seventh fold of fat below his chin;
here you'll find the dirtiest secrets of his past. Can you detect the
mystical hint of patchouli and white musk from demolished jostick
stalls? You can, well step back and watch him raise a piece of fluff
from a vibrant clothes shop up towards the roof on his snoring lips.
Now what's this? I told you it would be worth it; place your ear right
up under his chin and listen carefully. You can still hear the sounds
caught up in the walls of the Electric Ballroom: hot sweaty gigs by
Blur in the nineties politely harmonise with the Wah-Wah spangled
sounds of Ziggy Stardust in the seventies. The music is suddenly
drowned out by the howl of squealing bulldozer wheels. Quick, it's time
to go, so dip the developer's hand in water to make him wet the bed,
and let's move on.

I stand on the roof of a taxi and balance like a surfer as we cruise
around the block. You show off and find a bus to stand on. I watch you
laugh and perform a perfect back flip. You won't be laughing soon; we
re-enter the station from the new Buck Street end.

Inside, we push our way through a throng of shoppers and stallholders
who once made this their home. They wrinkle their noses at the clinical
scent of department stores and shopping arcade air fresheners. No
crowds pass this way during the day anymore because there's nothing
they want to buy in sterile Camden Town. This is now the station's
busiest time.

We pass more ghosts - these are the young tourists with fond holiday
memories, their voices rise like ash in all the tongues under the sun.
A girl with a pierced tongue walks through the closed station barriers
ahead of us and we follow her in. It's even busier at the back of the
station. Here we see a huge crowd of twittering spooks with large
sorrowful eyes flocking around two shadows in their centre. There's no
sound, down here but the couple are dancing. They float maybe an inch
off the ground at the most, occasionally an arm or a flying shoe skims
through a wall or tiled piece of floor. All the while their eyes never
leave on another's and their bodies move slowly closer. A tear runs
down the cheek of an old rocker ghost, floating like the husk of a
burnt amaretto wrapper, as he's sucked in through an air conditioning
grill. The couple move closer, as fragile as a celluloid dream. Their
lips move closer. Through the gap in between you can just see a ghost
of a Goth girl opens her mouth to scream. Their lips are touching now,
they should be pressing gently together but they're not, they're
passing right through. They fall right through each other and land on
the floor. These are just two of the ghosts who found love in Camden
Town. The ghosts suddenly look around desperately for a place to hide.
A crackly tannoy announces the first train of the day.