You Tube: My History

Ok, this post is a little long and factual, bear with me. This post is metaphorically my first session on the chaise longue of the internet. If you're reading this you've just become an accidental online therapist. Get ready to analyse.

I used to be fine with traveling on the London Underground. As a teenager I'd go to gigs all over town  (Less Than Jake at the London Astoria, Capdown at Camden Underworld, Spice Girls at Wembly Arena, etc... DON'T JUDGE ME) and had no qualms about scurrying down and riding the sweaty, packed gig tube trains back to Waterloo in a flurry to catch the last overground train home. When I was 16, I had to use the tube to get to my after school work experience in Soho. It didn't even cross my mind that I should have any reason to dislike this form of transport.

I first started to feel unsettled around the Tube in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. The 2005 London bombings increased this unsettling feeling, but didn't deter me from traveling on it.

When I started university I met a girl who had a fear of all London transport. I was really suspicious of her, I thought it was completely irrational and I couldn't understand it. We studied in Camberwell, the closest tubes were Elephant & Castle and Oval. As Camberwell is so well connected by bus we hardly ever needed to use the underground.

I don't know what happened but at some stage during first year, a worry light switched on in my head. I gradually began to feel uneasy when I knew had to take the tube. When I went on the tube, it was always fine, but I began to avoid it and take other routes. I ended up traveling all over London by bus, which was great because you learn the layout of the city, but most of the time it was agonisingly slow.

After graduating I went and worked in New York for a couple of months. As I was a stranger to the city I'd commute in to Manhattan from Brooklyn using the L or JMZ train. I much preferred the New York Subway system. Although the map is complex (standard) and the express trains are hard to get used to, I loved the efficiency (trains run 24hrs a day) and the air conditioned subway carriages. My favourite thing was the fact that the subway was usually a short flight of stairs underground, it seemed so close to the surface. The depth of the London Underground is one of the major factors of why I don't like it.

I only had one major hiccup when traveling on the subway when the emergency brakes got thrown on and we were stuck in a tunnel for about 10 minutes. This has actually been the only tube incident I have experienced. Yep, what a sissy.

When I got back from New York I moved to another tube-less area, Stoke Newington and took up traveling by bike. I was really scared of even attempting to ride a bike in London but after one go I was a convert. I started off on an old racer biker I picked up on eBay but now have upgraded to a lovely single speed bike that makes me feel all kinds of East End smug. Having a bike totally freed me up from all of my transport worries. It's the fastest way to travel about London. I now had a massive excuse why I didn't have to catch the Tube.

I'm a fair-weather cyclist (combination of bad circulation and a dislike of the bitter cold) so I stop cycling around December and start back up again in February. This means 2-3 months of the year I need to travel on public transport. I now live in Archway which is obviously well connected on the Northern Line. At one stage in early January of this year I managed to travel on it for a week solid. My worries almost disappeared. I'm now back to my favourite technique: avoidance.

Why I Want To Solve This

I'm your average Londoner, I love the city, I just happen to dislike traveling on the Underground. In the past few months I've made a really big effort to force myself to travel on the Tube and for a brief while it was working but I've recently slipped again and am back into avoiding it.

I've set up this blog as I'm pissed off with myself. Tonight, I've missed out on going to a friend's birthday. He's having a Circle Line pub crawl, which is currently my worst nightmare. My boyfriend headed off out with our friends and I've stayed in like a square. Annoyingly, by avoiding it I know its only compounding my fear of the Underground even more. My aim is to one day be able to catch the Tube without giving it a second thought.

Image via here.