I went to get the Underground home after going to check out the ‘Occupy’ protest outside St Paul’s Cathedral, only to find the next tube scheduled for eight minutes time because of a “defective train.” The announcer reassured the crowded platform over the PA that there would be a train every minute afterwards, but these proved to be too full to make much impact. My companion left to walk to a District Line station, so I caught the eye of a friendly looking guy in a shirt standing next to me on the platform holding his suit jacket.
He told me he was an IT consultant from Blackburn who had just moved for work and we talked for a bit about the tube and how busy it was, a good entry subject. When train after train is going past packed full like that, you realise the sheer volume of people the tube system carries. I think it’s quite amazing but he clearly didn’t.
“The one thing I hate about London,” he said, despite only arriving in here a few days ago, “is the Underground. If I were a millionaire, I’d buy it and scrap it.” He had that manner of speaking where people raise their voice at the end of a sentence, like everything’s a question. What about the congestion? I asked. “I don’t care,” he said, “I’d sell it for scrap metal.”
As we got closer in the ‘queue’ to getting a cramped spot on a train, I told him I’d been at St Paul’s to have a look at the protest and asked what he thought about it. He said he didn’t think it was going to change anything, and contrasted it with the Arab Spring protests. We eventually squeezed on to a crowded train and talked to each other through a strange contortion of limbs, him looking at me sideways over his arm holding the rail above and while my arm holding my coat was trapped behind his back somehow.
“It’s the way the world is,” he said. But does it have to be? That’s the question. “I think while the real people don’t have the power to change it, they’re not going to change it. Money makes the world go round.” Maybe we can distribute it more evenly and change that, I said, leading him a little. “The only thing you can do is try to change things is from the inside.” Ah, but how many millionaires do you think are going to give their money up? “You’ve got to do it from the inside and expose them,” he said confidently enough for me to not consider following up what he meant.
People have commented on this blog that the people I approach must be aware of other people listening in on the conversations, which must make it weird. That’s really not the case, at least for me. Once I’m engaged with someone, I forget all about the other people around me, and it seems to be the same for them too. Maybe it’s because it’s a stranger and a slightly awkward situation, but it feels like it’s just the two of you, or maybe, particularly in this cramped and crowded situation, it’s because the other people aren’t talking and they seem almost cattle-like and unhearing.
Over someone’s shoulder, I saw a picture of Colonel Gaddafi, and asked what he thought of his capture and possible death. “I think it’s all about money,” he said, warming to his theme now, I felt. Libya as well? “Oil. Afghanistan’s about strategic positioning in the Middle East and Iraq’s about the oil. No matter what they say, It’s all about the money… It’s all about money.”
What about that scandal? The Liam Fox one? I wondered, seeing as we were sweeping the news. “Give the right person the right amount of money and they’ll do anything.” I’d like to think I wouldn’t I said, leading to a slightly awkward pause. There’s a fine balance in this kind of conversation between getting opinion, causing offence and keeping people interested, but our chat had been light hearted and we’d both chuckled along despite the subject matter.
So, I asked before I got off, what was his plan to become a millionaire then? “I think I’m gonna have to rob a bank” he said, quick as a flash. “They seem to be doing a lot better than we do. Either that or become a drug dealer.”
The doors closed on the Circle Line train and I looked around at my fellow passengers, settling on a stout, sandy haired man with glasses standing opposite me in the doorway, smartly dressed in pinstripe with a briefcase between his feet. Aha, I thought, my first ‘suit’.
Having asked about Ed Miliband last week, in the interest of balance I wanted to find out what people thought of David Cameron after his speech to the Conservative party conference on Wednesday. The man opposite me told me he was a bank manager, on his way back from seeing a client in response to my now customary ‘going anywhere interesting?’ approach. Well, I thought, this should be predictable.
When I moved on to Cameron however, after the pleasantries and complaints about the delays on the tube were out of the way, asking him what he thought of him using a newspaper as a prop, he wasn’t the Cameroonian I was expecting. He’d lost his faith in politicians a long time ago, he said, and didn’t think anything they said made much difference. I tried to draw him on whether he thought Cameron or Miliband had the better ideas but he just shrugged, saying he couldn’t really tell the difference, and the conversation ran dry pretty quickly, with me apologetically telling him I’d studied politics at university, like it was some oddball hobby. “We’ll you’ve got to have faith then haven’t you?”
He was friendly, happy to talk, with open body language, so I thought I’d quiz him a bit. A bank manager going to see clients? I thought that was a thing of the past? Apparently not, very much a thing of the present, particularly now. I asked him if he’d recommend it as a career.
“Not anymore, not in this climate.” He explained that he had targets that his branch had to hit, which had become more difficult not only because many of his business customers were struggling but also because the targets had actually been made tougher during the recession. I had been considering whether to bring up the demonization of bankers in general, but he beat me to it, continuing, “It’s the investment side that have messed everything up, you see. It’s very different on my side of things.” They had screwed up, but were still reaping the rewards while his job had been made a lot harder as a result of their irresponsibility. As for the bank manager, so for us all.
The doors opened at my stop and we said a friendly goodbye, with him offering his hand, which has never happened to me before. Formal but also friendly, and imbued with a little trust as well. Perhaps ‘suits’ aren’t so stiff after all.
London Talking 