Four Foot Eight

Camden Town

It's the beginning of the evening peak. The station is largely quiet as two trains approach simultaneously from the south - one from Bank bound for Edgware, one from Charing Cross bound for High Barnet. They pull into the northbound platforms to stop more or less simultaneously, and as the doors open the station comes to life.

Commuters burst from the doors, sprinting for the connecting passageways linking the two branches of the Northern Line as if their lives depended on it. In a way their lives do depend on it - every minute they have to spend waiting for the train is a minute they're not spending at home putting their feet up, having a bath or being with the kids. Passages which were deserted twenty seconds earlier mill with pushing, shoving commuters who simply want to go home.

Some of them make it to the other platform in time and leap onto the northbound trains which will finally take them home. Others arrive too late and look irritatedly at the indicators, wishing that they were somewhere else as the trains pull away.