OK! I have just watched another sixty-something woman, hobbled on a four-pronged walking stick, make like Mufasa as a stampede of City boys charged into a Northern line carriage. This isn’t Charli XCX’s Glastonbury set. We are not vying for a glimpse of the latest K-pop sensation in town. It is a Transport for London service no one wants to be on, and maintaining group courtesy is the only thing holding it together. What’s happened to behaving on the Tube?
There are rules. Some infractions (letting your child stand on the left side of the escalator) can be forgiven — for tourists. Others (cramping comrades to get hold of a rail during rush hour) are expiated with a simple four-word spitfire (“sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry” — a British superpower, not to be underestimated). But now the deficit of decency has gone too far.
TfL’s most recent six-month Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour statistics are utterly depressing. Across TfL, crime was up 56 per cent year-on-year with reported theft and robbery “much higher than last financial year”. Needless to say, nicking someone’s purse (not to mention their designer, puffer jacket) is always done in poor taste. Then there’s the 32 per cent of travellers who have felt worried about personal security on public transport in the past three months, and the seven per cent who have been completely or temporarily deterred from using public transport after an incident.
This is all dreary, but crime isn’t new. Fellow commuters staring vacantly into level 87 of Candy Crush while a pregnant woman is left riding the Central line like a surfboard on a cruise ship is a more contemporary issue, however.
Don’t do disgusting things, such as sneeze openly, vape, fart, burp, take your feet out of your shoes or watch porn on the way home from work
It doesn’t always happen but, per Liz Wyse, etiquette adviser at Debrett’s, our behaviour is deteriorating. This came with “the advent of mobile phones,” she says. “Once people become absorbed, they are much less alive to their surroundings and are therefore less likely to pick up on the silent signals that make travelling, crushed together, in a confined space tolerable.”
It’s for this reason many other elements of good behaviour have gone, too. For anyone needing an update on the rules, here you go.
Don’t refuse to move to allow others off the train. Don’t barge on before people have disembarked. Don’t, on hearing the doors beep, beep take it as a cue to pelt like Dina Asher-Smith towards an already full carriage and launch yourself into a stack of people. Don’t wear your backpack inside the carriage. Don’t sprawl across three seats, or linger by the door so no one else can board. Don’t even think about listening to music, a podcast, TV or TikToks without headphones. Don’t take calls, FaceTimes, Zooms, Skypes, Teams, whatever, onboard, even if there is WiFi. Don’t ignore expectant mothers, OAPs, disabled people or anyone wearing a badge asking you to please, please give them a seat without them having to run your foot over with a wheelchair before you deign glance up.
Don’t do disgusting things, such as sneeze openly, pick your nose and hold the handrail, pick your nose and wipe it on the handrail (I wish I was joking), man-spread, put your hands down your tracksuit bottoms, press up against people, vape, fart, burp, take your feet out of your shoes or watch porn on the way home from work.
The amount of McDonald’s eaten on the Tube is extraordinary. It is a triggering aroma for many of us; we do not want a whiff of your saver menu order. The same goes for insidious types who eat those katsu curry boxes from Wasabi on the move. Wyse agrees with me, elegantly explaining that “scoffing a greasy, messy and — worse — smelly meal in a stuffy carriage is never good, and might turn some passengers’ stomachs”. Hear, hear. The only acceptable food is a non-offensive, ham and cheese Pret baguette, for emergencies only.
Your go-to position at all times is to sit, vigilant to your surroundings, and in silence — this has been the expectation since London’s first underground travel venture, when the Metropolitan railway opened between Paddington and Farringdon in 1863. There are some idiosyncrasies which I am happy to debate. When it comes to big objects, I think travelling with a whopping great cello is actually a very chic thing; an obnoxiously large house plant, less so. I am happy to sit alongside dogs, so long as they are not yapping, biting or lying flat on their back in the middle of the carriage. It will be your fault if I fall on your cockapoo. It is quite glamorous to do your make-up underground, and I never mind walking slightly slower behind someone who has braved their commute in a ballgown and heels. Glamour is healing, people.
Anyone looking for a pastime that is not playing a game loudly on their iPhone would do well to consider reading a book, analysing the Poems on the Underground, fretting about work or imagining sleeping with Paul Mescal — things normal Londoners do daily.
When you leave the station don’t dawdle watching an old season of Grey’s Anatomy, block the escalator, stare at everyone on the descending escalator or decide, on reaching the top, that now is the time to bend over and tie your shoelace. It is also awful when someone squeezes behind you as you tap away £2.80 at the barriers.
Abide by these, and improvement will come. We must console ourselves with the fact our behaviour has not yet descended close to the hellish depths of New York’s Subway, where there is now no trace of human civilisation whatsoever. That really is the bottom barrel, though: Londoners should aspire to far better manners than that.
