London: Ealing Broadway is the final or first stop on the District Line — the red route that intersects so ironically with all of the other primary colours, dotted and black lines on the map of London Underground.
Riding ‘The Tube’ involves taking steep and crowded escalators down to the bowels of the Earth to what may very well be the first of seven levels of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. If you’re claustrophobic or can’t handle being crowded into a creaking and rattling tin can that bucks and sparks on as it rides the rails, then this piece of London isn’t for you.
But it’s the only way to get around if you haven’t got a car, can’t afford the £11.50 (Dh60) daily congestion charge in peak business hours for central London, and need to be somewhere sooner rather than later.
At least Ealing Broadway station is above ground, and you can clearly read the ‘Mind the Gap’ in white painted on the platform’s edge. A snack food stall is doing a brisk trade in coffees, drinks, chicken tikka rolls and samosas, and breakfast butties.
Katrina and her boyfriend, Pavel, arrived in London a month ago, as soon as they were finished their exams in Tallinn. She’s an English major and he’s studying to be an architect, more of a draftsman, she explained. Right now, they’re staying with four friends, also from Estonia in a one-bedroom flat in Acton, also on the District Line.
“I cannot understand why the British would want to leave the European Union,” Katrina tells Gulf News. “For years, my country was under the Soviets, and as soon as we get our freedom, we wanted to join Europe. It’s good for people like us who are young and want adventure and opportunity to work somewhere else when we’re young.”
So far, she’s managed to get some shifts waitressing in a pub and Pavel has worked valeting and washing cars, also for an Estonian.
“There are a lot of people from my country here, Latvians, Lithuanians, too. It’s like we never left home.”
True, but come Thursday, if a majority of Britons vote to Leave, there will very likely be curbs placed on couples like Katrina and Pavel — and many tens of thousands more.
Ken Richards gets on at Shepherd’s Bush.
A station loudspeaker booms, ‘Mind the Gap’. Here, on the Underground, that gap is turning into an ever-widening gulf.
How is the middle-aged Richards voting?
“Leave,” he says. “And the sooner the better.”
“The whole thing is being controlled by Germany,” he says. “Angela Merkel is running Europe as well as Germany. It’s only going to get worse. What happens if the EU lets the Turks in? Then you’re going to have millions of Muslims being able to move here. Shouldn’t be allowed. Better we get out now when the going is good. We can just be like Switzerland or Norway. They don’t need the EU. Or Canada. We could be like Canada.”
So what did he think of US President Barack Obama tell the UK that it would have to take a beat seat behind other nations if it left the EU?
“Well of course he would say that, wouldn’t he,” Richard says. “Beside, who does he think he is coming over ‘ere and telling us how to vote. You can imagine how the Yanks would react if Prince Charles or David Cameron went over there and told them how to vote or what to do with their weapons. They wouldn’t stand it for a minute.”
So Donald Trump for president then?
“Absolutely. He doesn’t take any [expletive]. He’s right to build a wall with Mexico and kick out the Muslims. We should have done that here.”
