It happened on the Northern Line

I recently took an overseas trip, and one of the stops was London.    It's been a couple of years since I've been there, and I'd forgotten about one of the city's nightly rituals -- closing time, when the pubs empty out and the Underground experiences a third rush hour of drunken revelers. 

I was waiting at a Northern Line station (Camden Town?) for a train.  The tone had already been set at the entry to the subway station, where two girls were walking the wrong way on the escalator, while a third girl took pictures, while the subway station manager yelled at them ineffectively over a loudspeaker.   Their backward walking disoriented me, and caused me momentarily to step onto the wrong escalator, which sent them into hysterics.

Down on the platform, the mood was boisterous.  All that was needed was a spark, and suddenly that spark came, in the form of a single guitar chord ringing through the station.   Everyone turned to the man with the guitar, who launched into a Johnny Cash song.  The party was officially on:





As he played, people sang along and danced while others called out requests.  Somehow, simply because I'd been standing there, I was everyone's best friend and was drawn into the circle.   A train was approaching, and we all felt a bit sad to leave the party behind, until someone had the idea to ask him to join us on the train, which he did:



With each stop, people came and went and the party continually metamorphosed.  The dancing continued, if anything more wildly on the narrow train because each time the car lurched people were thrown into each other.   I never had a moment to realize I'd gotten on the wrong train    The requests kept coming, moving from Cash to Elvis:  "Suspicious Minds," "Blue Suede Shoes," "Burning Love."   And a couple of times the lurching train threw the musician into sitting passenger's laps, yet he never missed a note and kept playing.



Finally, he had to get off the train, everyone's stop came up, and the party came to an end.  We bid polite goodbyes, without the music, strangers once more, and I went about figuring out how to get back on the path to home.

Note -- the guitarist gave me a little flyer, which reveals that he is Daniel Jeanrenaud, "the one and only Camden Cat," playing at the Blues Kitchen in Camden Town every weekend.