Rain

Alas, autumn arrived today with a fair degree of conviction. It rained quite a bit. I don't like the rain. Thunderstorms, I like; snow is pretty, hail has drama; this sort of dreary, demoralizing wetness, no. It's just dull and relentless and quietly saps one's will to live.

London at rush hour seized up in a way that, for those like me who were unaware of the true cause, seemed to typify the strange inability of this city to cope with really quite unexceptional changes of weather. It has been warm and dry of late; today, cool and wet. Of course the whole transport system seized up. It was the shock.

But apparently not. By some as yet unexplained circumstance, much of the city suffered a substantial power loss, a femtoscopic echo of the vastly larger one that struck the Eastern US a couple of weeks back. On the TV, energy pundits are shaking their heads knowingly, trying to hide the childish glee of saying "I told you so!" The underground and traffic lights were major casualties, and the city was brought to its knees, briefly.

Trudging home in the pouring rain, this information still some hours away, I was reminded of a number of things.

The first was how much I fucking hate umbrellas. Now, it would be reasonable to suggest this is just jealousy because I don't have one. But I have had, and I hate them even when they shield me.

For one thing, they get in the way. People with brollies always take up more space, and move slower. They make the foot traffic more viscous, furring up the pavement like arterial clots. When half the population of the city is plodding those pavements, a reduction in overall walking speed by a factor of, say, a third, is equivalent to an awful lot of wet and pissed off people.

For another, they are always at eye level. Why is that? I'm not especially tall, but somehow I seem to be just the right amount taller than everyone using an umbrella for my sight to be seriously threatened by each encounter. Those things have spikes all around the sides, for fuck's sake! Were they designed by some inquisition torturer or specialist in mediæval weaponry?

The next thing I was reminded of was a dance by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's wonderful Belgian dance company Rosas, which I saw here last year. This dance is called Rain, so the connection is clear enough. That's pretty much the only positive association I have with the word. I'd love to see it again, and as it happens I might be able to. It's being performed in New York in November, and a couple of European cities next year, and Ian and I are tentatively planning to synchronize a holiday with one of these appearances. It's a long time since I was in New York and I really want to go again; Ian used to live there, though, and seems to think November isn't a great time for someone like me who hates bad weather. So we'll see.

And then, thinking of my city crippled by a bit of rain, I was reminded of being in Cairo a couple of years ago. Now there's a place that's really not equipped to deal with water falling out of the sky. Understandably, because it almost never happens. If only London had that excuse.

Just after we arrived, it started raining. And it rained a lot. The streets had little in the way of drainage, and torrents raged in the gutters. Cars were up to their axles. The locals were... bemused. None of them had umbrellas. It was actually quite entertaining.

We were travelling with a small tour group, and -- as is the way of things -- we rolled up at the Giza plateau early in the morning. All the tours do. Tickets to go inside the Great Pyramid are strictly limited and go on sale at 8, so everyone arrives then to have the option, even though many people don't actually do it. The guides are upfront about it: it's very cramped and crowded and there's nothing much to see when you're in there. Nevertheless, the allotted 150 tickets always sell out.

So there we are. It's not actually raining, but everything's sodden from the night before, and it's grey, and cold. Six of us -- knowing we won't enjoy it, determined to go in anyway -- have our entry tickets, and we join the long queue at the entrance, gazing up at the monstrous, squat bulk of these strange monuments, waiting to be allowed in.

And waiting.

And waiting.

After some time, people in the queue start leaving. We wander forward to take their place, but it becomes apparent that something is wrong. The whole event is in doubt. It takes some time to establish this, but it turns out that the power is out. Due to the rain. There are no lights, and so no-one is to be allowed in. And so we drift away.

But.

Our group is not on a tight schedule. Our leader suggests going off to another vantage point for some good views and photo opportunities and coming back later. Maybe the power will have been restored by then.

So that's what we do.

And, gosh, what do you know? When we get back, the lights are working. The pyramid is open. And everyone else, apparently lacking our flexibility, has gone. There is no-one queuing. There is no-one inside. The pyramid is open, and it's all ours.

There's a relatively large corridor leading to the tiny, cramped passage into the pyramid. The passage ascends steeply, and is maybe a metre square in cross-section. I'm told that it is possible for two people to squeeze past each other in there, but to me it definitely seemed like there was only room for one. There are lights strung along it, and wooden banisters fixed to each wall, and ladder-like rungs attached to the floor. To go in, you have to lean your forearms on the banisters, and crouch down, and run up the slope -- an awkward and unnatural position. Even when it is wet and cold outside, the passage is hot and airless.

One member of our party takes one look at it and decides she's seen enough.

The rest of us set off. The Canadians are in front of me, Ian behind. As I'm panting my way up, I idly start wondering who'll be next. My chest is bent down to my knees, my face to the floor. I find myself thinking about the people who installed the rungs, the lights, the banisters, working for hour after hour in these suffocating conditions by lantern light. Hammering in the dark, unable even to turn around: a godforsaken job.

Above me are many dozens of metres of stone; below me many thousands more. I'm reminded of one of the most terrifying moments I know of in fiction, which takes place in a book called The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by the great children's author Alan Garner. The child heroes, Colin and Susan, in the company of two dwarfs, are making their escape from a labyrinthine mine under Alderley Edge in Cheshire, and wind up crawling down a steep, narrow, descending passageway. It gets tighter and tighter. There is a vertical hairpin bend, which they just manage to traverse, but it leaves them upside down. Their arms are by their sides and there isn't room to bend them up. There isn't room to turn around. The have to inch themselves along with their fingertips. Somewhere in this nightmare, Susan has a wide-angle vision of herself there, sandwiched between huge tracts of rock, like a living fossil. I have never considered myself a claustrophobe, bit this image has always frightened me. Of course, they survive; they are the heroes after all, and it's only halfway through the book.

Anyway, we are still climbing. The passage is long as well as steep, and by now we are all breathing heavily. Ahead of me is some fellow traveller's backside; the end of the passage is nowhere in sight. I try to imagine what this must be like on a normal day, a blazing summer day, when the temperature is in the upper 30s and 150 people are struggling in and out through this tiny tube. I'm still idly speculating about who will be the next to succumb to the claustrophobia when it slowly dawns on me that I already have. I can feel myself panicking. I can't go back. The passage will never end. My way is blocked ahead and behind. And above and beneath and on both sides, by millions of tons of rock. I will never get out of this place. I am being buried alive.

But of course I keep going. There is no alternative.

When we emerge into the Grand Corridor, I am amazed. I am amazed because I have seen this before: towards the end of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation there is a sequence inside the Great Pyramid, and part of it looks just like the real thing. In this and in many other ways, the research for that game was astonishing. And yet still totally wrong. I am amazed because what I expected to be a relief from the suffocating tininess of the passageway does nothing to relieve my panic. It is a huge chamber, more than 20 metres high, but so narrow I can touch both sides at the same time -- and the walls slope inwards. This minimal width is divided into three: another tiny passage goes horizontally forward towards the room known, probably without justification, as the Queen's Chamber, while staircases ascend either side of it towards the main burial chamber. The Ancient Egyptians knew what they were doing: this is a space designed to make people feel crushed, to scare the living shit out of potential graverobbers.

Unwilling to own up to the blind terror that fills me, and in some small part of my mind anxious not to waste a journey I know I will never make again, I head off up the stairs. (The Queen's Chamber is a narrow corridor too far; besides, we have been repeatedly warned that it's even more uninteresting than the rest of this tomb, just an empty space inside a bunch of rock.) I am anxious to see the place as fast as possible and get the fuck out, preferably alone and unconstricted. Thus I am the first that day to squeeze through the hole in the wall to the burial chamber of Khufu, a pretty dull room containing a duller stone box.

Ian arrives soon afterwards. The space is just about large enough to keep my panic in check, and we quickly scope out what little there is to see. I sheepishly admit that I'm having a panic attack and need to leave.

"Aren't you even going to lie down in the sarcophagus?"

"No, I'm fucking not!"

And so he does, and so I leave.

As I'm climbing out through the hole in the wall, I encounter our Canadian chums. They ask me if that's the way to the burial chamber, and I tell them it is, though there isn't much to see. Then I head on down.

When they approach the sarcophagus, unsuspecting, Ian looms up out of it. Their screams pursue us for the rest of the trip. Even on the final night, more than a week later, the woman at least has not forgiven Ian this evil joke.

Rain. Power cut. Claustrophobia.

And so. Tonight, this city was laid low by the rain. The power was lost. Hundreds of people were trapped in lifts, and thousands in subway trains and stations, and struggled through tunnels in the dark.

Anubis, guardian of the underworld, must have been laughing his dog-faced head off.
Posted by matt at August 29, 2003 03:41 AM