Windswept of Finsbury Park

I have many memories of Finsbury Park. It was part of my daily trek to school and back during many of my formative years. From the British Rail platforms down through the maze of tunnels past the underground lines and out into the bus station.

It was one late evening / early night in October 1987 when I was touched by nature. I had been out that evening on a school trip to the National Theatre (I was 15 at the time) and was stood on platform six, waiting for a train to take me on the last leg of my journey home. It was dark and quite chilly, especially when the wind blew, which it was doing rather a lot.

The BR platforms at Finsbury Park are elevated. At either end of the station the railway crosses a road bridge and, apart from some factory offices opposite, the station is the highest point and therefore exposed. I stood near the waiting room, opposite ‘Doris’, letting the wind blast through me. I could have easily gone inside to keep warm, but the energy in the air that night was intense.

In those childhood commuting days I relished being part of the weather, feeling the full force of nature. I would come home soaked through or frozen, not caring as my body, my mind and the world were in tune. I hated school and regularly went through periods of melancholy, a sign of things to come later in life. As I stood there I was not looking forward to school the next day. If I could just convince my mother that I was ill the next day, a Friday, then I could avoid going back until Monday.

As rubbish swirled across the platform and around my ankles, I could almost lean into the wind. How far could I lean without falling over? Could I lean over the tracks and be saved by the wind? Or would nature and fate let me drop beneath the wheels of the next train, fulfilling those depressed teen fantasies?

My mind jolted back to reality as the train pulled up alongside the platform. I climbed in and the hissing of the automatic doors closed out the whistling gale that was building up outside.

I planned my Friday sickness on the way home. The next morning I awoke to car alarms, power cuts and a closed railway. My fake illness was no longer required, it was the 16th of October and I was going nowhere...