William Leith

“I’m on the train, and the doors are shutting behind me, when I smell the smoke; or rather I’m stepping into the train, towards the seating area, when I sense something bad, and I don’t know what it is, and I sit down, and I see that the doors are shutting, and I don’t know yet where the bad feeling is coming from, because when you smell something it goes straight to your memory, smell bypasses all analysis, as Proust described when he bit into the dunked cake and was transported to his childhood, and only later realized that this was because of the smell of the cake, the madeleine; I step into the train, and feel the bad feeling, the ominous feeling, that something is very wrong, it’s the memory of fires, but not good fires, and I sit down in the seat, and the doors close, and then I realize that I’m smelling something, and it’s burning rubber, or plastic, or oil, or a mixture of all three, and I shift upwards in my seat, already knowing it’s too late, because the doors are closing; have closed.”
― William Leith, A Northern Line Minute: The Northern Line