From Canning
Town on the Jubilee line for two stops and into the world of Foster, a
cavernous space with oval columns reaching up to concrete ribs that support the
world above the ticket hall, with its automatic entry gates activated by touching
in and out with an ‘Oyster’ card and an orderly flow of passengers to and from
the trains. A guitarist plays at the foot of the main escalator bank, making a
very good instrumental metal interpretation of John Lennon’s Imagine. Both
sides of the ticket hall lead directly into below ground shopping centres that
run between the towers, something akin to Mike Davis’ City of quartz where he
talks of rich people having their own streets, patrolled by private police
forces.
The domain
below ground is best navigated by my three-year-old daughter, from getting off
the underground train at Canary Wharf, she knows where the lift is to get to
ticket hall level, which buttons to press, which side to be on when we get to
the barriers so she can get through with her buggy where she says hello to the
orange man (man in hi-vis orange jacket). Once through the barriers she gets
her copy the morning newspaper ‘City AM’ from the lady and heads over to the
next lift, most of the big people go up the escalators sometimes some of them
are not working, and other times they are all working depending on how many
people there are. Sometimes we share the lift with other people in buggies,
sometimes with a lady in a wheelchair.
Once out of
the lift we have to keep left to avoid all the people rushing back towards us
from the top of the escalators to get to work through the shopping centre, they
are all in a rush sometimes reading a book whilst walking along. My daughter
knows the way to her creche, she knows the way to her Mummy’s office and where
to pickup the ‘Evening Standard’ from a different lady in the afternoon and the
way to her favourite food place after work.
There is
another lift that leads down to the car park, but we have to put our tokens in
the machine first we don’t use the car very often, but it’s good when we do
because she gets to use her scooter. For her, the shopping centre is a large
friendly place where it is good to run around, then sit on benches or hide
under them, and watch all the other people going by. She knows which train
takes her to Canning Town. At rush hour the platform is occupied by orderly
queues of people waiting by the sliding doors that line up with the train when
it arrives. She knows where to go to get on the DLR, and which line is the best
to get her home. I find it quite amazing that the area my daughter knows so
well is a whole world that did not exist when I first visited the Docklands in
1989.
A ride up the escalator to a plaza in front of the
glass canopy, which is located in a lush green park known as Jubilee Gardens,
with rolling lawns where on sunny days she can run around on the grass or play
with the water, on a raised water feature that threads its way between the tree
canopies, just about seeing over the wall, and likes to watch it flowing down
like a stream.
