HOW TO MEDITATE ON THE UNDERGROUND DESPITE SECURITY THREATS...

Londoners seem very tense these days what with declared heat waves and ongoing security threats on the underground. It seems normal to be stuck somewhere deep below the earth under passing feet and traffic above, while a train breaks down, there is a signal failure, the next train fails to leave the station, and there are ongoing repair works on the railway tracks. During these periods it becomes hotter and stickier - the passenger's faces glance nervously at each other and at anyone's rucksack, while beads of perspiration form on their brows. The metal vertical bars you hold onto are damp with perspiration. Sometimes the whole carriage appears to be passing out from heat and lack of air, there are people falling asleep all the time, heads flopped to one side, or wobbling forwards above their knees. At rush hour it feels like being in a sauna in a sardine can, and usually smells like one.I have a fan. Not a human one, although that would be nice, but a Chinese one I got from a stall at the Trocadero for two pounds. When I use it other passengers stare at me enviously. I would like to share it but it would break the British rule of non-communication to strangers on the Underground. Although, strangely enough, when I first arrived, everyone spoke to me, strangers at bus stops, at the underground, on buses. I am wondering if my face now has that semi-glazed disinterested look cultivated by all Londoners. Deep inside, I am concerned it has. It seems to me that there should be a means of meditating on the Underground in order to relieve the stress. To stare at a single spot and focus on that, its details, the markings, the colour, the texture. However, beware if someone appears to be meditating at a spot on you, they could be completely mad, as the very strange guy on the Underground who deliberately came and sat opposite me on a fairly deserted carriage chose to do the other day. I deliberately chose to get off the carriage two stops on, and catch the next train.