LIFT
Oakland Excelsior
Daniel Park
I love people-watching. Visiting the Hepworth today was just an excuse to watch people watching things. God-awful spiky pottery things – you see one, you’ve seen them all – but people, well now, they’re all different.
Like that rail supervisor letting people through the ticket barrier – you see him? All sweeping arms and legs and smiles, like an enormous camp windmill? I’m not saying he’s you know, that way…but darrrrling, he parades that station concourse like a Bangkok Ladyboy on Brighton Pier. And he seems genuinely interested in other people. Take that miserable crumpled suit he’s just shown through – clearly a regular – only goes and shows him a picture on his iPhone – actually got the old git to crack a smile. Show someone you’re human and you can work miracles.
I bet if I told him Barbara Hepworth used to take the train from Westgate down that mile and a half of decommissioned track to Alverthorpe, where her dad was a churchwarden at St Pauls before the Great War, he’d be thrilled. I’d even let him use it as part of his act. I push myself towards the barrier and am gutted when he steps away to let a stream of noisy commuters through the other side. He’s someone I’d like to have ask me if I need any assistance madam, and he’d have meant it…but the gate opens automatically because I’ve the right kind of ticket and I just can’t find a good enough excuse to linger.
As I reach up to press the lift call button I realise how much I hate machines. Yes, they’re all very helpful I’m sure, but there’s no gritty edge to them, no hidden depth to fathom. You can’t have any fun guessing their motives the way you can with a sassy ticket inspector or that kid at the Hepworth who picked his nose and sneaked snot over the curve of a priceless Henry Moore.
The lift door opens and I push in. It’s a decent enough space all right, no danger of squashing your fingers between the wheel rims and the walls like some I could mention. I crane my neck up to read the shiny chrome panel that displays its name: Oakland Excelsior.
Oakland Excelsior – now there’s a wet dream from a marketing department’s perspective – all that twee tea-cosiness spliced with sci-fi nerdery – like a stair lift with warp drive. “Lift going up” announces Oakland Excelsior in an assertively male but appropriately non-domineering tone. I wonder how many desperate jobbing waiters they auditioned for that gig. Everything’s so swish and efficient in Oakland Excelsior – all so damned DDA compliant, with its special alarm buttons built into the base of the walls so if you tip out of your chair you can crawl to the most convenient one in effortless comfort to attract attention.
It is only when the Oakland Excelsior glides to a halt that I hear the announcement. “Footb”. The “B” cut off with all the ragged sharpness of Hepworth pottery, plus intrigue. Did someone in the marketing department judge the Oakland Excelsior was so perfect that it had to be spoiled to spare our blushes, or did the machine develop this flutter all by itself, absorbing the daily frustration of the heavy laden wheelchair, baby buggy and shopping trolley? If the Oakland Excelsior wants to perform its own miracle: to show enough humanity to turn me from people-watching to machine-watching, then what better way than with a speech impediment.
