I mean, of course, the disasters. That extraordinary series of accidents and incidents which mars my otherwise magical memory of those ineffably exciting years. Perhaps it’s just a case of perception, and the apparent pile-up is merely a reflection of just how impressionable I was. But even looked at objectively, there’s been no other period in my lifetime when so many catastrophes – encompassing such a horrifying range of settings and scenarios – unfolded in so short a time.

What exactly am I referring to? Well, I probably wouldn’t include, say, the 1983-1985 Ethopian famine, since that unfolded over a longer period and lacked the suddenness needed to crash into a young boy’s mind. My disaster decade probably began with the Challenger Disaster in January 1986 – truly, stuff to stir the imagination of a seven-year-old - and continued with the Zeebrugge ferry tragedy in 1987. After that, in rapid succession, even for a kid experiencing the giganticism of time, there was the King’s Cross underground fire, the Piper Alpha explosion, the Clapham Junction Rail Crash, Hillsborough and the Marchioness disaster.

There may be others I haven’t mentioned; there may be some I have which don’t quite compare in scale or circumstances. Either way, it was a vivid, terrifying time, and I remember wondering what grimness could possibly be coming next.

Of course, having been young at the time, my lingering memory isn’t so much in the detailed, scandalous specifics of how each event unfolded. It’s more in half-remembered news reports or glimpses of where I was when I heard the news (the front garden, helping to a paint a fence, when Hillsborough happened). Above all, for me personally at least, it’s in that most ephemeral of responses to disaster: the charity pop single.

It was the fashion at the time. After Band Aid and USA for Africa, it became the default response to tragedy. There wasn’t a single for each of the major disasters – though the Pet Shop Boys’ King’s Cross offered an eerie, unofficial pre-echo of the underground fire – and, in truth, the majority of charity singles, then as now, were prompted more by ongoing campaigns (Comic Relief, Sport Aid, the GOSH Wishing Well appeal) than specific tragedies.

But whatever the context, I remember being very keen to collect these records. I still have the Zeebrugge and Hillsborough seven inches, plus virtually all the campaign records up to the early 1990s. I don’t want to overstate my youthful altruism, but it definitely felt like a positive way of responding to the horrors of what I’d seen on TV. I don’t suppose I really understood how it made a difference any more than I questioned the charitable integrity of participating artists. But that wasn’t the point. As a music-loving 10-year-old, the only action I could take was to march down to W H Smith, Our Price or Woolworths and spend my pocket money on a single. So that’s exactly what I did.

I mention it now because of The Justice Collective’s newly-released version of He Ain’t Heavy (He’s My Brother). As I bought my copy on Wednesday, it occurred to me that this kind of charity single – celeb-packed, event-specific – felt like something of a throwback: an old-fashioned way of answering injustice and suffering.

And then I realised: what could be more apt? The legacy of Hillsborough’s outrageous aftermath has been the inability of the victims’ families to move on from their grief. They have been frozen emotionally in time by a web of conspiracy, deceit and lies. So it’s only fitting that He Ain’t Heavy feels a little anachronistic. By harking back to those heady, frequently horrifying days, the single reminds us where these people have been trapped all this time. Its release, one hopes, will bring another wave of catharsis to match those brought about by the findings of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, and the quashing of the original inquest verdicts.

No evidence
of that night of death.
No hint of fire,
no scent of smoke.
The walls have been cleaned.
Scrubbed down,
and whitewashed,
the offence has been painted over,

There are no graves,
no screams of anguish
no shouts of panic
in smoke-filled corridors.

But still you know
and can imagine.
Still you walk with respect.
For death has surely been here
Leaving its invisible mark.

© David B – December 1988

I remember noticing the blackened ceiling above the escalators leading to the Piccadilly line. Every now and again I would ask myself what had happened there, and how long ago.

Yesterday I found out what had happened, and it left me shocked and saddened. I was reading a book called The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg. It’s a good read generally, written fairly well, tackling the idea of how habits control our everyday lives, as well as the world of business.
It uses the Kings Cross fire as am example of how organisational habits can cause a dangerous malfunction.
I learnt that in the eighties, a massive fire killed more than thirty commuters and staff and injured dozens more. The author describes how it took half an hour from the moment a commuter reported a burning tissue at the bottom of the same escalator I used to take on my way home every day, to the moment a huge burning ball of fire engulfed everyone still stuck in the main hall.
Why do we not talk about this?

The Rail Maritime and Transport union has announced it will be commemorating the victims and highlighting safety concerns by demonstrating outside the station at 11am on the day.

RMT secretary, Bob Crow, said in a statement that the demonstration was partly in response to a confidential London Underground document seen by the union last year which indicates proposals to “impose an unattended network including automated trains and would necessitate the ripping up of the safety regulations, including minimum staffing levels, which came about in response to the tragedy.”

A public inquiry (download the Fennell report) following the King’s Cross fire criticised London Underground for its complacent approach to fire safety. Smoking in the tube itself was only banned in 1984 after the Oxford Circus fire, but not on the escalators nor ticket halls. The King’s Cross tragedy led to a ban on smoking in all areas the network, five days later. And the Fire Precautions (Sub-surface Railway Stations) Regulations 1989 was also enacted.

But some of the report’s recommendations were still not in place some 20 years after the fire, and an emergency services radio network that works above and below ground only seems to have been finally rolled out three years ago.

In October last year the union revealed a confidential London Underground report discussing the prospects of measures such as closing all but 30 ticket offices, putting station managers in charge of several stations at once and cutting 1,500 jobs in all. Some changes carried a timetable of 2016.

London Underground’s response was reported as: “This discussion paper was prepared purely to stimulate fresh thinking within London Underground. It has not been adopted by LU senior management, the TfL board or the mayor and so does not represent agreed proposals for change.”

The leaked paper is available to view here on the union’s website.

There is a public memory box for the fire on Friends Reunited.

On the 18^th November 1987, the underground station serving King’s Cross bore witness to one of the most tragic events in recent London history; the King’s Cross Fire.

King’s Cross, November 17th 1987

It is generally accepted that the inferno, which started on an escalator, was caused by a discarded match.

In those days, many of the escalators on the London Underground still had wooden steps, and the King’s Cross escalator in question- which connected to the Piccadilly Line- was no exception.

It had been constructed in the 1940s and, from that time until 1987, the engine room below had never once been cleaned.

Consequently, the escalator was a tinder box; a mass of firewood, slowly grinding over a tangle of machinery which was caked in fluff, grease and grime; a hazard made even worse by the surrounding litter which had accumulated over the years. 

There had already been a number of fires on the tube- some 400 between 1956 and 1987- but they had always been small, understated affairs which had caused no significant damage. These fires- referred to by tube officials as ‘smoulderings’- had almost always been caused by rubbish and discarded matches and, although the London Fire Brigade had given repeated warnings (including a written plea for action, penned just one month before the King’s Cross Fire), little had been done.

However, following a combustion at Oxford Circus in which 14 people required hospitalization, one concession was made- smoking on the Underground was eventually banned in February 1985.

*

Despite the ban, it remained common practice for people to ‘light-up’ as they ascended the escalators on their way out of the station, and it is believed that this practice is was what led to the King’s Cross Fire.

A passenger, the identity of whom we will probably never know, stood on the escalator, placing a light to their cigarette. As they inhaled their first breath of nicotine, the match was carelessly tossed to one side, sliding between the wooden grooves, and down into the escalator’s machinery…

When the fire first sparked, it was not considered a true emergency. Described as being about the size of a campfire, commuters and tube staff remained calm, and passengers were still allowed to travel on parallel escalators.

However, the situation became deadly serious within seconds when the fire, stoked by a gust of wind from a passing tube train below, ‘flashed over’; the flames suddenly finding contact with the greasy mass of filth and fluff beneath the wooden stairs.

Moments later, the small fire suddenly transformed into a searing 100 degree inferno, sweeping upwards and engulfing the ticket hall with a speed which one survivor likened to that of a blowtorch.

So severe was the fire, that over 150 fire-fighters were needed to fight the conflagration.

Fireman attending the King’s Cross Fire

One of these firemen was Colin Townsley who was based at Soho Fire Station.

The crew from Soho had been the first to arrive at King’s Cross, when the fire was still in its infancy, and Colin was one of the first firemen to enter the ticket hall; doing so moments before the flashover occurred.

Colin Townsley, a brave fireman who perished in the King’s Cross Fire

Whilst in the ticket hall, it is believed that Colin- who was wearing no breathing apparatus- stopped to help a woman in trouble, but the pair were rapidly overcome as the fire swept over. The speed with which the inferno took hold is demonstrated by the sad fact that the pair were found just six feet away from an exiting staircase which would have led them to fresh air and safety.

The aftermath

*

Overall, 32 people perished in the King’s Cross Fire. The youngest victim, Dean T Cottle, was just 7 years old.

An exhausted fireman resting at King’s Cross

Mercifully, the disaster occurred as the rush hour was receding- if the fire had occurred at the height of the peak period, the casualties would have undoubtably been far higher.

A video of an ITN news bulletin, broadcast in the aftermath of the King’s Cross Fire can be viewed below:

A public inquiry into the disaster- the ‘Fennell Report’ was held the following year.

The Fennell Report led to a host of new regulations.

All wooden escalators were replaced with metal ones. Heat detectors and automatic sprinklers were also installed at all stations, and all underground staff now receive fire training on an annual basis.

Today, a model of the escalator, which was used in the inquiry, can be viewed at the London Transport Museum.

Model of the King’s Cross escalator, used during the investigation into the fire.

The Fire Leaves a Mystery

One of the victims of the King’s Cross Fire remained unidentified for many years, creating quite a mystery.

Buried in an unmarked grave, the charred body, which resembled a victim of Pompeii; crouched down and with their arms drawn in, was simply known by the tag which had labelled it in the mortuary; ‘Body 115.’

In 1990, this enigma inspired musician, Nick Lowe to pen a song about the case; Who Was That Man? (click to listen). 

*

It would be 16 years before Body 115 was identified….

Using skull fragments, forensic experts managed to create a plaster cast of the victim’s face.

Plaster Cast of ‘Body 115′

Thanks to this likeness, backed up by evidence related to medical operations which the victim had undergone during their lifetime, Body 115 was finally identified in 2004 as being Mr Alexander Fallon; a 72 year old, homeless pensioner from Falkirk in Scotland.

Alexander Fallon, the homeless pensioner whose body remained unidentified for so many years

Alexander’s tragic death was the sad conclusion to a heartbreaking period of his life. 

Up until 1974, Alexander Fallon had led a normal existence. However, in that year, he lost his wife to cancer.

Devastated by the death of his partner, Alexander found himself unable to cope, and drifted towards London where he ended up living rough for the rest of his days. 

The Scottish pensioner remained in touch with his grown-up daughters via regular phone calls, but these came to an abrupt end in late 1987. From around the same time, benefits in his name ceased to be claimed. 

Alexander’s daughters had had their suspicions about their father’s fate, but it was not until the plaster cast was created years later that the tragic tale was able to find its conclusion.

Although we will never know for sure, it is most likely that Mr Fallon, being homeless, was at King’s Cross Underground that evening seeking shelter from the autumn chill, waiting for the local King’s Cross hostels to open their doors for the night. 

*

An Eerie Prediction

In September 1987, just two months before the King’s Cross Fire, pop duo, The Pet Shop Boys released their second record entitled Actually.

The final track on the album is a melancholy song entitled, King’s Cross which, in a rather bizarre coincidence, appears to foresee a disaster at the station with the lyric:

“Only last night I found myself lost, by the station called King’s Cross… dead and wounded on either side, you know it’s only a matter of time…”

This haunting song can be listened to in the following clip. The accompanying video (made two years later), was filmed on location in and around the station, depicting the area as it appeared in the late 1980s:

Following recent modernization, the ticket hall at King’s Cross today is unrecognizable compared to how it appeared at the time of the fire.

In an understated corner, often overlooked by hurrying commuters, a memorial to the disaster can be found; a simple clock and plaque dedicated to those who died that fateful autumn evening.

King’s Cross Today

In the past few years, King’s Cross and the surrounding area have undergone a massive renaissance.

Aided by the introduction of the Eurostar terminal at its close neighbour, St Pancras, plus the need to get in shape for the Olympics, the area around King’s Cross has been cleaned up considerably.

The station itself has had £550 million spent on it. The centrepiece of this refurbishment is a dramatic new roof (liked by some to having the appearance of a string vest!), designed by Hiro Aso; an architect who specializes in transport infrastructure.

King’s Cross is now also home to the largest railway station pub in Britain… I have a feeling this record is going to lead to many missed journeys!

Surrounding the station is a vast swathe of redeveloped land; ‘King’s Cross Central’; a £2.2 billion project.

Still very much a work in process, King’s Cross Central, which already boasts a new campus of St Martins Art College, hopes to eventually become a bustling destination. A map of the site can be viewed here:

http://www.kingscrosscentral.com/the_site

A feature of this burgeoning area is an attractive art installation which (despite resembling a bird-cage), is known as the ‘IFO’; (‘Identified Flying Object’), created by French artist, Jacques Rival. Many passengers in my taxi have commented on and asked about this new sculpture, which is designed to be hoisted into the air one night every month!

One group impressed with the latest developments at King’s Cross are the Chinese Government… so much so that they recently voiced a wish to build an ultra-high speed rail link- from Beijing to London- with King’s Cross being the terminal! 

This incredibly ambitious project envisions the Chinese laying rails from their capital, across Russia and then on through Europe. Using the fastest train in the world; The Harmony Express, it is estimated Beijing to London could be achieved in just two days.

The Chinese, ‘Harmony Express’

However, as Mr Wang Mengshu of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, says, “the biggest issue is money…”

I’m not quite sure if I’ll ever be picking up passengers straight off the train from China in my lifetime, but it would be certainly be wonderful for business if the project ever did come to fruition!

As they say in Mandarin…. Zhu ni haoyun! (Good luck!)

The fire was catastrophic, and unfortunate, no smoking had been allowed on the London Underground for years, since the little known Oxford Circus Fire, on Novemebr 23rd 1984, although no-one was killed, 14 were hospitalized. The fire gutted the stairs up from, and the whole of the Victoria Line platforms. So extensive was the damage to the Victoria Line platforms that the station wasn’t fit for purpose for weeks, finally reopening on December 17th.

Back to Kings Cross, 3 years after the Oxford Circus Fire, and return to bedlam, the fire was absolutely out of control, with people screaming to get out, clambering over each other to get to fresh air, some resigning to their fate. at 19:45, the London Fire Brigade arrive, first in was Officer Colin Townsley, who was leading the first fire engine crew to arrive, he rushed in without any breathing apparatus, and on his return to his crew he helped a lady, and became overwhelmed by the smoke, and lost consciousness. According to wikipedia:

“London Fire Brigade Station Officer Colin Townsley from A24 Soho was in charge of the first fire engine to arrive at the scene and was down in the station concourse at the time of the flashover. As he was making his exit, Townsley spotted a woman who was in trouble and stopped to help her. He was not wearing breathing apparatus and was overcome by the smoke. Although he was later found in the inferno by his colleagues, efforts to revive him had little effect, and he was rushed to hospital, where he later died due to smoke inhalation.”

In short, London Underground’s Health & Safety measures have improved exponentially since the tragic fire, simple steps [unintended pun!] include removing all but 1 of the wooden escalators, replaced by steel steps. Emergency fire push-buttons every few metres on ALL escalators, and fire extinguishers at the base and summit of all escalators [although removed from ALL trains due to vandalism].

There.  Now normal service can be resumed.  Today was again a day of much leisure, as mum and dad very kindly kept the girls amused until tea time and then dropped them off so we didn’t have to come out.  The girls were delighted.  They got to watch what they wanted, eat what they wanted and nobody shouted at them all day.  It is as much a holiday for them as it is for us.  Granny is their saviour, and mine.  I might put her up for a sainthood, or an Oscar at the very least.

Talking of which,  Oscar has been very happy all day with both parents not as tired as usual, and devoted to his every whim.  He has paid us by deciding to suddenly start walking.  This is our reward for custard creams, regular meals and milk on tap.  Jason is very relieved.  I knew this is what would happen.  Tilly was a real trier, she did everything 150% when she was a baby.  When she was learning to roll over she made such a fuss about it you’d have thought there was a deadline she had to meet.  She was a driven, corporate baby.  She’s eight and she’s burned out.  Maybe that’s why she’s just so random and vague all the time.  She peaked too early.  She tried, tried and tried again.  She would have made that spider proud.  She just kept on plugging away at it until she got there.  The same with walking.  She was very dogged and persistent.

When I had Tallulah I thought that she would be the same.  Quite the contrary.  She would watch Tilly do something, give it a go, and then if it didn’t work she would just stop, and not do it again for weeks and weeks.  In the meantime she would be thinking about it and working things out, probably using blue prints, computer read outs and algorhythms.  She would then try again, adjust her charts, and generally by about the third time she would be perfect at whatever it was she had set her mind to.  Oscar has been a bit like this, only more laid back and laconic.  This morning he got up and just wandered about casually, stopping for a chat, doing a little dance, flirting with his toy cat.  It was as if he’s been able to do it since birth, but has only just gotten around to being bothered by it all.  He can’t really see what all the fuss is about anyway.

Because he’s been walking about he’s been quite tired in his more restful moments.  This has meant two full strength naps today, which I had begun to fear were a thing of the past.  It has been wonderful.  He has slept for about four and a half hours today, and as we were awake this meant that we could do things.  Jason has a good book.  He started it yesterday and I knew it was good because he said that he wasn’t sure about whether to read or to watch television last night.  Normally there is no contest and the telly goes on.  This time the telly won, but only because I had put off watching my Amazon Vine video about cocaine smuggling in Miami, and now really had to get on with it.  It turned out to be actually rather good, so consequently Jason started reading his book and then put it down after about ten pages, as he was sucked into the drama that was unfolding.

It was a fascinating story of murder, mayhem, drugs and bad Eighties hairdon’ts.  The music was even done by Jan Hammer who did all the music for Miami Vice, so it was very retro.  The only thing that let it down was the appalling cinematography.  If you had given the material to someone like Kevin MacDonald the guy who made Touching the Void and One Day In September, it would have been awesome.  As it was there were times when I had to look away, not because it was too graphic and violent, but because it did spend a considerable amount of time looking like a rather bad pop video.  Nevertheless, this is only the second thing that Amazon Vine have sent me that I have enjoyed, so I am feeling quite chipper, and more than a little relieved that I can actually write something other than my usual; ‘two stars, this was terrible and here’s why’, kind of review.  I was beginning to feel like the harbinger of doom.

Today I had to move on to much more intellectual pursuits.  My Shakespeare course starts next week, and if I want to be ahead of the game, which I do, I really have to crack on.  I was supposed to plunge into it last week, but was so enervated by all the dung I only did a little bit and messed about a lot reading sad tales of the old days instead (Blake Morrison’s, ‘And When Did You Last See Your Father?’ – heartrending, but good).  I have been working away at the Shakespeare since Friday, and have made pretty good headway so far, although I really must keep up the momentum and not sit back on my laurels giving myself pats on the back while Rome burns, to mix many metaphors.

I finished reading Germaine Greer’s OUP A Very Short Introduction to Shakespeare. It was much, much better than I anticipated.  I have always found, being rather a fan of the Late Review, although not so much since they threw Tom Paulin off for being too politically naughty, that a little of Germaine Greer tends to go a long way.  She’s a lot like parmesan cheese in that respect.  I have never read The Female Eunuch, as I always found the title rather off putting, I have never wanted to be or know about female eunuchs.  It seems rather messy and a bit tasteless. 

Consequently I approached this book with great trepidation.  I was amazed that not only is it good, but that she is not half so annoying on the page as she is in the flesh.  I think it’s because she’s got those fierce eyes that bore into you and demand that you confess all, and you just don’t feel compelled to tell her how you stole a cherry off a market stall in 1979, but you’re really sorry about it, when you’re reading her book.  This was a relief.

I have also sorted out all my paperwork to do with the course.  I have logged on to the forum and said hello to people.  I have organised my books into a well known phrase or saying and have made a significant start on one of the set texts.  I am so good that my halo is choking me.  I am not feeling too virtuous however, as there is still masses of work to do, and Andrea is at least a week ahead of me, if not more.  She too has vowed to get her act together on this one.  Whether it will last for either of us is questionable.  We’ve got a hot few weeks of theatre going coming up, and that usually tends to do us in because we’re too busy enjoying ourselves to get any work done.

We’re studying Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet.  We’re currently debating taking a trip to Leeds in March as the theatre there are staging Romeo and Juliet.  Andrea rang me about it last week and said that if I wanted to book it I should let her know the dates.  I feel that this is really passing the buck.  We both hate Romeo and Juliet.  The last trip we took to see it together we were fourteen.  It was a school trip to the Young Vic in London.  We were hideously late because the entire of central London was bunged up with the emergency services.  It turned out that it was the night of the Kings Cross Fire.  We spent hours in traffic, missed the entire first half and then ended up wishing we had missed the entire second half because it was done in modern dress and Romeo had a shiny suit and a dodgy Kevin Keegan perm.  We have been nervous about it ever since.

I have seen a good production of it since then, with Tim McInnery (Percy from Blackadder) as Tybalt.  I believe my mother came to see it with me.  It was in full Elizabethan rig, which she approves of.  She doesn’t like these newfangled attempts at theatre where everyone dresses as Isoceles triangles and so forth.  She loves a good codpiece and that’s that.  She was very impressed with this production and came out announcing that she wishes she had known about the name Tybalt when my brother was born, and she would have called him that.  I know he is glad she didn’t.  To be honest, even if she had of known, I think my dad would have had something to say about it.  She wanted to call me Isolde (a la Tristram and Isolde), but as I ended up Katy, I feel that prudence was the order of the day.  There are not many things I am truly grateful to my father for, but that is one of them.

I am worried that if we book this trip to see Romeo and Juliet, a similar fate will befall us and we will end up stranded in Leeds for days.  This is not such a bad thing, as they do have some fantastic hotels and restaurants, and the shopping is very good.  There are worse places to be stranded.  It’s just that Jason will panic if I’m not home to put the children to bed, and Andrea has a new baby (calf), called Disraeli (all her boy calves are named after prime ministers. Gladstone’s up next!) who is taking up a lot of time and energy.  We worry for the children…and we don’t really want to go and see it.  Mind you, it might be a revolutionary production that completely changes our mind about the rubbishness of Romeo and Juliet and turns it into our best ever play ever.  This is highly unlikely, unfortunately.

I spent the rest of the day cleaning like a fiend.  I have only done a bit here and a bit there over the past week, and I really couldn’t live with the squalor any more.  The whole house is now lovely and clean and I’m absolutely filthy and need a good bath and a scrub with a wire brush.  I have even changed the bedclothes.  This is called tempting fate.  It is absolutely certain that one of the children, who have all been perfectly fine all day, will now wake in the middle of the night and then vomit copiously over all the sheets.  I nearly didn’t do them, but I was afraid they would rise up in the middle of the night and kill us, so I have capitulated.  It’s all a bit depressing really.

I’ve also got to go and parcel up Rachel’s present and Peter’s, bless him.  It’s mum and dad’s birthdays the week after next.  It’s very inconvenient knowing so many people with birthdays so close together.  I might write to them with alternative dates, just for my purposes.  ‘I know your birthday is really January 27th, and that’s absolutely fine, but do you think I could pencil you in for March 25th, as that suits me much better and will give me a nice long lead time?’ kind of thing.  Mind you, knowing my luck I would be suddenly inundated by people giving birth to cute babies who absolutely demand presents in March, and we would be back to square one.  The only thing I can think of is to get them all to have their birthday on that odd day in the leap year and buy everyone a huge present once every four years, with the rest of the time to save for it.  That would work, probably…