The 243 to Wood Green

Clubbers, cleaners and the night bus as a state of in-between-ness

N18 (Credit: Aubrey)

In recognition of our new Andy Burnham overlord (let’s agree to memory hole that newsletter intro in which I admitted — even in an infinite universe with its infinite possibilities — I still struggled to imagine a world in which Burnham led the Labour Party), I want to talk to you about buses. Specifically, the 243.

Running from Waterloo Station to Wood Green, what it lacks in ‘N’ designation (it runs 24 hours), it more than makes up for in range. First, there is the neighbourhood it bisects, from the theatres of Aldwych to the nightlife of Dalston and finally the residential neighbourhoods of Stoke Newington and beyond. But I was thinking more about the people.

From an architectural and urban perspective, the night bus can be understood as an interstitial space — a temporary environment that exists between origins and destinations. Not quite anonymous or public, neither dead time nor, given the capital’s average speeds, especially efficient. But the night bus is more than an interstitial space — at its best, it becomes what Victor Turner called “liminality”, or the state of “in-between-ness”.

Think about it. It’s 5am and the 243 is playing host to both the nightclub reveller going home and the office cleaner heading into work. For the former, the previous day has yet to end, like the long 19th century but without having to read Hobsbawm. For the latter, it is a new day entirely. Is it elision or collision? Two liminalities moving in sync but in opposite directions?

I was again reminded of this phenomenon by, of all things, the UEFA Champions League. Due to the lingering effects of Covid-19, the qualifying rounds for the 2020/21 tournament began on 8 August 2020 — two weeks before the final of the 2019/20 edition. The football season’s previously hard boundaries just became… porous.