Some time in the early spring of this year, an event occurred that was to have a profound and debilitating effect over the next eight months of my life. I was approaching Holborn tube station in central London when the gates were closed suddenly because of an unspecified incident. It was the late afternoon rush hour and a crowd began to build up on the pavement. After a few minutes, the gates were reopened and we all rushed towards the ticket barriers. I pressed my Oyster travel card down on the pad, passed through the gates and got to the top of the down escalator, where I was suddenly overcome by an intense sensation of panic. The crowd was pushing past me. I was hesitating just before the first step, looking down at the moving stairs, the plunge down to the concourse below and the gliding black handrail. It suddenly appeared to be impossible for me to negotiate all the separate movements that would allow me to get on the escalator: looking down, grabbing the rail, placing one foot carefully on a step, then picking up the one behind it (with the other speeding forwards) and navigating it to a spot next to the forward foot.
I have lived in London for 21 years and the down escalator that begins the journey on the tube was usually something that I barely noticed, absorbed in my own thoughts or examining the ads on the walls with the models' faces defaced by chewing-gum blobs. But, abruptly, the sequence, the series of movements that my body knew, had failed. I turned back, left the station and got a taxi.
Later I attributed this sudden refusal to get on the escalator to the impatient crowds, the latent anxiety about the temporary tube closure (after the underground bombs of last year), and the high-heeled boots I was wearing, which affected my balance. I had recently had a knee problem and the escalator had been a problem then too, but as soon as it cleared up, I was back riding.
The next escalator presented no problems. But from then on, the panic started to take over. I approached each escalator as a tricky manoeuvre, which required me to rehearse mentally all the stages as I was approaching. Soon, the fear was clutching at my stomach, like a meaty hand grasping and twisting my internal organs. Dizziness, extreme vertigo. Once I was on the escalator, if I could get past those two or three seconds of terror, everything was fine. Up escalators were no problem; it was fear of falling that possessed me.
By May I was no longer able to get on to an escalator at all. So began the strange summer in which I avoided the underground at all costs , when I was forced to rely on buses or taxis, and took lifts in stores or used the stairs. Certain tube stations were my friends: I was extraordinarily lucky that my local station, Finsbury Park, has steps only. At least I was able to begin my journey. But Oxford Circus was appallingly problematic - to reach the northbound Victoria line, say, you have to go down not one but two escalators. During slack periods, they would turn an escalator off, making a fixed stair I could walk down, but not on the second descent. Knightsbridge has a permanent fixed stair. This station, and others like it, became my dear friends.
After a while I began to notice that I was not the only one who was frightened of escalators. I saw others pause, grab the rail and cling on for dear life. At Oxford Circus, they told me that staff sometimes had to accompany people all the way down, because they were so terrified. I put "fear of escalators" into Google and was amazed to find that this phobia is well known, though for many people it is the fear of getting clothing trapped in the mechanism. I tried not to dwell too much on this because it would prevent me from getting on up escalators as well, and then I would be truly stuck.
I told hardly anyone about my excruciatingly embarrassing problem. I tried to cover my weakness by suggesting alternative routes or steering people towards the lift, or suggesting splitting the cost of a taxi. The three or four people to whom I did confess were surprisingly kind and helpful. My 21-year-old nephew tried to explain that I just needed to look straight ahead, not down, and took my arm to make sure I would not fall, which only reminded me that this was how I had helped my late, demented mother on to the escalator, as if I were manhandling an elderly doll.
One friend suggested that I should go to see an inner ear specialist. Someone else thought psychotherapy might be the answer. I didn't think it was an inner ear issue, and was certain that if I went to see a shrink I would still be there, 10 years later, dealing with my birth canal traumas. My sister mentioned hypnosis. I filed that thought away - it felt like the solution, but who knew hypnotists? Not long after this, I met someone who had given up smoking after one hypnosis session. He hadn't smoked for five weeks. He had a great deal of intellectual difficulty with the cure because the hypnotist had told him that he would be suggesting things to his subconscious: "I'm a Marxist," he said. "I don't believe in the subconscious."
I am not a Marxist and I do believe in the subconscious, so I had a head start. He gave me the number of Aaron Surtees, at City Hypnosis near Angel tube station (two extremely steep escalators) and I made an appointment. Surtees turned out to be a young guy with a degree in psychology from Southampton University. I explained my problem and he sat me down in a big leather armchair and set about making me relax. I was quite curious about hypnosis, and imagined I would go into some kind of trance state, but I didn't. I was conscious. I could hear noises outside the room. I could move if I was feeling slightly uncomfortable. I don't believe that if he had told me to imitate a chicken I would have done it. All the time he was talking, I was analysing his method. He talked in a kind of intermittent mutter, with long pauses, mainly about how relaxed I was feeling. It was disappointingly banal. A few minutes before the end, he started to mention escalators and what he said was pretty basic: you can get any escalator, anywhere, you enjoy riding on an escalator, and so on. As soon as he started talking about escalators, I felt, though faintly, the familiar panic.
He counted backwards from five, my eyes snapped open, I paid him £90 and we agreed that I would ring him once I had navigated my first escalator. The next day I went to Oxford Circus. I needed to get something in the basement at John Lewis. I was feeling very, very excited about what was going to happen - I couldn't wait. I walked towards the escalator and as soon as I reached the top, the panic came on. But at the same time something else happened. I can only describe it this way: it was as if my legs were saying, "Yeah, yeah, we know all about the panic, but here's what's happening - we're getting on this escalator. Deal with it." I just stepped on, or rather my legs did. I clutched the rail, I felt the trembling in my feet, but I had done it. A sensation of triumph, as if I were breaking a world record, combined with deep joy at the sheer ordinariness of the action, of being back with the rest of the human race. I made my purchase, came back up and then started going up and down escalators. The more I did it, the easier it got.
Then I went to the tube station. The downward thrust of the stair still fazed me. For some reason I preferred to get on to the left side of the escalator rather than the right, where you are supposed to walk rather than stand, so I was in people's way. But six days later I had successfully navigated 13 down escalators and refused none. The body had relearned the skill I acquired in childhood. The fear lessens a little each time.
When I think back over this strange summer, I remember most clearly the misery. I could not stand the control my phobia exercised over me, how it imprisoned me. I disliked the deviousness with which I tried to hide my fears from others, the time wasted on interminable bus journeys, the long waits for lifts that never seemed to arrive. I had a love-hate relationship with the Transport for London journey planner site where I plotted my Byzantine escalator-free journeys across the city. I was frightened that this was me, now, for ever, like people who have never travelled because they will not fly.
At least this summer I saw the overground city. I passed through streets I had never seen, on buses whose routes I now know like the back of my hand. If it were not so relentlessly debilitating and time-consuming, I would prefer to travel by bus, but I will not live in the grip of an irrational fear. They say that hypnosis only works if you want it to. The hypnotist implants the suggestion - the mind does with it what it will. I very badly wanted to recover from this illness - which is what it seemed like to me. I keep wondering what else the hypnotist could do for me - for he has entered my subconscious and now that door seems permanently ajar.
