29 degrees on the tube and hotter than transporting cattle screamed the headline on the Evening Standard who were bursting with tube news today. It's the day the Americans take over the tube in the shape of Bob Kiley and Tim O'Toole - the new bloke who's taking over from Paul Godier.

Well I didn't notice any difference on day one. I was lucky as I mentioned yesterday to travel to somewhere near the North Pole this morning (Whetstone and Totteridge or Totteridge and Whetstone), which is so far North of where I live it is not true. I used the Silverlink for most of the journey and it all started to go wrong (surprise, surprise) when I boarded the northern Line. The train wasn't going to the end of the earth like it had displayed but stopped unexpectedly about four stops from Totterstone and Whetbridge. So I got off met my colleague who unbeknown to me was on the same train - and we waited about ten minutes for the train to arrive.

Going back into Piccadilly Circus took close on an hour, but it was lunchtime and fortunately the train was not packed and also fortunately it stopped for great lengths of time with it's doors open at stations. This wasn't a form of air conditioning or great kindness on the part of the drivers but simply normal Northern Line rubbish service.

(BLIMEY Ken Livingstone is offering a reward of �100,000 to anyone who can air condition the tube - a reward mate, they ought to get a knighthood. But also Ken, isn't this simply part of London Underground's job. Over 100 years of the tube and it's still not air conditioned. Hello, but hasn't someone thought this was a problem in the past thousands and thousands of times and shouldn't people being paid to invent something rather than turning it into a Lottery style fiasco or prize draw dumbing down milarky)

I thank my lucky stars that I do not have to do a journey like that Totteridge and Whetstone to ....anyhere, every day. It makes my Kew to Piccadilly journey seem like a walk in the park - but a park that's full of people with luggage, rucksacks, discarded copies of Metro and blokes sitting on benches with their legs wide apart.

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Wednesday, July 16, 2003 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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