Thursday, September 30, 2004
Map Mania
talk in Kew tonight and on BBC2 at about the same time (7.30pm) there's a whole programme on him
"Modern explorer Nicholas Crane travels across eight maps that changed the face of Britain in a series of geographical challenges through some of today's wildest landscapes, telling the story of British mapmaking from the time of Chaucer through to the current generation of cyber-mappers. Inspired by a circuit board diagram, Harry Beck designed the London Underground Map, which has become an icon of London."
Loving the Punch Cartoon which shows what a the tube map used to look like and how "simple" it was to understand. According to Jill Britton, who found this cartoon - "PUNCH's cartoons regularly reflected the anxieties and spectacle of travelling by "Tube".
Also Mark Ovenden got in touch with me yesterday after reading my BBCi article on the history of the tube map. Mark wrote Metro Maps of The World and he is featured briefly on tonight's programme where Beck's map is compared to other subway maps.
Geoff n Neil are still muttering about coming to the talk in Kew with me, that's if they're not too busy signing autographs and basking in their publicity over the last few days.
One Stop Short of Barking on TV
One Stop Short of Barking - which I ably worked on, was featured on TV on London Tonight at 6pm and also previewed on the 3pm version London Today. I've got a copy of the video now which features a short interview with Mecca and Geoff has promised to work out a way of getting it streamed for the web. But in the meantime you can hear a recording of the afternoon feature here - this doesn't have Mecca's dulcet tones on it, but gives you a good idea of the way the book was covered.
See, Geoff n Neil, you're not the only media whores in town.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Neil n Geoff in the news
Evening Standard with their record breaking tube challenge.
I love the last paragraph "Mr Marshall will not reveal the route in order to protect the record. But it began at 5.29am in Amersham on the Metropolitan line and ended at 12.05am at Upminster on the District line. Ironically, after their mission they missed the last Tube home and had to take a mini-cab."
Well done Messers Marshall and Blake - you'll be on Newsnight next.
UPDATE
Not quite Newsnight but Geoff is going to be on the radio later not once, but twice - LBC at 6.20pm and BBC London at 6.40pm. Both have live streams. Wot a media whore.
New tube map front cover
It's a target made up with colours of the Tube lines, which is fine, colourful and bold - but is it really (as the arty press release would have us believe) "deceptive in its apparent simplicity with its own identity inextricably linked with that of London Underground" and does it "playfully combines the Tube line colours with art historical references, graphic design and our collective memory"?
Our collective memory of what? It's just our collective memory of tube line colours, as it "prompts a double-take as we work out why it seems so familiar".
The press release continues with this memory of tube line lark and I'm afraid it's just a bit too arsey, sorry, arty: "Emma Kay is interested in how objective facts and figures are subjected to the eccentricities of our memories. 'You Are in London' (the title of the piece) is Kay's own memory audit of the tube line colours. Combining a popular symbol with a familiar set of colours she lays claim to both."
Why not get a bit more surreal though? If something was to represent our collective memory of the Tube, I think it would have to be a bit out of focus (not just representing drunken nights on the underground). Pulling on my arty goatee beard I'd envisage something that combines speed with the dichotomy of a private company looking after a public service. Something which merges inner turmoil and ennui with the discordant echoes of Munch's The Scream. Something where Victorian values mingle unhappily with a 21st century phenomena struggling phoenix-like through a mire of bureaucracy, politics and public opinion.
Sorry, I had a bit of a Sister Wendy Beckett moment there. But if you had to artistically visualise the Tube, how would you do it?
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Tubebacca
Monday, September 27, 2004
Just seconds out
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Tubelation !
our last attempt to break the world record. God bless them at Guinness. When I rang them two weeks ago to ask how it was going (and mention it was a shame that we'd missed out on the 50th anniversarry book that's just come out) then told me that 'They still hadn't looked at my claim yet' (Three+ months after I'd submitted it), but it now had 'high priority'.
High enough eventually, for me to be woken by my girlfriend this morning from my slumber with the words "Somethings just turned up in post that I you're going to want to see", and passed me a sturdy envelope which I quickly ripped open to find inside ...
So there you have it. We are official. 18 hours, 35 minutes and 43 seconds. Now for us to get our grinning mugs in ' Metro' I think ... :-)
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
From Edgeware to Amersham
see below) of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night" last night - in bed, and noticed that typo which every good writer about the tube makes once in a while. Yup - on the map plan of the Bakerloo line (towards the back of the book, he says without trying to give too much of the story away) they'd written 'Edgware Road' as 'Edgeware Road' by mistake. Tsk! Very shoddy.
Edgware Road, or even Edgware is not a place that exists in the Meaning of Liff though. This is a classic book that did the rounds a good 10 to 15 years ago, (and was quite funny then, but I'm not so sure about now) and was a dictionary of definitions for things which previously didn't have a word.
My favourite? A "Huby" - "An erection large enough to be a publically embarassing bulge in the trousers, but not large enough to be of use to anybody". You get the idea.
Anyway, a lot of the defintions are named after place names in the UK, and whilst browsing through the index, I couldn't fail to spot 'Amersham', which is listed as:
Amersham - "Is the sneeze which tickles, but never comes. (Thought to derive from the Metropolitan line tube station of the same name, where the rails always rattle but the train never arrives)."
Intruiged? You can download and have a look at it here.
What were you doing last January?
Brook Lapping) are currently working on a "Cutting Edge" programme about how London ground to halt last January (30th Jan 2003, that is) because we had four centimetres of snow. I remember the date well as I broke my leg in two places the following day by falling on some ice outside a railway station.
It took Jag (from Route79 blog) 9 hours to get home and he chronicled his nightmare journey including letters to all manner of people on his site. He will be appearing on the Channel 4 programme and said: "the folks from Brook Lapping have indicated that they might "hire" some underground trains at night for use in filming a psuedo-reconstruction of my journey home! I haven't been given any details other than to prepare to take part in some "overnight" filming!"
Jag and the production company will be popping by from time to time so post any nightmare stories of how you got home that night - whether by tube, train or car - here.
Monday, September 20, 2004
Date for some diaries
Mr Beck's Underground Map", will be talking about the creator of the Tube map, the Tube map as well (and his book - I imagine) at The Barn Church in Kew. For a modest two quid you get a glass of wine or a soft drink too. I don't know whether they're selling tickets on the night, but you can get them in advance by sending a cheque made payable to "The Kew Society" to Stephen Enthoven, Flora House, 81 Kew Green, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 3AH - don't forget to enclose an SAE.
Many thanks to Will Dyke for alerting me to this.
As Kew is a stone's throw from where I live I'll try to pop along myself too.
That was just terrible
Friday, September 17, 2004
Gloomy Friday Tube Haiku
Here we go again.
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Who's the goat then?
last year) said:
"The failure to tackle the transport funding black hole shows that leaving XXXXX to manage a budget is like leaving a goat to tend the cabbages".
Nice one Lynne, and no real prizes for guessing who XXXXX is.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Alice in Under-land
BBC Essex website for complete details.
Celebrity Station Announcements
Crimewatch on BBC.
Perhaps it would have helped if he'd have said (Simpson stylie) "Hi I'm Nick Ross, you may remember me from the popular BBC series Crimewatch....", but I spose that makes for a rather long announcement.
So is this going to be a new trend? Getting celebrities to make relevant voiceovers on PA's. I'd quite like someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger to do a "Mind the Gap" one.
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Tube Challenge Hell!
Going for a ride on the tube
TFL website, they are allowed on certain lines, and that DOES include all of the 'cut and cover' sections (e.g the District) but only between certain times - Not between 07.30 and 09.30 in the morning, and not between 16.00 and 19.00 in the evening.
 And the time of this last night? It was five past seven! So I'm guessing she must of known about the time restriction, but it still to me seemed a little awkward and she annoyed many other passengers who gave her menacing looks as if to to say that they thought she obviously shouldn't be there.
Me? Well, I'm going to stick my neck out and say that I don't think she should have been there either .. to me it seems daft allowing bikes onto a busy metro train service where there are a lot of stops and lots of people frequently getting on and off. So yes .. I would totally ban all bikes on all lines in the central zones ... your comments?
New Route Analysis (Part 3)
www.getfed.com/index.cfm?&AID=185&new=yes (yes, there's a website for everything these days). I particularly like this item. It'll look dead classy in my display cabinet with all my Princess Diana plates.
Hmmm, Ocean Finance Ad Chic. "Well, me and the wife went to Ocean Finance to buy some new furniture to replace this gaudy tat. We also ripped up the green carpet and took the textured wallpaper down."
Sorry, going off at a tangent now.
Monday, September 13, 2004
Working for LU
www.geofftech.co.uk/tubechallenge/tube7.htm - I'm the one with no hair) when I go for my final interview and gets turned on by the prospect of me getting my copy of LU's internal magazine/newsletter (I suppose he reads enough corporate crap in Ariel every month so he needs a change of scenery).
My ex-girlfriend-who-I-live-with (yes, it can be done successfully) is also very excited and thinks I should mention the tube challenge to show that I know about the tube (but my argument against that is that I didn't need to do the challenge to know all about it anyway).
Now, I'm somewhere in the middle. I don't want to voluntarily mention it but then again I've got a slight urge to tell them. What do I do? Is it best to just get the job on the strength of my undeniable charisma and fantastic customer service skills or do I play the geek card and make them think I'm a 'nutter'?
Anyway, the interview is on Saturday at West Kensington station (which is where these things take place) and should I successfully pass I'll be off to the training centre to learn how to climb a ladder and step over a rail whilst carrying up to 4kg of equipment. I would also need to prove I can see with both eyes and have perfect hearing.
I would also receive the magic all-zones Oystercard (muhahahahah) and never have to pay to travel round London ever again (unless I get a taxi or one of those rickshaw deathtraps from outside Covent Garden but you know). I've already got an all-zones travelcard paper ticket but I have to pay for it. Plus you get 38 days' holiday a year including Bank Holidays.
And, of course, once I've been there a while (6 months I think, I'm not entirely sure how it works at the moment) I can apply to become a driver (sorry, 'Train Operator') which is what I REALLY want to do. Naturally, Geoff wets his pants over this too and no doubt if I ever became a 'Train Operator' he'd pester me to let him ride in the cab with me (sorry sir, it's more than my job's worth - against regulations - what would the unions say etc etc).
Now, of course, there are drawbacks. If you're on the early shift, it's up at 4am or something and if you're on lates you finish at 1.30am or thereabouts and have drunk twats to deal with. And with earlies you can't get the tube to work cos it's not running so it's the nightbus or the bike. (I think I'm going to get a bike because then I can ride through red lights and kill commuters - fantastic). But it's all part of the job and I'd rather do shiftwork than 9 to 5 to be honest since a few of my previous jobs have been early starters and I've always been an early person (up at 8am at weekends - I just can't do lie-ins).
Despite getting sent a message by Capita (who administer the online applications so I wasn't full of confidence it would go tits up) saying that my 'application was expiring on the 31st of August' they're still advertising for station staff since they always need them - either the turnover must be high or they're just increasing the staff levels for better service. So if you fancy a go yourself, apply!
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/jobs-customer-services.shtml
(They've got to give me the job now - I've just given them a free ad!) :-)
I'll let you know what happens.
New Route Analysis (Part 2)
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Prom diddly prom prom prom ...
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Just finished THE book of the year
The Curious Incident of the Dog in The Night Time
If you've not read the above book yet, please, please, please do. It's fantastic. I finished it in a day and a bit. I know there's a current trend for adults reading books aimed at children (from Harry Potter - shite in my opinion - sorry, to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials - brill), but this breaks the mould as it's not set in some fantasy world. It's about a teenage boy (Christopher Boone) with Asperger's Syndrome (a type of autism) who knows "a great deal about maths and very little about human beings". There's a particularly pertinent part (well for this blog anyway) about his first visit on the Tube. Ruth Rendell opened her Tube novel King Solomon's Carpet with someone's first visit on the Tube (where they die at the end of it - rather extreme), but Christopher's view is equally as fantastic and frightening. Here's a tiny piece from Christopher's journey - take yourself back to when you were a child and I'm sure your first trip on the Tube would have seemed like Hell (or perhaps your everyday commute is like this):
"then there was a sound like people fighting with swords and I could feel a strong wind and a roaring started and I closed my eyes and the roaring got louder and I groaned really loudly but I couldn't block it out of my ears and I thought the little station was going to collapse or there was a big fire somewhere and I was going to die. And then the roaring turned into a clattering and a squealing and it slowly got quieter and then it stopped and I kept my eyes closed because I felt safer not seeing what was happening. And then I could hear people moving again because it was quieter. And I opened my eyes but I couldn't see anything at first because there were too many people."
Christopher is so freaked out by this, he closed his eyes again, concentrates on some Kuoni ads, closes his eyes and then "I opened my eyes and I looked at my watch and it said 8:07pm and I had been sitting on the bench for approximately 5 hours but it hadn't seemed like 5 hours, except that my bottom hurt and I was hungry and thirsty". Wish time would pass like that for me on the Tube.
After losing his pet rat on the tracks and almost electrocuting himself when rescuing it, he manages to successfully get on the Tube (noticing every sign, ad, person and piece of upholstery) and travels to Willesden Junction from Paddington. For someone who never normally goes further than the end of the road by themselves, his complete train ride from Swindon to London becomes like a voyage to another planet - as he'd always dreamed of being an astronaut - you can really sympathise with his journey.
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
New Route Analysis (Part 1)
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Err, which platform am I on?
More Map Madness
http://www.aardvark.at/
Monday, September 06, 2004
Sometimes I get caught out too ...
chavscum in our carriage abusing everone (They were drunk, loud, abnoxious, and one of them REALLY DID have a fake burberry cap on) which made me change trains along with several other people - by the time I came back a 'signal failure at Stratford' was mucking up the whole of the central line.
I fail to see how a signal failure that far down the line can have an effect as far back as White City. Perhaps if the volume that the drivers PA was set to enabled you to HEAR what he was saying on the occasions that he did try to tell us, then everyone wouldn't have got so annoyed.
Instead, it took me 47 minutes to get back between Ealing Broadway and White City, 20 of those minutes were sat agonisingly outside White City station itself - and it drives me mad. So yes... even tubegeeks get affected sometimes.
I remember when Jack Welsby last got the tube record, the LU press office put a big positive spin on it saying "He was able to do this due to the improvements that we've made under PPP". This is bobbins! (That's a real word, btw)
If Guinness ratify us (any day now, surely?), then I can tell you now that I'm going to say "A lot it is just pure luck on the day that nothing breaks down on this ageing and underfunded system", because all too depressingly often something does break down almost every single day. Siiiiigh.
Cor blimey guv it's today's Metro Momento
new family arriving in Walford tonight who I can assume will be causing loads of problems in EastEnders. So it's kind of appropriate that Metro did a feature today on the Tube's most popular station Walford East.
"Based on Maida Vale tube station and taking the place of Bromley-by-Bow on the District Line, the fictional Walford East Underground station was built to provide another backdrop for all the drama from those famous EastEnders.....
Walford East was officially born in 1996".
Quite a long time for them to go without a Tube station as the soap started in 1984. You always saw people in the soap jumping on and off buses, but now the Tube seems to be the preferred mode of travel (next to the taxi of course when they usually leave and never ever return).
There's one guy at Transport for London (Nick Triviais) who's actually responsible for updating the timetables and poster campaigns at Walford East. Now poster campaigns I can well believe, but timetables. Is anyone really eagle eyed enough to worry about the timetable of a fictitious Tube station?
Trivias says "Walford East has every iconic London Underground feature fitted into one station in order to make it instantly recognisable as an Underground station to viewers who might have never been to London"
"Every iconic London Underground feature".....hmmm, I suppose their definition of feature is a bit limited. As there's no escalators, no buskers, no rats, no litter, no British Transport police, very few people at the station and probably, most noticeably, no trains.
Friday, September 03, 2004
Upside down Underground
collect all the different variations of tube maps that are floating around the internet.
I once spent a rather dull and rainy Sunday afternoon reversing the tube map and writing it all the names again using the correct font, so that Mill Hill East and High Barnet appeared at the bottom of the map, and Morden at the top. They're on all this page here.
Well today I discovered a brand new variation! I can't take credit for it, but I don't know where it came from either - perhaps if the author of it is reading this he could let us know?
Anyway, they've obviosuly spent a long time doing it, and it's what the tube map would look like if applied in a way where more of south London had tube stations instead of the north. Neat!
(Click on the image to see the rather large full version)
Updated - Its from Colour country's site!
Thursday, September 02, 2004
Laptops
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Escalator Question
Thames-no-link
http://tube.tfl.gov.uk/content/tubemap/images/london_connnections.gif
to come up with a new route for me to get to and from work. It doesn't have to be the same in both directions - I like diversity and my current route isn't the same both ways anyway. Here are the facts you will need to help in your deliberations:
I live within easy walking distance of the following stations:
Deptford Bridge DLR
Deptford
New Cross
Greenwich
I travel to St. Albans (just north of Radlett and zone 6 at the top of the London Connections map). It shouldn't tbe too hard to see the current Thameslink route on that map given the diagrams above.
So, get to it! You've got 10 days to think of something for me.
NEWER POSTS
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OLDER POSTS
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When I first saw the woman on the platform at Earl's Court, I thought "Surely she's not about to take that with her, is she?", but yup .. she did, right onto a (admittedly not packed) quite busy trains, where she stayed all the way down to Wimbledon.
