Counting on the London Underground

Sesame Street's The Count would be pleased

I often see a lot of blog entries from people where they count things in a sort of Bridget Jones Diary type of way. You know the score - number of cigarettes smoked today 12, number of crisps eaten 18, number of pounds lost 1, etc. I can't say I've ever been particularly interested in counting things since I have been at school. However someone sent me a link to an interesting "watchers" project where a number of things in south east London have been counted, with pictures taken to represent them.

A station assistant at Bermondsey London Underground Station must have been fairly bored and he counted the number of people hurrying through the station in one day.


It was only 41. Which really doesn't seem a lot to me, but I suppose as it's not in an interchange, or maybe no one is in a particular rush for anything at Bermondsey. However as I have no idea how many people in total pass through Bermondsey Tube I'd never really know if 41 is a lot.

If you're travelling by Tube today perhaps you might consider counting something, on the way in or home, so we could do a comparison. Obviously, we haven't all got the time to stand at a Tube station for a whole day to count things, so here's a few workable possibilities:

Number of people reading Metro in your carriage
Number of people standing in your carriage
Number of people listening to an iPod, walkman or some other personal stereo in your carriage
Number of people with rucksacks in your carriage
Number of posters that have been graffitied (is that a word? - but you know what I mean) in your carriage
Number of pigeons on your platform

If there's anything else you'd like to count or make a suggestion for people to count, feel free and leave in the comments below. Thanks muchly.

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Thursday, June 29, 2006 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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