Welcome to the fun, "irreverent & informative", award-winning London Underground - Tube Blog.
Click here for other London Underground guidance. Contact me here
Annie Mole's, daily web log (blog) & “guide” to the London Underground
If you like this you'll LURVE One Stop Short of Barking, the fun and informative book about travelling on the London Underground.
Some of you may remember the Tube Map pencil case quiz where you had to spot the mistakes with the map. So the same goes here. Click on the picture of the enlargement of the tie below and you have to spot what's wrong with it. Bearing in mind it's unofficial there's likely to be a number of things.
For this quiz, one guess only please, and each guess must be different. Please make your guesses by Sunday 7th May 23.59 GMT. All of the correct entries will go into Neil's paper clip selection and he'll select two people who'll each receive a tie. To enter leave your email address and/or website/blog with your answer in the comments below.
I love the "Broadway" musical feel it has to it, plus some of the lines are brill.
"Cos there isn't any room in this town, we put all the trains down under the ground" "Packed inside the train it's too crowded to complain on the Subway! Subway!" "Ahhhhhhh my stop just went by. Ahhhhhh your umbrella's in my eye. Ahhhhhh It's so hot I could die". "You can lose your purse or you might lose something worse on the subway! Subway!" "Come and step inside, you'll get taken for a ride on the subway! Subway!"
Enjoy. You might be humming the tune for the rest of the day though! Finally, happy Bank Holiday weekend if you're in Europe.
Expect to see confused tourists on the Misery Line
As part of the huge "improvements" taking place to the much of the London Underground at the moment, from this weekend and for the next ten weekends, the Charing Cross branch of the Northern Line will be closed between Camden Town and Kennington. And there will be a reduced service on the remainder of the line. The thing is with the Northern Line "a reduced service" will be close to meaning "no service" as it's so rubbish anyway. It's quite scary to imagine what a reduction to the service will be.
George McNulty, a service director for London Underground, and master of understatement said "We recognise that the Northern line's performance is not as we would like," You don't say George. He continued, "but we are looking forward to Tube Lines taking this opportunity to accelerate the amount of track renewal work undertaken."
Anyway Transport for London seem confident that they won't have loads of confused tourist wandering around throughout May, June and half of July. Because "All the stations on this part of the Northern line either interchange with another line, which will be running on those weekends, or they are a bus ride away, or within walking distance of another Tube station, so no rail replacement buses will be provided."
I've just found out why I was 50 minutes late for work this morning. I got stuck at Turnham Green on the Sadistic (sorry, District) Line, as there was a security alert at Glamoursmith (sorry, Hammersmith) and the District and Piccadilly lines were suspended. So I walked to Hammersmith hoping to pick up a Hammersmith & City Line train. But this was also suspended and police were everywhere around Hammersmith Circus. I managed to squeeze onto one of the crowded buses heading towards Shepherd's Bush, only when I arrived I found out that there were loads of fire engines and police swarming around Shepherd's Bush Green too. Fortunately the Central Line was open, so I was able to get onto to that and get into the West End.
A number of my colleagues from West London had the same problem and when I was moaning about it today, I heard that the security alert was because a woman had left around fake bombs as part of an "art installation".
"The woman who is from the Shepherd's Bush area and who described herself as an artist was then arrested on suspicion of causing a public nuisance and taken into custody where she remains."
I can think of many other ways that I would like to describe her and artist isn't top of the list.
Rob from Londonist got back from his honeymoon in Singapore and Hong Kong last week and kindly sent me some videos of the underground system there. The one from Hong Kong is great. Look out for some nice details including a commuter wearing one of those white masks to either stop them giving their lurgies to other people or vice versa, or just to generally protect them from pollution.
Rob also made the following observations: "1) Dozens of delicate paper butterflies hanging from the ceiling - how long would these last on the London Tube?
2) You should just be able to make out the threat of a 6000 dollar fine and 6 months imprisonment for something on the electronic sign on the platform.
3) The lack of any 'let passengers off the train first' etiquette. HK is incredibly polite and ordered but they don't have the 'let them off first' rule and neither do they have the 'stand to the right of the escalator' rule. Are they mad?
4) The cool video ads playing on the platform.
5) The very helpful 'fairy light' tube maps which tell you right away which direction you're going and what stop's next. Also (difficult to make out on the video) is a light telling you which side of the carriage the doors are going to open on at the next station."
He also wants to know if anyone can tell us what the bouncy LCD sign at the end says?
The video from Singapore's underground system is here (interesting how they have TV monitors showing films/advertsing in the carriages) and Rob also found a cute little poster from a series of "Graciousness is...." ads on Singapore's network.
They reminded me of the old London Underground "Love Is....." series of posters. I wonder if they got the idea from London?
"A typical London commuter takes 3,400 steps, walks more than two miles and uses up 246 calories each day on the journey to and from work". Over a five day week that's apparently the equivalent of an hour's jogging or burning off two Big Mac meals.
The survey looked at three typical rail commutes but also added short Tube journeys at the end of them. This meant three sets of steps, at least one escalator (did they count walking up the escalator though?) and an eight minute walk from the Underground to work.
They got in a a fitness expert to try to verify their theory, who rather obviously said "Commuters tend to walk at a much faster pace, have stairs and escalators to overcome and often have to run to catch trains so the heart rate increases and calories are burned." Peter Hood continued "Depending on body weight, commuters could be shifting up to half a pound of body fat in oune week on the journey to or from work".
I suppose if you add sweating like a pig in over crowded carriages in the summer time, dealing with the numerous escalator closures so that you have to hike up the stairs and calories lost by the chocolate machines having a melt down, which should be thanking the London Underground for providing such a health conscious service!
The auction ends on the 28th April. It's based on an Ikea pine chair and I've just spent a small fortune in Ikea and gave myself a massive headache by putting up half a desk (why Ikea don't put even a few written instructions in their flat packs is beyond me - as their illustrations aren't particularly foolproof).
Being an Ikea chair, I'm surprised it hasn't been given a name like Billy (my bookcases), or Johan (my new desk). If I win it, I'll call it Fairlop as that sounds suitably Ikea-ish! Or perhaps it should be Neasden as it's the nearest Tube station to Ikea.
I'm not getting into the fishnets or no fishnets debate this week. But I would love to have known whether this woman did have a pair of smart shoes in her bag, and was just doing the "I've just come back from the gym" look or the "My office shoes are so painful that I can't walk properly in them, and have to wear trainers to get around town in quickly" look
I know women who do this, and if I were them, I think I'd just buy a pair of smart work shoes that I could easily hop around the Tube on. But I spose having a pair of heels in your bag might come in handy if you ever need to swing your bag someone.
Enormous Turn Ups
Is it just me or are some people trying to get their jean turnups to take up half their legs?
Coloured Boots
Finally a look at two women who decided that brightly coloured boots are nice. I've fairly boring and conventional with my boots and they either are brown or black and that's it. But there's nothing (too) wrong with a bit of brightness. The lady below resplendent in purple boots and a matching funky purple "leopard skin" bag pulls it off quite impressively:
Whereas this lady on South West Trains doesn't:
Pink Uggs with an anorak. Or rather Pink Uggs with anything. The mind boggles!
We were wracking our brains trying to work out where the London Underground station really was. Searching the net was no help. In fact, I found another person who was also trying to work out where it was filmed. Fortunately, a regular contributor to the blog was also watching Poirot and we had the same discussion, but he managed to take a number of screen shots including the ones below:
However, we still couldn't actually work out where it was filmed. It's obviously a station that was around in the 1920's or 1930's when the story was based. The outside shots looked like they could have been a set, but the ones inside definitely looked like a real Tube station.
I asked another contributor who was likely to know and he came up with an excellent suggestion. Neil checked it out on Monday and took a shot of the lines from the station in question.
So can you also work out where it is? This time, one guess only please and as usual to enter, leave either your email address and/or website or blog in the comments below.
You have until 23.59 on Sunday 30th April to enter. In the event of more than one person guessing the correct answer, Neil's paperclip selection will come into play.
They remind me of the fab art deco opening titles to Poirot, which always want to make me travel on the Orient Express.
There's also a bonus prize if you can come up with a caption for what Damian Lewis (pictured above) from the same episode of Poirot, is saying to his lady friend on the Tube to make her laugh.
The funniest caption will win this rather unsual photo frame / fridge magnet in the style of the ticket booths that were around at the time.
Same deadline of the 30th April, but the more the merrier with caption guesses.
A few weeks ago Phill Price sent me a picture of the white haired guy below, who is famous and asked me to guess who he was. I guessed fairly quickly cos I'm a bit of a tube celebrity stalker. Do you know who he is? No prizes, just the satisfaction of knowing you're right!
I took a picture of the next guy for two reasons, firstly he caught my eye because he was reading a copy of London Under London, one of my favourite books about life underground which has been re-printed loads of times. He also looked a bit like Keith Allen, the Northern actor/comedian, most recently the narrator in the Manchester Passion over Easter:
There must be quite a few people who travel on the London Underground who just happen to look like celebrities and have people staring at them or people like me try to take pictures of them. Have you seen any celebrities or people who look like celebs recently?
She said she would send me a "little something" for organising the party, so I've just received quite a big something in the form of a package, containing all the New Orleans food goodies below:
It's extremely generous of Tami as she already gave us all a load of Mardi Gras beads when she was over. I must think of a suitable food related quiz so that I can share some of this. But in the meantime, thanks so much Tami, it's really appreciated!
Sam Cawley (pictured on the far right) who was also came to the Tube Relief Reunion and individually raised the most money for the event, has a non Tube plea, which any football fan might be interested in.
She's trying to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis and has the following items for auction:
Manchester United football signed by 13 first team players, Everton team photo signed by the whole first team squad, 2 adult and 2 junior Exeter match tickets for any league game valid until end of next season, 1 adult and 1 junior Brentford match tickets valid until end of next season, Signed Yeovil Town "In a Different League" book, Tottenham Hotspur pennant signed by the first team squad, Plymouth pennant signed by the first team squad, Barnet poster signed by the first team squad, Newcastle programme signed by Alan Shearer, Bath Rugby poster signed.
Plus something for cricket fans - 2 Hampshire cricket tickets, valid for any Totesport league or Cheltenham and Gloucester trophy, but not floodlit!
If you would like to bid on any, please email her on sam.cawley@btinternet.com.
Many thanks, and watch this space for a food/London Underground related quiz for a share of the hamper!
Well it looks like we might not be hearing that any more from the summer of 2008 as the London Underground is going ahead with plans to have mobile phone transmitters in Tube, in spite of initial fears by the Lib Dems that the transmitters might provide a new way to detonate bombs.
According to the BBC, the political party "have been persuaded that any extra risk is minimal and that in an emergency, people need their phones. A study looking at putting transmitters in four stations begins this month. The two-month feasibility study will look at the space, power and changes needed to put mobile phone masts in stations."
The project, to put transmitters which would also allow internet access and WiFi hot spots, was put on hold after the July 7th bombings. In Spain, investigations revealed that the Madrid bombers, while using mobile phones as detonators, set off the bombs by using the phone's alarm function rather than by calling each individual phone.
A spokeswoman from London Underground said "The timers of mobile phones are not affected by whether a signal can be received or not so the Tube would not be at a greater risk from that type of attack than it is now".
Lib Dem MP and former London Assembly Chair of Transport Policy, Lynne Featherstone, conceded that "Better communications could be of enormous benefit in the event of an emergency, allowing passengers to communicate with the emergency services and worried relatives".
But we will still have a fairly peaceful "haven" where people aren't shouting into their phones, above the racket of being in deep level stations, for a year or so. The Tube's spokeswoman said: "It is our intention to commence a trial at a small number of Tube stations in late 2007 with the aim of introducing mobile phone and new technology provision at stations from summer 2008."
I hadn't been to the Model Railway Exhibition at New Romney station before, which was one of the highlights for me. I love this enamel sign and am now kicking myself that I didn't buy one from the shop back at Hythe:
The other great thing about the model railway exhibition there were the rather bizarre juxtaposition of things in the scenery alongside the trains. Every so often you'd hear someone say, "Oh look there's a dalek", or "Look at the dinosaurs", or my favourite "Look at the rat"!
We took the railway for the 13 and half miles from Hythe to Dungeness, stopping off at New Romney on the way, for lunch and a visit to the Model Railway Exhibition. Dungeness is probably one of the worst places to visit in Kent. By the railway it is totally flat and deserted and the only things that break the bleak landscape are occasional spots of yellow gorse bush, two pretty uninspiring looking lighthouses and the splendour that is Dungeness power station. It was pelting with rain by the time we reached there, which was fortunate as it meant it didn't take long for me to convince Neil to stay on the train and loop straight back towards Hythe.
There's something typically "English" about seaside towns in the rain and although all of the stations ran along the coast line you can't actually see the sea properly from the trains. You get glimpses of it from Romney Sands (sounds much nicer than it is - basically the land of caravans and grim 'holiday homes') and perhaps if it wasn't so grey and wet from Dungeness, we might have caught a glimpse of it then.
However, we actually had a good laugh, you can see Neil giving the train a "thumbs up" when we left Hythe.
It was also good to see that the mini guard was still working at New Romney
There was also a suitably London Underground style announcement apologising for the late running of the train into New Romney, just so that we felt at home!
I'm sure Neil will update his blog with his version of the day and hopefully more photos than me. He took quite a lot of the marshy wet Dungeness (apparently a great place to bird-watch - so it does have its benefits) and you'll be able to see how different it looks from the sunny "Welcome to Dungeness" poster from the Model Railway Exhibition.
No Tube fashion victims today as it's Bank Holiday weekend, but I thought you might like the picture of the Easter Bunnies below as we celebrate "National Eat Loads of Chocolate" weekend:
Happy Easter and cheers to my colleague, Wozza, for sending me the picture!
The ad focusses on one of those days when you are stuffed in the Tube with your face in somone's armpit and you feel the need to really moan about your journey, when someone asks how it was. In the New Year of 1999, I thought that I fancied building a website, but wanted one where I could wax lyrical about something I felt other people might want to wax lyrical about too. The Tube seemed the obvious thing to me, as I can't remember the amount of conversations I've had over the years with people saying "You would not believe the journey I had into work today".
At the leaving party, a number of us were talking about those "old" sites like Fortunecity, where you could build a site for nothing, and they were all in "streets" roughly divided into categories - Goingunderground still exists in some rarely updated shape and form at http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/finsbury/254/ (beware the horrible pop ups), and I think I chose victorian as a place to house my site because of the Victorian nature of the Tube and I think Finsbury meant that it was a UK related or a London related site. Christ knows now, to be honest, but I've got a lot to thank Fortunecity for, even though I now pay for my hosting of goingunderground elsewhere.
Anyway, yesterday morning, I really felt like the woman in the ad above, as the Northern Line was acting as normal, meaning there were long delays between each train and even though it was 9.50am during a holiday week, I was on a crowded train with no prospect of a seat. Even the female breakfast show presenter on Heart FM (Harriet Scott) had been moaning about the Northern Line like mad and saying how she now walks extra stops rather than put up with it.
Apparently it's even harder to sell your house or flat if it's on the Northern Line route, so it's not called The Misery Line for nothing. My sympathies to all fellow Northern Line passengers and woe betide the person who asks us how our journey was. Incidentally, how was your journey today?
But onto the main winner by points. Fimb fortunately kept track of all of your answers on a spreadsheet and four of you had ten points - Lewis, John B, Jo and Michelle
Soooooo, Neil had to do his paper clip selection and the winner of the London Underground Anagram Map Mug is Jo. So well done to Jo who has won the "banned" limited edition mug above.
Onto the most creative answers - Jo's fab link for the picture of a celebrity on the London Underground (Jodie Marsh dressed as a chicken on the Tube) was ingenious, so not only does she win, but she also gets a bonus prize too!. John B gets a prize for giving us a painting of Blur for the best celebrity (or celebrities found on the Tube), Jon Justice gets a prize for going to the trouble of making some images for the quiz - I particularly liked his Tube train you can eat picture, Dmitri for his inventive Tube related tattoo and Lewis's Tube train swiss roll also deserve bonus prizes.
So well done to all the winners and to everyone who entered into the spirit of the quiz.
"I recently got asked the following question (indirectly) on my blog: "How many London Underground stations are alliterative?"
The question was indirect because the reader entered it into a search engine to get to my blog. I was wondering if you could help us answer the question?"
Surprisingly I don't think there are actually that many - Seven Sisters, Charing Cross, Clapham Common and Golders Green were the only ones I could come up with, and Hampstead Heath (although as it's on the North London Line, I don't think it really counts). But perhaps I'm missing some.
I much prefer even more unique station names, such as the only two stations which have every vowel in them and the only station that has none of the letters from the word mackeral in it.
The Sunday Times had an article about the rise and rise of game shows this weekend, and said that TV is having to catch up with the internet with dumbed down games - hence the launch of ITVPlay channel next week. "Gaming on the internet is growing, and people have become accustomed to the idea of pursuing a solitary obsession through a relationship with a machine."
This year Ladbrokes are running very similar ads playing on us looking at the faces of the inscrutable people sitting opposite us:
I have a bit of a poker face on the Tube, specially when taking pictures of people sitting opposite me. But in general I think, the advertisers have got a point here, as most commuters have pretty good poker faces.
We all generally avoid eye contact and turn off our personality on the Tube. If we haven't got anything to read, we try to put on that vacant air to show that we're not really thinking about much at all, and that we're certainly not imagining what the person sitting opposite us does for a living, or what they might be having for tea that night, or what they've just had for breakfast. Even if we do have such thoughts, they usually leave us the minute we get off the Tube and we go on with our real life overground.
And we certainly don't think that they might be having exactly the same thoughts about us. Or do we? How many times have you imagined a life or story for the person sitting opposite you, or does the Tube "Poker Face" get in the way?
I wouldn't say that smelly people on the Tube is my biggest worry, but with air conditioning on the London Underground supposedly being impossible and with experiments like Madeleine to pump out calming perfume, not making it past trials at Euston, Piccadilly and St James's Park, it looks as though we will have to put up with more "people odour" this summer.
However, being able to hear the music from people's iPods and the like is definitely a pet hate from mine, and I've often wondered what it does for the hearing of the "offender". The problem is they wouldn't be able to hear even hear you say "Turn down your music mate"!
So do you agree with the survey, would farts, BO, loud music and snogging be amongst your personal peeves? Or do you have other pet commuting hates?
Ant and Dec's alien film, Alien Autopsy, opens this weekend (to some fairly awful reviews - ah, poor Dec and Ant), so it's kind of fitting there's an alien theme to the competition. The screen grabs below are for a TV ad for Airwaves chewing gum, featuring an alien on the Tube.
Jon says: "All you have to do is suggest captions and/or speech bubbles for the 'toon above. Submit your ideas in the comments below by Friday 14th April (leave your email address and/or website and blog too). All entries will be worked up and submitted to the people on Jon's list. The winner will be the one who gains the most votes from the people on the list and will be announced as soon as the votes are all in, probably a week later on April 21st."
Ah there she is, inside the train and the man sitting next to her put his hand on her knee to stop her getting away
I'm not sure what sort of shoes "go" with such stripy tights. Probably nothing, but at least keeping to black and white wasn't such an assault on the eyeballs.
Metallica
Speaking of assaults on the eyeballs
The brown boots in the foreground are OK. The metallic boots on the left are, well, bearable I suppose. But blue metallic shoes! Jesus, what was she thinking when she bought them? I was particularly flabberghasted to see the chequered pattern on them and the black ribbon running round the edge, just to emphasise the hideousness of the blue. The shop assistant saw her coming, and thanks to that shop, now the rest of us can see her coming from a mile or so away.
White Moccasins
I promise not to go on about the fishnet tights, but purlease, black fishnets with white shoes. Fashion police where are you, when we need you?
First Birkenstocks of the Year
Hurrah, only last week we were talking about Birkenstock sandals and here's my first sighting of them in early April
They look like a nice comfy pair too, but (ah the horror), she's wearing them with tights. This is the female equivalent of men wearing sandals with socks. However, when you look at her elegantly cut toenails it's hardly surprising she chose to cover up her feet a bit.
Red Belts or Red Skirts
I'm going to sound like someone's Mum here, but why do girls go out wearing skirts that are so short they could almost be belts?
I'm not sure why the girls at Waterloo station had such an obsession with red either, perhaps they wanted to draw even more attention to themselves.
"The magic, mystery & sometimes maddening shortcomings of London's Tube are documented with love,
enthusiasm & sometimes despair by its unofficial social historian." The Guardian
"On some mornings it can feel like the only reason to be grateful that the Tube exists" Time Out
"a big hit on the Web...one of London's obsessives" Metro
"an irreverent and informative must-read for everybody, not just subterranean commuters" The Times
There's also a bonus prize if you can come up with a caption for what Damian Lewis (pictured above) from the same episode of Poirot, is saying to his lady friend on the Tube to make her laugh.
Sam Cawley (pictured on the far right) who was also came to the Tube Relief Reunion and individually raised the most money for the event, has a non Tube plea, which any football fan might be interested in. 
