Innocent Village Fete Shortlist - help me get lucky!

Just found out through the power of Twitter that one of my pictures from the Innocent Village Fete back in the summer (yes summer, remember that, it lasted about 2 days) has reached the finals for best photo contest. It's a contender for best overall fete picture. So if you like it please vote



My mate Anna (mondoagogo)'s picture is also up for a vote (Best Bunting) as is fellow Twitterer Tall Rich (photoverulam) for Best Fete Game pictures - so please vote for us all!!!

Voting closes on the 21st September and the winners will be announced on my birthday 24th September. Thanks so much!

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Wednesday, September 17, 2008 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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Uptown, Downtown on New York Metro

After my 3rd full day in New York, I think I'm beginning to get the hang of the subway now. As some of you have said in the comments on my previous post, you thought that I'd be able to find it easy after the London Underground.

"One of my friends told me she wished she's been on the Tube before she first tried to deal with the NYC subway, because the Tube made so much more sense to her, and when she next went to New York, the logic seemed to transfer over and make it easier for her to figure out how to get around. Which is a long way of saying I'm not surprised you're having such an easy time getting around." said alto2.

Greg said "The subway there isn't so scary, especially for someone from London!"

It's not been entirely easy or unscary though. Specially my first time of using it in the evening on Sunday night. I travelled "downtown" from Grand Central to Greenwich Village and that meant having to get the S or the shuttle from Grand Central to Times Square or 42nd.

This looks like something out of Dr Who

Taking the S to get to Times Square might have been faster than taking Line 7, but that's were encountered my first scary moment. The carriage was pretty full and the train seem to sit for an age at Grand Central before moving off the one stop. It was about 8pm and a couple of guys got on who were clearly on something - not sure if it was booze or drugs.

One of them loudly made his through people to get to an empty seat at my end of the carriage. With much "F**k you, mother f**ka" and "Get your ass up here" to his mate. He slouched in the corner and was at that partial "I'm passed out" and partial "I can take you on if you challenge me" stage.

His friend eventually made it down to the carriage but first gave some rather surly advice to a woman who had her bike on the train. "Hey lady, you're blocking the passageway here. Can't you move that thing?". She sort of managed to move it, with an almost inaudible apology & he wound his way through people, all the time being loudly "encouraged" down by his half panther - half sloth mate.

I did the London thing of keeping my head down & not trying to stare at Panther Sloth guy who was only a seat away from me. All the other locals had a similar idea. The general light mutterings of conversation virtually stopped and you could sense that we all felt that something might kick off if someone did the wrong thing. Whatever the wrong thing here might have been.

That's the thing about public transport in a strange city, you don't really know what the unspoken rules & etiquette are. You might be able to understand the maps and the insistence on having two names for most stations (Times Square 42nd Street - 66th Street Lincoln Center - Christopher St Sheridan Sq - we don't do that in London!), but you also need to know the "rules".

There are Rules to this Game - seen at New Rochelle Station

After what seemed like an eternity waiting at Grand Central - with more "Mother f**ka's" and "Why don't you get up and let this pretty lady sit down?", directed his mate about a young woman standing next to me, there was a collective sigh of relief when the train finally decided to move.


Earlier that same day I had got Line 7 or the purple line or whatever it's called in New York to Times Square 42nd Street and at the interchange there saw some fab mosaics paying tribute to the industries there.

We actually have a very badly lit version of our tribute to Leytonstone's best known director in the East End of London. There's a little known series of 17 mosaics which honour Alfred Hitchcock who was born there.





The ones at Times Square were equally as detailed & colourful, but as with London, most people rushed by them, even in the daytime & hardly seemed to notice them




Overground architecture seems to get a snapped a lot more in New York, just as tourist spots above ground in London do. But at least these mosaics in New York had some lights thrown on them.

There were also some stunning Klimt like golden mosaics at 66th Street Lincoln Center


I've mentioned in the previous post how clean the carriages on the Metro appear (admittedly there are still mice / rats on the tracks scuttling around the pools of dirty water), so the cleaners don't seem to have as much work to do as in London.


This woman came on my carriage, had a quick look round, and like the Fonz from Happy Days looking in the mirror, must have thought "Heeeey, nothing needs doing", and went on her way.

If Heroes ads have taken over Grand Central - well at the least the Metro North Railroad side - Showtime & Dexter ads were all over the Broadway side of the Metro.


It was quite a shock to see UK faces like Billie Piper from Secret Diary of a Call Girl & Jonathan Rhys Myers from The Tudors sharing space with David Duchovny & Michael C Hall. Also a nice reminder that some bloggers can make the "big time" (specially when they write about sex). My blog was highly commended in the Guardian's Blog Awards 2003 the same year that Belle de Jour won her award for best written blog. Look her now, she has two successful TV series & a book based on her blog and I, well ... err ... I'm sitting in a hotel room in a New York suburb blogging about her.

There's more pictures on the Metro & train journey into town from my 2nd full day in New York on Flickr.


The set includes my day in Central Park & some New York pigeon shots for Brian Pigeon my favourite pigeon blogger back home in London. You might want to check out Brian's theories of the Circle Line being London's very own Large Hadron Collider - you can now see where the term "bird brained" comes from.

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Tuesday, September 16, 2008 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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First impressions of New York Subway

So, I did it. I travelled on the Metro in New York for my first time ever yesterday. As someone who's been blogging and writing about the London Underground for about nine years now (crikey) what did I think?


I have travelled on subways in Mexico, Paris, Lisbon & Toronto, so this wasn't my first non London Tube experience. It was really, really familiar but totally unlike anywhere else too, which is obvious really. Buskers on the subway carriages actually weren't treated with scorn or total indifference (not sure if it's legal in New York - "on carriage" busking on the Tube was never legal).


It was busier than London I reckon. I was on the Metro at about 11am on Saturday morning & I left it at about 4pm on a Saturday afternoon, and the stations I travelled through were pretty crowded. In fact the first train was too crowded to get on. But that may have been because engineering works meant that some lines weren't fully operational.

A guy next to me sighed when the woman over the subway PA was politely telling everyone about the alternatives. "Just get on with it, and get us there", he said to no one in particular. I kind of knew how he felt!

However it was refreshing to actually hear what she said very clearly (even though it may as well have been Greek to me as I had no idea what she was talking about). I also liked the recorded announcer who said "Watch the gap" - it sounded more like a cheery and proud invitation than our drony, yet "quaintly" London "Mind the gap".


Grand Central Station however was much less crowded that I was expecting. It's an amazingly palatial station, cool, high ceilings, wonderful zodiac murals above and like a cathedral with stunning windows.




However it's a showcase and I'm sure gets more loving care than the bits that fewer tourists photograph. The platforms I used from my train which came in from New Rochelle were completely taken over by Heroes advertising:


That was another surprising thing. I was expecting loads and loads more ads down there. So far Paris has to win for the subway system with the most ads. Some station walls are literally covered with ads (eg Trocadero), so much so that it's hard to read the station names - like in Edwardian times in London when they first started experimenting with ads.

Like London's Tube there were some nice architectural bits at some stations


But also like London the stations were tatty in places and could do with a visit from some serious spring cleaners.

The great thing was the air conditioning on the trains themselves. It was a welcome relief, however it made the stations seem like infernos from hell, though as there was nothing to cool people at platform level. We sometimes have the opposite problem with our big comedy fans cooling down interchanges and areas around escalators but nothing to keep us cool on the Tube itself. You can't win!

Their public service ads were less inventive than ours though. There was a vague attempt with the one saying don't run on the escalators


But the "do not lean on the door" & "do not hold the door" signs were fairly basic in comparison to our more err visual ones about not holding the doors open:




Yes I know what it might remind you of!

If you've not been following my Twitter feed, you might not know that I'm staying outside of New York City itself and am in a suburb called New Rochelle. It's a really simple and cheap (well in comparison to London) 30 minute commute into Grand Central station.


I've probably spoken too soon about the "simplicity" but I've bought a week's unlimted travel into New York for $54 dollars & I paid an extra $20 to get $23's worth of Metro subway value added to it. To me this is a Bobby bargain.




The Metro North Rail Road runs from Connecticut into New York and provides a commuter link to NYC taking in suburbs around the Hudson River & on the East Coast like New Rochelle, Harlem, Pelham and Mount Vernon.


That's it for today. I'm sure I'll be filling you in on other New York Subway impressions. There's more pictures of the subway and Metro North Rail Road in my Flickr set along with some other pictures of New York - including the ... ummm ... delights of Deep Fried Oreos & some NYPD police who weren't living up to their doughnut (sorry I'm in the US) donut eating, coffee swigging stereotypes.

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Sunday, September 14, 2008 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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London Underground Fashion Victims via New York

I'm in New York!!!!! Strangely in the week before I left London I spotted a number of Tube Fashion Victims who looked like they'd be borrowing a Big Apple look.

Baseball Caps

It's been unseasonably cold in London so some people have been wrapped up like it's October right now. Yet others are braving it out. The woman below is in duffle coat, boots and New York Yankees baseball cap, yet the guy next to her is only in an American football style T-shirt


I won't be buying a NY baseball cap even though I'm in New York as I'll look like a card carrying tourist and I don't get on with baseball caps. I don't have the right hair for it or pony tail to stick through the hole.

Once again we see the "air traffic controller" style headphones over a hat look.


I preferred the headphones over the silver beany from last week. This guy looks like he's really trying a bit to hard to say "I'm a DJ".

The Fame Look

Legwarmers. Wow are they making a comeback? I did expect her to leap off the District line and start singing "Fame! I'm gonna live forever".


She must have a good washing machine to wear white legwarmers over the bottom of her shoes.

That's it for now, not sure if I'll be able to grab any New York Metro Fashion Victims as I'll probably get lamped, but we'll see. Hopefully later today will be my first trip on the subway here, so I'll report back.

In the meantime, the previous fashion victim post is here and the complete picture gallery of all the TFV's can be seen on the following Flickr set.


While, I'm here I must say many thanks to Janine from my hotel (Marriott in New Rochelle) for leaving me a little gift of snacks - much appreciated!

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Saturday, September 13, 2008 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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Cryptic Tube Station Clues at Qype Pub Quiz

Whenever I go to a pub quiz and there are London Underground questions, people always look at me. Normally I just shrug and say "Why are you expecting me to know this?" as they are usually so anorakky or trainspottery or obscure.

However, this time at the Qype pub quiz last night for their 1st birthday, I managed to get all cryptic clues on the Tube station names.

Here are the rather risque clues, see if you could have worked out which stations they are:

1. Two types of cheese
2. Arsenal get fruity
3. An apostle's erection!

Ooo-err missus. Anyway we never won the quiz, but didn't do too badly. You might want to have a shot at the picture round below:


Many thanks to Rob & Andy at Qype for a great time, all the food & drink. Thanks also to my fellow team members of the Sarky / Sake Six. We were a formidable team & at least we didn't come last (like the Time Out pub quiz err, fiasco!).

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Friday, September 12, 2008 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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Your own carriage on Art Deco 1938 Tube train

The London Transport Museum emailed me to let us know that they've added and extra item to their Transport charity auction with eBay.

"You will have a special VIP carriage on this train for up to 40 of your closest friends. Dress up and have fun as you are whisked on a journey through the network, earning the admiration and envy of everyone you pass.

Date to be confirmed, but your trip will be either a Saturday or Sunday during the day, between 14 April 2009 and 30 September 2009. The date will be determined by track and service requirements and will be set by Transport for London.


"Your trip involves both departure and return from an agreed point on the Underground route. Route is to be determined by Transport for London.

You are not able to bring any alcoholic beverages on your ride, though feel free to bring other refreshments. Please remember this is a genuine historic vehicle and treat it with respect." Full details here.

I went on this art deco Tube train in April earlier in year with a few friends and we had a great time.

Bids close on the 15th September, and if you fancy having a bid on anything else, like a behind the scenes tour of the Fen Line, the chance to learn how to drive a First Connect train, a double decker Routemaster bus for the evening, actual London Underground station roundels and more, get clicking!

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Friday, September 12, 2008 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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London Underground £3bn Funding Gap

Transport for London yesterday morning blamed the government for a three billion pound funding gap, as the cost of repairing the Tube goes sky high.

The Guardian reported yesterday: "An assessment of the Tube network's financial needs published this morning outlined a financial black hole of up to £1.4bn on a third of London's underground lines.

Someone needs to watch the Government - King's Cross station looking tatty

"The latest figures create a severe financial headache for the government when they are added to the projected £2bn funding gap on the rest of the tube system. Transport for London, the London mayor's transport authority, this morning blamed the government and said the Treasury would have to step in."

Tim O'Toole who runs the London Underground said "Any funding required above TfL's budget should be met by continuing support by government, who imposed this PPP structure on the tube and Londoners" .

The real scale of the problem was shown in a report by the PPP contract referee, Chris Bolt. He said carrying out vital upgrade work on the Northern, Piccadilly & Jubilee Lines up to 2017 would cost between £5.1bn and £5.5bn. TfL reckon it would cost £4.1bn and therefore faces a gap of up to £1.4bn.

However, Tube Lines, who own the PPP contracts for the work believe that's an understatement. They think the work will cost £7.2bn, so that would be an overspend of up to £2.1bn. They imply that the Government should put in place long-term financial backing for the network and not allot cash every seven years.

"The question is not should the upgrade of the tube cost this much but how is this vital work to be funded? Funding for future tube improvements must be secured and maintained" said a spokesperson from the company.

Dave Hill from The Guardian has responses from the political parties:

Val Shawcross, Labour London Assembly member who's the chair of the Transport Committee said: "It's vital that the planned investment and refurbishment programme for London Underground goes ahead. Our tube network is key to London's success as a world city; we need to ensure it remains so. The system is facing an increasing demand and must be able to keep up yet work on the Piccadilly line in particular has not yet begun.


Given the very large shortfall, over and above the amount the Government have already granted to TfL for this period of the PPP contract, I would expect the Mayor to enter into negotiations with ministers to secure funds to enable all the planned works to go ahead. Tube Lines have generally been doing a good job for London. The next phase of their contract isn't for gold plating the tube - it's for vital maintenance and improvement works."

Roger Evans, a Transport type from the Conservatives said "I share the concerns of TfL about this new black hole that appears to be opening up. We need to see more details and it might prove essential for the Assembly Transport Committee to hold a special session to get to the bottom of this. Last year, in the wake of the Metronet collapse, I appeared before the commons transport select committee (in my role as London assembly chairman of transport), and urged them to recommend the government provided the funding to make up the shortfall - a shortfall caused by their scheme.

The same principle should apply to a shortfall in the Tubelines contract. Fare payers cannot be expected to swallow another 10% increase which would be needed to raise £1bn, and asking TfL to find the money would put major capital projects like Crossrail at risk."

I travel on the Piccadilly & Northern Lines every day and as the pictures above show, King's Cross Station looks like it's being held together by sticky tape and that's just the noticeable stuff. Some stations clearly look like they need a MAJOR overhaul and it's interesting to hear from Shawcross that work on the Piccadilly Line hasn't even begun yet.

This is one of the reasons why the Tube fare increase riles me. A few commenters in my post about the fare rise said "stop moaning" and "you should see what transport is like in my city". The thing is, I don't live in Yorkshire. I live in London and me and 3 million other people pay some of the most expensive fares in the world to put up with a system that clearly isn't being funded. As Evans says, it's us fare payers that are going to pay for this shortfall and if ridiculously expensive fares meant a better service, all well & good (sort of), but unfortunately it doesn't.

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Wednesday, September 10, 2008 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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E-Reading on the Tube - The Future of the Book

Last night I went to an excellent round table event hosted at Random House on The Future of the Book. It was part of the a series of events run by the if:book London think tank. I joined a mixed group of interesting people - publishers, writers, digital folk & people from literary & reading organisations in a discussion about the opportunities and possible losses to literature brought about by e-readers.


Chris Meade, our chair, had just received his e-reader similar to the one I saw above on the Tube a few years ago. He said he was greeted by sharp intakes of breath and horror when he showed it to some bookish friends. Yet Naomi, a writer who also did creative things with games had an iLiad and she was a real convert to it. She said whenever she got it out on the Tube people stared at it and asked her what it was.

I must admit I had no idea what the e-reader was when I took a picture of it in November 2005. It turns out that the guy was way ahead of his time with his Vaio Sony U101. At the time this was a Japanese only release and about the size of two DVD's weighing less than 2 pounds! So very much like a book.

When I saw the newer Sony Ebook reader for the first time last week (Tom Reynolds had one from the US which we pored over in the post Eden Lake screening pub chat). I had that sort of shuddery instant recoil response as to me it just didn't look or feel like a book. Yet the guys with me had a major "nerdgasm" over it.

There was a similar response last night. People could see the potential and loved that you could carry 100 books around at once and it's handy for London Underground commutes or holiday travel.


One of my favourite authors Kate Pullinger was there (a shock when I saw her as I had no idea she would be at the evening) & she felt quite depressed & let down when seeing it. We'd all seen the hype about these readers for years with headlines screaming that it meant "the death of the book", yet for her it was cold looking with no colour. In spite of the moleskin cover it didn't feel like a book to her.

We had an interesting discussion about whether sales of the e-reader would take off like sales of the iPod which is now a standard fare for most commuters. Amazon expect to sell 400,000 of their Kindle devices this year and that's the same amount of iPods sold when they launched. However, in year two Apple sold 900,000 and in year three, 4.3 million. We all doubted that this would happen with e-readers.

Books in multi-media formats and creative reading was discussed, where people got the opportunity to interact with authors & books. Up until then no one had really mentioned blogs, so I piped up & said that some individual blogs got thousands of readers each day & if consumers were brave enough to "consume" stories in this way, why couldn't publishers be braver about publishing more blogs or even supporting younger authors who wanted blogs?

I'm sure other people at the event will blog about the debate much more eloquently than me, but one thing was certain - nothing was certain. No one knew what the future of the book was and what the next big reading "thing" would be for the UK.


When I left Random House after a lovely buffet & wine, I suddenly remembered that they published Rose Tremain, another author I like. You've probably seen her ads for Orange all over the Tube recently


The ads try to show how who we are is made up from so many other people. Rose says "I am the eyes of my readers on the Underground".


It would be exciting if e-books and e-readers enabled those Underground readers to interact & engage more with Rose and other authors. Unlike the internet, currently there's no sharing or response back to the book & its author.

On the Tube home, I bumped into Chris Meade and his wife Hattie from Snug & Outdoor who had also been at the event. We chatted about blogs & the Tube & stuff and it turns out that Chris Meade's mum - Dorothy Meade - edited "Lines on the Underground" (pictured on my bookshelf above). It's one of my absolute favourite anthologies about the London Underground and has been my bible of Tube references in literature for years! It was a lovely surprising end to a fab night. Many thanks to Random House for hosting & also thanks to Chris for organising it all.

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Tuesday, September 09, 2008 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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London Transport Museum Auction

Thanks to the London Transport Museum for telling me about the auction they launched on eBay on Friday where you can bid for some genuine Tube station signs including Shepherd's Bush & Lancaster Gate, have dinner for two at the Gherkin, learn to drive a First Capital Connect Train and have a Routemaster bus for the evening. At time of blogging this only had one bid - which is astonishing really!


The "once in a lifetime" opportunity to have a tour of the closed Aldwych Tube Station for up to five people is back on the auction again.

"Fantastic extremely rare opportunity to see inside this beautifully preserved piece of London’s history, and hear the stories and history associated with it from an expert guide.

Aldwych station first opened on 30 November 1907, and was then named ‘Strand’. It acted as the terminus of a branch line from Holborn. Architecturally interesting, built in the arts and crafts style, the station was built on the site of the old Strand Theatre.


The station was renamed Aldwych on 19 May 1915. Trains served the station until 30 September 1994, when it was closed by London Underground.

Since closure, the station has been used as a film set in such famous productions as ‘V for Vendetta’. It is not however open to the public."

There's also a number of other interesting things if you like your transport stuff, such as a behind the scenes tour of the Fen Line, a trip on a 1938 Art Deco special Tube train, which I was lucky enough to do in April (the upcoming one is blogged here)


Plus an opportunity to drive a bus on a state-of-the-art bus simulator and an take part in a Hitachi high speed train tour and simulator experience!


Visit the London Transport Museum eBay Auction now to see everything on offer & place your bids. Bidding on most of the items in the auction closes on the 15th September 2008.

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Monday, September 08, 2008 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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