The London Underground

I once had an idea for a blog about the on-goings of the tube (also known as London Underground, of course). I take the tube to and from work at the other diagonal corner of London to where I live, and have done so for a year or two, and so the tube is somewhat nothing particularly new for me. Some people would suggest this is mad and silly, imagine having to commute across London for work, twice a day. I find it comforting; I can flee work of an evening and board the magically tubular device which takes me (according to a fab website I've just discovered) about 5.7 miles away from work. This feeling is one of particular euphoria on a Friday evening, with the weekend ahead of me.

Alas I sidetrack ('scuse the pun). So, everyday I travel about 5.7 miles to and from work on the tube - that's 10 miles a day, 50 miles in the average working week and 2500+ miles a year. Not that I'm one for statistics or milleage per se, but this is a lot of time to be spending in the company (if being tightly squeezed into a small, metallic, moving device with hundreds of perfect strangers has anything to do with being in company). Which brings me to my main point of all of this.. just like with most events, gatherings, public or private celebrations, so much about the tube is about the people and the characters. And how there are some..

But before I get onto all that, check out this superb website! Its one of those ideas I've always had on the tip of my tongue, but its never quite materialised: http://www.tubewalker.com If you chose to walk rather than, err 'tube', you can check out the best walking route here. There's also all sorts of stats and numbers (for those of you who like that sort of thing) and tube NEWS. I can feel my inner tube geek getting ever so excited... Ah. I've just read the tag line which makes the whole thing make a lot more sense: "Between June and August 2008 I walked the entire Tube network, station to station and line by line, and this is the story of that walk". And I just enjoyed it for its pure randomness. Love it.


I'll be back onto those characters soon...