Captain’s Blog

W-w-wankers, They’re All Wankers January 26, 2010

The thread title is one of the many things that the Amateur Transplants have to say about London’s underground / overground / Wombling free transport network. While making my way home from work earlier today, I passed various things on the Underground that made me think “I should blog about that”. This happens frequently, but the posts usually don’t come to fruition through some combination of laziness and forgetfulness. Figured I should get around to actually doing it this time; so here are some random thoughts from me, loosely linked to each other by the London Underground.

I work on Old Street; as you can guess with fairly simple logic then, I frequently find myself travelling through Old Street tube station. Any of you who happen to be stalker fans of mine, and have the uncontrolable urge to go and lick things in places where I have been – it’s the stop just after Angel on the Northern Line, heading outbound from Kings Cross. I usually take the left-hand escellator (and touch the hand-rail on the left side, lickers!); as with every other escallator in the underground network, there are a series of posters in frames on the walls.

It’s probably worth throwing in a brief aside here: I am constantly confused and disorientated by semi-conscious attempts to work out whether or not these posters are in fact perpendicular to gravity (ie. parallel to the “ground”), or if they’re at a slightly wonky angle. While riding the underground escallators, I do tend to feel like I’m leaning back slightly – some optical effect of the sloping tunnel they move through, perhaps? – and do spend a lot of time looking up the escallator; having the posters angled would make a certain amount of sense. Unfortunately, it is nigh impossible to tell, since the only lines nearby are diagonal, following the slope of the incline. I may have to take a spirit level to work with me one of these days.

Anyhow. There is a poster part way down the left-hand escallator, informing people of a particular cosmetic surgery company, and how having people cut on your face and put squeezy stress toys in your boobs can make you feel better about yourself. Someone has rather amusingly placed a sticker across this poster, advising people “Don’t buy this sexist shyte”, or words to that effect. It isn’t the first time I’ve seen sticker annotations on this poster, on posters in general, or indeed around escallators: I remember seeing a “Mind the Step” sticker on an escallator, that gave me a hearty chuckle. What impresses me here however is the sheer amount of thought and preparation that went into it. It’s on the down escallator, which is moving – as escallators do – so there would have been insufficient time to write the sticker while passing it. That suggests a degree of pre-meditation; I wonder to what degree. Did the person go past this poster day after day, and finally snap, preparing the sticker and slapping it on? Were they so overcome with rage at the implications of the poster that they worked their way through the labyrinth of tunnels, went back up to ground level, and rode down the escallator again, just to deface said poster?

I suppose I’ll never know.

Moving on, some of you may be familiar with the fact that I mishear things from time to time, often with amusing consequences – I misheard “Lesbian venues” as “Lesbian values” today, when finding out what people were talking about (I was somewhat disappointed to not end up talking about the philosophical nature of female homosexuality, actually). I’m not entirely sure why this is: whether it is a lack of concentration on my part, an indication of some sort of hearing loss, or just my brain being particularly weird. Whatever the reason, I’m constantly reminded of it whenever I board the train at Old Street. The tube lady always announces “This is Old Street. Change here for Morefield’s Eye Hospital.” The first time I went to work, I misheard that as Change here for Morpheus Eye Hospital. Consciously, I know that I’m hearing it wrong every time, but I don’t care: ingorance is bliss, and it’s nice to have something to smile about a few minutes before arriving at work.

I used to have a tradition of ranting in every blog post; on the theme of the London Underground I have two, though neither of them are connected with the staff, quality of cleanliness, or the timetabling and delays. Instead, I want to rant about my fellow passengers, and the little ticket barriers at the entrances and exits.

You can always spot a Londoner, a very drunk Australian told me as I came back from work just before New Years, Because they don’t smile. I think he was wrong. I think you can spot a Londoner by how close to the damned doors they stand while waiting to get on a train. Now yeah, everyone wants to get on quickly, so that they can squeeze into those seats with no elbow room, rather than stand like a penguin for their entire journey. I get that. But what seems to escape them is the simple logic that people need to get off the fucking train. And more importantly, they need to get off first else there will be nowhere for you to stand / sit / lie / levitate. Londoners, please: stand back a bit; leave a gap so people can escape – and the old lady that smacked me in the shin with her walking stick for trying to get off the train before she was able to get on: fuck you.

My other rant is with the ticket barriers. Now, as far as I’m concerned, Euston is a magical place where dreams are made; sometimes I bypass the shortcut from the London Overground to the London Underground, just so I can walk through the main… foyer? Concourse? Whatever. The big hall place where everyone stands, staring at the clock and the board with the train times. I’ve been to several stations in London now. Kings Cross has some fantastic-looking platforms, but the waiting area is cramped, claustrophobic, and shitty. St Pancras is awesome, but is more like an airport or a continental station – or, hell, a shopping mall – than a train station. Waterloo is just confusing as hell, and for some reason reminds me of the of the NEC in Birmingham. But Euston? The platforms are pretty shitty, but the foyer is grand, with a high roof, loads of natural light, and most of the time it has pleanty of space to weave around between people and pretend that you’re in some awesome movie, like the bit with the locker in Men in Black, or the scene at the start of one of the Bourne films, with the sniper behind the revolving sign.

So yeah. Euston is great. But they’re stupid with the ticket barriers. When you come off from Platform 9/10/etc, you go through a set of barriers, and can either continue to the epicness of the main station building, or can go down some stairs and through a little subway to the tube station. You then touch through another set of barriers, and get the tube. Why is that a problem? Well, aside from the fact that the barriers close so quickly that I’m scared they’ll break my arm if I don’t dash through them fast enough… as soon as you come out of this subway, all of the barriers near you are exit barriers. You have to fight your way through all of the people leaving the tube network, which is about as easy as swimming across a set of white water rapids; then you’re squashed in with all of the people buying tickets, and channeled through maybe four or five barriers.

Now, I may be some crazy radical new guy who has only just moved to London, but would it not make sense to either a) flip a couple of the exit barriers, so that people heading from the subway can sneak through, or b) move the barriers at platform 9/10/etc, so that you don’t need to go through any to get to the tube station? I can swap from the Bakerloo Line to the London Overground at Harrow & Wealdstone without using my Oyster Card; why can I not do the same at Euston?

Okay. That’s my rant done.

And also my post it seems, since I can’t think of anything else to bore you with. Just as a final piece of information though: there will be a pool, so you can place bets on how long it will be until my next blog post. I will be accepting bribes in the form of money, chocolate or fruit pastels in order to fix the result of this pool, or in sexual favours: but only from attractive people.

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Addendum:

Dude. That was totally 1480 words. If I’d realised, I’d have spun it out for twenty more to hit 1500. Oh wait. I just did.