A friend from college suggested I submit a paper on Tubewhore to the Literary London conference in July.  It's been ten years since I presented to an academic audience, and felt the creaking weight of those years as I tried to remember how to write an abstract in 300 words without sounding like a total prig...But I can't have done too badly, thanks to some hand-holding from roseyphoenixand midnightxpress telling me I can actually be smart and funny and I've got peering witheringly over my glasses like all good academics absolutely down, as in mid-April I had a very excitable unofficial response from the organiser. 


Anyway, the good news is that I had an official email this morning to say the paper has been accepted.  The bad news is that it's going to cost about £200 (conference fees, accomodation, fancy dinner, train fare).  I still feel it's worth doing, although honestly, as much for my ego as any other reason...so I have booked holiday time and now have the perfect reason to knock out the top end of the Metropolitan line.  Anyone got any fabulous ideas for things to do in London in July?  

Neasden on the Jubilee and across to Stonebridge Park on the Jubilee, by way of one of the Wonders of the World:





..after finding art treasures in the pedestrian tunnels at Dollis Hill, we close up the final gap on the Jubilee Line by conquering the ticket barriers at Neasden.

...so Willesden Green...having skipped back to adventures on the DLR in March, I return regular readers to my more recent travels last week to complete the last few stations on the Jubilee line.

First stop, the fabled Willesden Green...


  ... then up to Dollis Hill.

Back in the summer, I picked up a leaflet on Dollis Hill House at the Kensal Green Cemetery Open Day.  The house itself, weekend retreat of Gladstone for many years, was badly damaged by fire in the late 1990's but there's a campaign for its restoration for local use for people using the park.  The park was part of the grounds of the estate and was bought out by the council to preserve some open green space when the area was becoming rapidly urbanised from the previously completely rural farmlands of Gladstone's time, that had once supplied London with milk and hay.  Mark Twain stayed in the house too in 1900, and described is as as close to Paradise as one could get here on earth.  Don't think he'd think the same now, but we didn't really stray past the tube station itself as there was plenty to see there.

If I tell people I use my free time to visit tube stations the way some people visit stately homes, they get this look on their face as though they are talking to someone who has conversations with the pixies, or even more socially unacceptable; a trainspotter.  I understand their misgivings -  I like to walk around the odd National Trust property myself, but the lives of the people who lived in these places are very remote from mine.  Corbusier called houses 'machines for living in' and these grand piles are 'machines for displaying social power', oh which I have none.  Plus I'm aware that given my social background I would likely to have been dead by 30 worked to an early grave as  with most peasants. 

Visiting tube stations though, I appreciate their function, the meaning they have to Londoners, even if for the most part it has become invisible through familairty.  It was the coming of the railways that pushed the speed of conversion of this land from pasture to housing estate, with populations going from under 3,000 inhabitants in the parish of Willesden in 1841,  to over 15,000 1871, in 1891 over 60,000, and by 1905 over 100,000;  Willesden Green tube, opening in 1879.  Without cheap fast travel into London, working people just could not have been able to escape inners slums to better housing.  The railways have shaped this landscape, shaped human usage of it. When scanning accommodation ads, how often is it that what you look for first is how close to a tube you are, and what line it's on.

...anyway, musings on land-usage aside, we don't have to stray far from Dollis Hill for our fill of culture because the exit tunnel walls are decorated with murals of OS maps and star charts - just fantastic stuff.  It might not be Canelletos or Titains painted on grand ceilings, but it's something to be enjoyed by any traveller anyday.

The latest map of the system as of January 08, separates Canary Wharf DLR and Canary Wharf Jubilee Line stations as they are a fair walk apart...which is what Gaby & I discovered accidentally when switching lines up to Green Park.  Directions are unclear, leading you through sub levels of shopping malls, with very little clear signage; all very disconcerting as the directions seem to be pointing you into an office block.  Eventually you pop out onto a wide Plaza, looking more like Berlin than London and I finally recognised where I was enough to find the curved mouth of the Jubilee Line station.

As it's a distinct 'new' station on the map, and the sheer fash we went through in finding it, convinced we were lost and going to be horrifically tea for our tea appointment, I'm bloody well counting the DLR Canary Wharf as a bonus station.   We certainly passed through sets of ticket barriers.

It also gives me an excuse to put up a bunch of the pictures of architecture of the area that we took.

So, from DLR station...


...and onwards to finish up in the rather different decor of Browns Hotel, of warm wood panelling, comfy sofas, soft lighting and a proper tea

Cutter Head in the entrance to Cutty Sark DLR in way of signage...


From being on the surface on the DLR stations we'd visited so far today, Cutty Sark is underground.  Platforms signs - apologies for the blurriness - indict there's plenty of things to do here, but sadly the eponymous ship itself isn't one of them at the moment, being that it caught fire not so long ago...I think it fitting that Gaby and are conclude out tubewhoring for the day at at station named for a tea clipper, that itself is named for a type of chemise.  We are certainly the only people on the station who might own such a thing...Fall into conversation with a very friendly sort who is fascinated in a charming way with a pair of trad goths appearing on the platform..  We get him to oblige with a photo as he expounds on how more people should dress more extravagantly in everyday life... sentiment I can wholeheartedly endorse.






And then back to the DLR, up to Canary Wharf to change to the Jubilee to green park for tea at Browns with Liza...

Beginning with meeting G at Liverpool Street, took the Central Line to Stratford for the DLR down to Greenwich town centre in search of girlie shopping and museums dedicated to pretty things.

The DLR remains fairly uncollected, so we began, mostly at random with Langdon Park, a new station only opened in December 2007.  Langdon Park doesn't really have anything about it that would indicate it's newness, it blends in seamlessly with the corporate European toy train blandness of much of the rest of the DLR. From Wikipedia: 'The station has 90m platforms connected by a lightweight transparent replacement bridge link from Carmen Street and Hay Currie Street which were all pre-fabricated off-site and lifted into position over two weekends to reduce service disruption.'  ...and this is the problem with much modern building.  Not to mention the fact that it seem to have a surfboard sticking out the roof.

Monday morning rolls around, the snow had cleared and trains seemed to be operating normally again.  It's always pleasing to the soul to not have to go to work on a Monday.  There's something especially decadent and self indulgent about absconding from the start of the working week in favour of pet projects, even if this particular activity of choice finds me heading against the flow of commuter traffic towards Kilburn a little after noon.  

I've never been to Kilburn before, or had friends that lived here, so I have no conception of what it is like to live in as parts of London go.  I have dim associations of it with trendy media types in the 'champagne socialists' of Islington variety, but this might be totally spurious, and founded on nothing more substantial than Private Eye strip cartoons.

So, I had no idea what to expect when midnightxpress and I popped out of the exit.   It feels residential, like Hampstead or Blackheath, in that 'seedy-made-hip-again-and-cleaned-up' fashion.  The most exciting thing however are the murals. Especially love the starground painted on the span of the bridge

 

Next train to arrive terminates one stop further at Willesden Green.

I have long wondered about Willesden Green.  Many trains terminate here so over the years the sing-song voice of the train announcer has permeated my subconscious;  she says 'this train is for .../pause to increase suspense and tension/...WILLesden Green...with a dramatic showman flourish to the 'Willesden'.  It's the sort of verbal 'ta dah!' you would expect with announcing: 'next stop... Venice!', or 'all aboard for Paris!'  What is there to be so excited about at Willesden Green?  I have been deeply curious for years.  Maybe it's something only train people know about? ...but finally, as we dash from the warmth of the waiting room through stinging sleet, my anticipation is about to be fulfilled...

There was a for the weekend plan...it involved spending Sunday afternoon playing on trains with cohorts, with Monday reserved for shopping at the wholesalers I usually can't get to on my weekend jaunts, before an elegant tea and home.

Woke up on Sunday to find that for once the forecast for snow had been correct.  Whereas Friday had been almost balmy, Saturday had grown gradually colder and more wintery  - especially during a 40 minute wait for a later train at Wimbledon due to a cable fire at Waterloo where I lost feeling in my feet and almost my temper* - and overnight a thick dusting of snow had fallen. 

The view from the kitchen window:


Now, I know to many of my Canadian friends, the definition of what constitutes 'heavy snowfall' will be somewhat different, but this is London, and the slightest case of anything akin to adverse weather throws all transport into confusion and general headless chicken behaviour.  There were already rail replacement bus services to factor in, but we decided to brave it and wrapped up warm in Doctor Who scarves and extra mittens to take on the Jubilee line after failing_angel had already called to wisely baulk at doing the DLR as originally planned.

Once outside however, where big fat flakes were still coming down and getting into eyes it was our resolve we found melting away in the April sun...we made it as far as the local cafe for a fine breakfast of poached eggs and fried things, and from there dragged to Surbiton train station, but at the site of people shivering in the cold waiting for the bus replacement gave up all pretense that we were actually going to go anywhere. The good old-fashioned British spirit of 'bugger this for a game of soldiers' kicked in and we headed home to lie on the sofa, watch junk telly and stare out the window as flurries came and went through out the day.  Pair of wusses!



Score for the day: weather,  1  Tubewhore, nil.

A belated Mother's Day treat was for mum and I to journey to London to see the Ideal Home Exhibition, check out her favourite US shop, Whole Foods (or Whole Paycheck as I have heard it described), which has a new branch over here in Kensington and hit Borough Market, before Mum heads home and I had a few days in the big city to myself.

I found us a deal on an hotel in Ealing, so the Friday morning, before joining the thronging hoards at Earl's Court, I persuaded the Aged P to go backwards one stop from Ealing Common to mop up North Ealing.  I'd not seen Ealing Common in daylight before, so was pleased to notice leaded lights with roundels, and pretty tiling.




However, from this Modernist beginning, of  geometric brick and curved concrete platform supports, we discover North Ealing to be a cricket pavilion.



 

To file under 'Things you Don't See Everyday'

After the brush with the law at Wood Green, we press on our way to closing up the gap on the Piccadilly Line.  Next stop Turnpike Lane.   Upstairs, the signage to the bus station above the station is enthusiastically huge and red, the font sized for the hard of thinking, the visual equivalent of shouting in someone's face 'it's behind you, stoopid'.

So, after a brief stop in Bounds Green we trundle back down to Wood Green.  Home to BBC rehearsal rooms etc.  As soon as we pop out upstairs I notice a bevy of hi-vi jacketed police, and in these security conscious times, wonder if this will prove  an interesting occasion.   I am not to be disappointed.


I stand beneath the station signage and G heads across the road to get a wide shot of the curved frontage.  As he's firing off shots one of the bobbies peels off and heads across the road.  I immediately think he's on an intercept course with the tall fella, think I'm just being paranoid as copper isn't in any kind of hurry, and am proved right as copper catches up with G on the traffic island and conversation ensues.  Fuzz talks to G, G turns to point at me, and I give a cheery wave back, Fuzz pulls out paperwork.  I can't just stand there, so take a stroll over to discover that G is getting a stop and search for the suspicious behaviour of taking photos of a local landmark in full view of a handful of police.  How dumb a crim would he have to be to be standing on a traffic island, wearing black, being an inconspicious six foot bleeding seven, carrying out nefarious activities with the police in their day glow stylishness being right bloody there? ...anyway, after losing my cool with the community policeman that stopped B taking pics at Waterloo, I remain chipper as G is written up.  I'm keeping the documentation as a Tubewhore artifact.  Helps that G has interesting ID to show...

Not living in London myself anymore, I hadn't seen the poster campaign urging Londoners to report people taking pictures of landmarks.  Seriously, what the hell is going on?  We seemed to have slipped sideways into Eastern Europe during the cold war where we're being encouraged to rat out the hordes of Italian exchange students taking photos of Nelson's Column.  There seems to be plenty of online backlash, but in all seriousness this new approach of civilain surveillance is desperately concerning. Who needs terrorists when we just have media hysteria to do all their work for them.  Amusingly, back underground - where we take loads of pictures thankeeverymuch...I spot a page from 1984, which has been photocopied and stuck up around the platforms; how very apt. 

   

...this does mean that exterior shots of Wood Green were limited to what we got before police intervention...when I do Arnos Grove and Southgate, I'll get more wide shots of the Wood Green station itself as it's rather lovely. 

Downstairs continues, and indeed expands, the vague Egyptian feel of the line, as the tiling colour are green and cream stripes reminding me of death masks and such-like.  Not so shiny and refurbished as Bounds Green though, but I also sort of like the scuffed-up grubbiness.  London is supposed to be a bit care-worn and battered looking...







 

Starting from Caledonian Road, decide to knock out the top of the Piccadilly as far as my travelling companion's travelcard would go - in this case Bounds Green and work back.  This would leave Arnos Grove and Southgate a tantalising pair isolated at the far Northern end of the line, but it would pick off four stations at least.

So, a drear Sunday afternoon, we arrive at Bounds Green.  It's one of those days were the sky is moody, but the sun occasionally staggeringly bright. I've subsequently learnt that the stations we're visiting today are part of the Cockfosters Extension in the 30's, done in the Modernist style. That bit is obvious as soon as you see the clean brick 'box' style - but unlike the 70's Brutalist style of building brick boxes, there's something warmer and more humanist in these structures.  They are  welcoming  rather than alienating environments.


Bounds Green has real 30's glamour.  It helps that the station has been refurbished, and the tiling cleaned recently so looks new and gleaming - all the posters spaces on the walls are blank still and the colour scheme is channelling Clarice Cliff in primrose and orange. There are the lovely bronzed deco uplighters, and the curve to the archways onto the platforms has an almost Egyptian feel to it - these curved walls with tiled edges would prove to be the architectural theme for the afternoon - although what is lovely about them is that  each station is everso slightly different. 

In case one was wondering what the going rate for a tubewhore was:



 

Sunday morning and I was off on a two-fold mission...to both check out venues for to hatch my Plans for World Domination and to collect a few more stations on the Piccadilly line.  With brain busy with Evil Machinations, I blithely got on the first bus from L's house which turned out to be a 19.  Realised that this didn't go via South Ken, missed the stop at Knightsbridge so took the chance to hop out at Hyde Park Corner instead.

Always loved the phrase 'Hyde Park Corner'; it's another Olde London Place name that reeks of Dickensian streets scenes and pea-soupers.  It's also one of the stations collected on a disposable camera back in December 2006, that turned out to be little but grey fog, so this seems a fortuitous chance to collect it again properly.  I was sad not to have had the pictures I took of the tiling come out in any usable form..

HPC is one of those stations that doesn't have a surface building.  Instead there's a portico into the netherworld, and because  this is a nice part of London there are graceful leaves carved into the walls and it doesn't smell of wee.

I've been waiting for this weekend with mounting anticipation since I first heard about it in July.  Once a year, the London Transport Museum's Depot in Acton opens its door to all and sundry.  The imagination runs wild...somewhere in deepest Acton there's a warehouse stuffed with all manner of transport-related heavy machinery, equipment, street furniture, signage, posters, and any other unknown bits and bobs, scale models and sundry peculiarities that have a home nowhere else. 

It was too good to miss...and from posting about it here, it seemed I was not the only one getting excited at the idea of playing with the old trains.  However, by a joyful failure of  joined up thinking, Transport for London have scheduled engineering works that takes out the  Piccadilly Line is westbound between Hammersmith and Acton Town this weekend, meaning anyone travelling to the Depot has to figure out the bus replacement service.  Just genius...

...still even with this extra hiccup I still arrive before anyone else I'm scheduled to meet.  I queue in the drizzle with all the other enthusiasts and watch the miniature steam tube  puff up and down...


An absolutely a wonderful day - I can't wait to go again next year.  And as we discovered on the way out, there's tube signage outside, so I'm claiming this as a special bonus stop.

Next weekend, the 8th & 9th March is the Open Day over at the London Transport Museum in Acton.  All manner of hijinks and transport-related shenangins going on - model trains, model railways, art collections... 

More details here: http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/visiting/86.aspx

I know that at the Sewing Machine Museum people were keen on attending, so possibly catch up with people there. I think there were even threats of a picnic if the weather is kind.  I'm planning on going on the Saturday.  I might even bake muffins...and the following Tuesday is my birthday so if people want to shower me with cards and presents I shall blush modestly while secretly loving the attention. 

I've been looking forward to this Open Day since July  because I have become a tragic transport geek, only I'm in impratical shoes...not many hairies wear heels.     

Then in the evening the tube-nerdiness continues with:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=7838373117

 

From Finchley Road on Sunday, we'd zoomed down the Metropolitan to Baker Street to pick up the Bakerloo over to Paddington.  On the platform was an archway - probably load bearing, or something else highly important to stop the roof falling on us, but it seemed an unnecessary portal...I like finding these odd details...naturally I walked through it, just in case it was interdimensional.

 
Again low light made taking pictures with my little camera difficult. 

In small type on the wall. Lovely burnt orange tiling...


Down the stairs to the Bakerloo line:

One of the  ideas for Sunday was to go up the Jubilee Line and visit the Hindu temple that's about equidistant from either Neasden tube station, and Stonebridge Park on the Bakerloo, but a series of transport delays eat up time.  Firstly, I can't get into the bathroom because Lemmy is doing his ablutions:



Any attempts to brush my teeth in the sink are meant with baleful stares and a mean left hook...

Eventually, after a negotiation on bathroom space and a  fine breakfast fromvelvetdahlia I'm trundling down the road to find somewhere to buy a travelcard.  I pick a newsagent at random and am flabberghasted to find the person behind the counter is someone I used to work with at the cinema in Fulham.  There's one of those 'staring open-mouthed in disbelief 'moments as she also can't believe I've just walked into her shop in Boston Manor far west on the Piccadilly Line.  There's much squealing and hugging across the counter as we just repeat each others names as though we've summoned each other by incantation - especially ironic is that I am going to metmidnightxpress this morning who is also an ex-Fulham UGC compatriot.   She's so flustered by my materialisation that she nearly stamps my travelcard the 14th November 2006.

London is supposedly this vast metropolis where everyone is a stranger, and yet I regularly bump into old friends and acquaintances - school-friends from Cornwall, people I worked with decades ago, people I know who don't live in London...even vodex of this parish (IIRC) was in a tube carriage with me an overheard my conversation about this art project before he found this blog...life is a series of astonishing co-incidences. I suppose that given the size of London and all the variations on chance encounter that are made possible by the sheer number of people sloshing around the city that we shouldn't be surprised at the frequency of bumping into people we know on the street, but it is still an ever-amazing occurence when you crash into someone you know from Bodmin on St Martin's Lane, or find yourself in a train carriage with an ex-boss.

Still slightly dazed, I then spend the next 40 minutes waiting for a bus, and wonderment has time to settle into annoyance at the morning slipping past.  Transport woes increase when I realise that my planned route is impossible due to engineering works taking out the whole Circle line and the Edgware Road branch of the District line.  Further hopes of a clever alternative are quoshed at Hammersmith when the PA system reminds us that there's no service on the H&C from Hammersmith today - so effectively any direct route into Paddington from West London is frelled.  I travel all the way into Piccadilly Circus and back on myself via the Bakerloo to eventually arrive at Paddington nearly an hour late. I'm more than a little fractious, so after leaving baggage at left luggage G and I settle for a soothing cup of tea to imporve my disposition before renegotiating today's plans now that we are behind schedule and I'm in a bad mood.  Tea helps...time with my friend to chat about frivolity helps even more.  We hatch a new plan and set off underground to conquer a few more stations.  I leave you this clue to deduce where we emerged:

The Morden Extension, conceived with a visual conformity to the platforms: 

In order, heading south from Clapham South down to Morden: