Tubewhore (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} tubewhore) wrote,@ 2007-01-13 16:51:00 |
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| Entry tags: | bond street, central line, lancaster gate, london stories, marble arch, platform tiling |
Marble Arch, Lancaster Gate and Bond Street
Above ground, Marble Arch is of course one end of the shopping mecca that is Oxford Street, and especially Selfridges.
Selfridges was one of the first proper department stores in London. In the mid-nineteenth century, department stores were new shopping emporia designed to make leisured middle class women feel at home enough to spend their husband's money - previously shops were not so female friendly - and of course the new transport links into town meant women dwelling in more outlying areas could travel into the centre with ease. I have several very interesting books on the development of 19thC shopping habits, none of which I have on me today, so we stick to mucking about on the platforms which, like Finsbury Park have a range of bright and cheery fascias.
A surprising number of trains arrive and disgorge passengers as we document each of the different designs.
>
Unlike Finsbury Park, though, these are printed onto metal fascia boards rather than the more labour intensive mosaics, and while they are bright and fun, that does spill over into garish...my favourite is the more restrained grey and yellow.
One stop further up is Lancaster Gate. I've been through here only once before.
A large chunk of my degree was paid for temping for a large company that held its annual Christmas Conference here. It's a very male-orientated company, built around 'direct marketing sales', which is jargon for 'people knocking on your door and bullying you into buying stuff'. One year I was invited to the conference as the guest of the Edinburgh team manager.
T'was surreal experience. Firstly, even by eight in the morning the Glasgow team had run up a bar tab of over eight grand and were fighting with each other, fists clenched around wads of fifty pound notes over who was paying for what. Even at hotel bar prices that's ridiculous and one of them was later hospitalised with alcohol poisioning. It seemed to be some form of badge of honour for the Scots guys to outdrink the English.
In the actual conference hall itself, of the 700 attendees, I was one of only three women. I walked in and felt the eyes of all of them turn on me, and you could feel the testerone level rise. I'd spent much of the previous three years travelling around the country from hotel to hotel teaching pretty much everyone in the room how to use the companies new EPOS system on a two day course I'd helped develop. It was one of my more entertaining jobs. The guys I taught are of my father's generation, not comfortable with being in a classroom with a computer, not happy about being taught by a young, blonde girl, and of course let loose in a hotel overnight with expenses. As well as learning a lot about teaching methods, I also learnt a lot more about ego-wrangling, and developing a nifty two-step in order to keep out of the clutches of randy middle-aged salemen. I strongly suspected that there was some kind of book open within the teams to see who could bed me. None of them won, despite the late night knocks on my door, the stuffed animals or seductive notes. I stamped on any number of footsies under the dinner table... I learnt a lot on how women travelling on business are treated as well.
And so, with the book still open, there I was stuck in a room with bloody all of them, all tipsy on champagne cocktails for breakfast. It's no exaggeration to say that after the speechifying, and more alcohol, I was literally mobbed in the hallway by several hundred guys wanting a Christmas kiss and a hug. It was terrifying...a stampede of drunken double glazing salesmen advanced towards me with a hungry look in their eye...I had bruises by the end of the day. Like many a gal before me, I took refuge in the ladies, but hell those management skills have certainly come in handy over the years.
There were other women at the function, only they were 'dancers' dressed in teeny little santa outfits, who mingled between tables, and they had a different look in their eyes. They stared daggers at me and the only two other women there as we wouldn't be tucking a Christmas tip into their white furry garters. Women police women. A very very odd day...and not necessarily an experience I'd care to repeat.
new manicure...
From here one more stop to an even more exclusive shopping area, Bond Street. Bond Street has no surface building of it's own, disgorging instead into a shopping centre.
Great place for shopping for shoes. There's a button shop nearby that sells incredible things from 17thC onwards. It's one of those incredibly old fashioned shops where everything is piled on shelves in brown cardboard boxes, run by a tiny old chap who knows every piece of stock amongst the thousand upon thousands of tiny items in the inventory. But we don't hang about, instead we go back downstairs & switch to the Jubilee Line for Waterloo for the trip to Bank.
Now many of you may indeed scratch your heads at this choice, as at Bond Street we were already on the Central Line, a mere 5 stops from Bank in a straight line; why travel three stops Southwards and change lines? Because, from Waterloo one can use The Drain, the colloquial term for the Waterloo and City Line, coloured a fetching shade of aqua on the map. I've already 'done' Waterloo, so getting to Bank via the Central Line would mean I'd not ever travel The Drain as it consists of a link between precisely two stops: it goes only between Waterloo and Bank and is the shortest line on the network...and it has travelators!
T'was surreal experience. Firstly, even by eight in the morning the Glasgow team had run up a bar tab of over eight grand and were fighting with each other, fists clenched around wads of fifty pound notes over who was paying for what. Even at hotel bar prices that's ridiculous and one of them was later hospitalised with alcohol poisioning. It seemed to be some form of badge of honour for the Scots guys to outdrink the English.
In the actual conference hall itself, of the 700 attendees, I was one of only three women. I walked in and felt the eyes of all of them turn on me, and you could feel the testerone level rise. I'd spent much of the previous three years travelling around the country from hotel to hotel teaching pretty much everyone in the room how to use the companies new EPOS system on a two day course I'd helped develop. It was one of my more entertaining jobs. The guys I taught are of my father's generation, not comfortable with being in a classroom with a computer, not happy about being taught by a young, blonde girl, and of course let loose in a hotel overnight with expenses. As well as learning a lot about teaching methods, I also learnt a lot more about ego-wrangling, and developing a nifty two-step in order to keep out of the clutches of randy middle-aged salemen. I strongly suspected that there was some kind of book open within the teams to see who could bed me. None of them won, despite the late night knocks on my door, the stuffed animals or seductive notes. I stamped on any number of footsies under the dinner table... I learnt a lot on how women travelling on business are treated as well.
And so, with the book still open, there I was stuck in a room with bloody all of them, all tipsy on champagne cocktails for breakfast. It's no exaggeration to say that after the speechifying, and more alcohol, I was literally mobbed in the hallway by several hundred guys wanting a Christmas kiss and a hug. It was terrifying...a stampede of drunken double glazing salesmen advanced towards me with a hungry look in their eye...I had bruises by the end of the day. Like many a gal before me, I took refuge in the ladies, but hell those management skills have certainly come in handy over the years.
There were other women at the function, only they were 'dancers' dressed in teeny little santa outfits, who mingled between tables, and they had a different look in their eyes. They stared daggers at me and the only two other women there as we wouldn't be tucking a Christmas tip into their white furry garters. Women police women. A very very odd day...and not necessarily an experience I'd care to repeat.
new manicure...
From here one more stop to an even more exclusive shopping area, Bond Street. Bond Street has no surface building of it's own, disgorging instead into a shopping centre.
Great place for shopping for shoes. There's a button shop nearby that sells incredible things from 17thC onwards. It's one of those incredibly old fashioned shops where everything is piled on shelves in brown cardboard boxes, run by a tiny old chap who knows every piece of stock amongst the thousand upon thousands of tiny items in the inventory. But we don't hang about, instead we go back downstairs & switch to the Jubilee Line for Waterloo for the trip to Bank.
Now many of you may indeed scratch your heads at this choice, as at Bond Street we were already on the Central Line, a mere 5 stops from Bank in a straight line; why travel three stops Southwards and change lines? Because, from Waterloo one can use The Drain, the colloquial term for the Waterloo and City Line, coloured a fetching shade of aqua on the map. I've already 'done' Waterloo, so getting to Bank via the Central Line would mean I'd not ever travel The Drain as it consists of a link between precisely two stops: it goes only between Waterloo and Bank and is the shortest line on the network...and it has travelators!
