Tubewhore

On trying to appear far cleverer than I actually am...

2008-05-07T11:44:24Z

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?

Completing the Jubilee Line - Kilburn to Neasden: Part 3

2008-04-19T21:32:31Z

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.

Neasden station itself is jauntily painted in china blue and white sailors stripes, but not a lot can be done to pretty up the fact that it's lost in an urban sprawl of estates and ring roads. Wembley Stadium hovers on the skyline...this is the miserable face of city living - chain link fencing, litter and cracked tarmac as land has been swallowed up for housing and light industrial use with an emphasis on cheap and quick rather than attractive or humane.

We have a specific destination in mind, and consult the local map. Inconveniently the station building itself is small, meaning the map has been stuck above a ticket barrier so you have to block the exit in order to reach it. We are advised on routes and buses by station staff, so as the weather continues in its schizophrenic switch between blinding sun and sleet, we take the momentarily blessing of sunshine to stroll towards the less than salubrious environs of the bus stop opposite Neadsen Parade by way of 30's architecture.

This is what London beyond Zone 2 looks like; I want you to have an idea of the general area, because it contains a surprise:

From here we take a bus towards the big retail park containing a massive ugly Tescos, car dealerships and IKEA. Sleet starts as we continue our peregrinations towards Stonebridge Park. Following road signs we cross the North Circular, duck down a small side street - just another standard road in the suburbs, except that at the bottom of this one is the largest Hindu temple outside of India, carved from white marble and limestone. It appears on the skyline like something made from royal icing.

This is perhaps one of the most surreal things I've ever seen. Usually large monuments like this kind aren't sandwiched between rail depots and retail parks. I can't adequately express how peculiar it is to find something just this huge, this spectacular, hidden away in this part of London.

As we get closer, and the detail emerges it just gets more impressive.

Passage to India via a one day travelcard:

We drop our bags at security, and head inside, leaving shoes behind in one of many little pigeon-holes and skate around in stockinged feet on polished marble floors. Outside, dirty Old London has begun to take the shine of the stonework, but inside is a crisp and pristine as if it was carved yesterday, which in truth, it very nearly was. I'm used to visiting ancient monuments - things that have had centuries to weather into softened lines, but this was only finished in 1995. It's gives an impression of how precise places like Whitby Abbey would have been several hundred years ago before sculpted into froth by salt-laden winds, and gives hope that people can still make things like this. No photographs allowed inside, so you'll just have to visit for yourself to see the halls of marble carved into fretted curlicues and arabesques, the stone made to seem weightless, made of dreams. Truly a wonderous experience; I promise it's well worth the trek. We stroll in silence, drinking in the frosted milky light glittering from the frozen music of the stonework.

Naturally, the gift shop supplies plentiful postcards, and I bought extra, so first person to email a snail mail address to my inbox (sbamford AT uwclud DOT net) will receive a souvenir from the temple in the post. I'm also keen to visit again, so if anyone is free the first week of July company on the visit would be very welcome.

From here we walk back into mundane suburbia again, cross back over the tarmac expanse of the North Circular to find Stonebridge Park on the Bakerloo Line. After the delicate, shining marble and serene atmosphere of the temple, the noise and dirt of London crashes back in on us...Stonebridge Park is utterly charmless. I spent a week temping here once - commuting in from Welwyn GardenCity, 30 miles to the north; just awful. I don't remember who I tempted for or what I did apart from it was photocopying, but I remember that the journey was a terrible slog, and that I didn't feel especially safe. It's a grim jolt back to reality.

Stonbridge Park station has no external signage:

Glad to leave - well the area; not the temple...not enough time there. I call the Cadogan from the train and we head there for afternoon tea. Weird day of strange weather and stranger juxtapositions of locations and architecture, which I suppose is one of London's great strengths.

Completing the Jubilee Line - Kilburn to Neasden: Part 2

2008-04-15T20:26:06Z

...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...

Willesden Green turns out to have a cream tiled facade, of lovely Edwardian styling complete with shop frontages still bearing retro gilt lettering for cigarettes and tobacco, wooden beading and curved glass windows. Upstairs looks to be offices rather than a domestic situation.

Sadly, this quality architecture is disappearing under glaring modern adverts and neon... Love the diamond shaped clock. I had a delicate 50s ladies wristwatch just that shape once. Lost it rummaging for bargains at a jumble sale - someone there will have nabbed it and gone home with a prize!

As we walk back to the other entrance, a police car pulls up at the zebra crossing. Both policemen stare at me, and I resist the urge to give them a cheery wave. I simply don't want the aggro - but is that me wimping out? Have I begun to modify, however unconsciously, my natural behaviour in these new suspicious times. I am angry at myself for feeling cowed by their presence when I am doing nothing wrong - they are their to protect my right to be odd if I want, not censor me. Surely it is our civil liberty to be eccentric that we are fighting this War on Terrorism for - a defence of our way of life to be as harmlessly peculiar as we please. It seems instead that with very little struggle we are all swallowing this 'need for security and vigilance' line with very little protest, and in so doing, the terrorist have already succeed in changing something fundamental in our society.

A little saddened we head back to the platform. The original tiling inside the station once must have been beautiful - but it's been neglected, and various modernisations have been fixed into it with little care. I can't get to the staircases down to the furthest platforms, that are also prettily tiled as they're gated and locked, so we plod back to the Northbound platform instead. Staring across to the locked off platform as we awit or train, I notice a gateway. You can see a glimmer of greenery behind the grill...a lost world, a secret garden. I have a desperate fascinations with obscured doorways and hidden entrances. Narnia as likely to be in Willesden as anywhere else.

... 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.

I though these were terrific, so lots more under the cut:

And the best thing? The best thing art instead of adverts! Not a billposter to be seen - as well as something intriguing to look at, a momentary break from having pointless goods and services being forced on your attention.

Back up on the platform, on the wall above the stairway there's a charming plaque:

...and finally for the day, the final station to collect on the Jubilee line - Neasden!

Canary Wharf renegotiation

2008-04-13T08:58:16Z

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...

After passing through an evolving landscape of tower blocks:

Pulling into the DLR, we had seen the Canary Wharf Jubilee station from the train:

Through a Plaza that should be full of spies in berets trading Cold War secrets:

From in front the Jubilee Line station, we look back to the DLR train...

The Doctor Who fan in me feels the need to make some kind of 'Claws of Axos' reference, with the station a giant buried pod with just a mouth above ground...

To the Jubilee Line

...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

Cutty Sark DLR

2008-04-12T22:23:12Z

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.

Looking at our list of possible destinations we decide on the Fan Museum after a spot of lunch and window shopping.

Sadly, the town has changed a lot since I used to walk here from Surrey Quays to sign on at the DSS offices just outside the town centre. It used to be vintage clothes shops, book stores, and antique places. All a bit hip and boho, made especially so at the weekends by the large covered craft market. These days the few interesting shops left seems a tad beleagured against a growing number of sports wear shops and chain stores. I'm horribly disappointed that I've dragged Gaby to London for an interesting day and brought her to somewhere with nothing to see but cheap trainers and Superdrug. I find myself pointing out what used to be here as we wander about looking for lunch.

With it being a drizzly Monday in March, the owner of the Mexican place we chose seems delighted to have us. We sit in the window, and become objects of intense interest for a large group of school kids, pressing their noses to the glass to look at the freaks. Disconcerting to say the least. We wave at them. This is followed by a woman banging on the glass and asking if she could take our photo. When we say yes, she comes into the restaurant to do so, and gives us a business card afterwards. So yes, a peculiar start to the meal.

We finish up to be in time for the Fan Museum which opens at 2pm. It's teeny museum, but running an exhibition of Dutch fans that are simply exquisite. Now it's us pressing noses to the glass of display cabinets and gazing in adoration...lace fans, flamboyant ostrich, fans inlaid with diamonds and rubies, carved ivory...

After a desultory tour of the rest of the town, when the most interesting thing we've seen is the tarmac being scraped of the road and spat out into a truck by resembling a wood chipper that breed with a dinosaur transformer Zoid we head back to the station, slightly underwhelmed by Greenwich on a weekday:

Super big tonka toy on tracks that's ripping through the street being driven by a woman...very Rosie the Riveter...

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

DLR on my birthday...

2008-04-12T20:57:15Z

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.

I fully appreciate the need to minimise disruption, but it might as well have been assembled during recess from mecchano. There's no soul to the place, just picked up flat-packed for self-assembly over the weekend from IKEA with the the minimum of design effort involved. And in this sense I mean 'minimal' as the least possible thought involved in slapping together a shelter for people to stand under, rather than the grace inherent in Minimalism/Modernist stripping things to their essentials to have a perfect coalescence of form and function that still manges to be pleasing.

One of the things I enjoy about wandering the system is seeing the evidence of time - the way the system has grown and evolved over a century and a half, utilising the best, often most radical, design standards of the time and how that is reflected in the fabric of the buildings themselves. And even with extensions that have been built at the same time, like the Morden extension from Clapham, or the Cockfosters extension on the top end of the Piccadilly, there is a specificity to each place, each place an expression of what can be done with that space that expresses a sense of pride, of meeting a challenge and an opportunity, in creating something that will last and be lovely to use. The variation-to-a-common-theme in the tiling between Manor House and Bounds Green done recently is a prime example; there is no reason I know of why while the tiles should be different colours, and possible more expense, but it gives each of the stations a character, a uniqueness.

Can we say the same about the DLR stations? All the snap together kit asethetic? In 20 years the Edwardian ox-blood and custard facience tiling will still be beautiful, and the Modernist 30s extensions will still have grace, and will still speak of their time ...and these stations? They'll still look cheap and bland and lacking in vision over making something exciting out of the built environment...and depressingly, perhaps that does speak of our time, and the time the DLR was conceived of in the 80s, and the prevailing political attitude towards public transport as something fit only for failures who can't afford cars.

The problem with having a birthday in March, is that the weather is always horrible. The rain a melancholic drizzle that beads on your clothes and permeates misery.

Behind us, building work continues - possibly more wasted money on the Olympics, the three cranes each in a primary colour, like children's toys.

We press on to All Saints. I feel we should be singing girl group harmonies and wearing baggy combats that show off a lot of midriff and a thong. There's no station signage outside that we can get a clear shot of without endangering life, limb and good shoes, so trust me that we did pass through the ticket barrier here. 'Ticket barriers' on the DLR being somewhat more of an abstract permeable membrane one wafts through rather than an actual obstacle to traverse.

We pass close to Billingsgate Fish market - course this isn't the real one, this is the new one built in the 80's ...but you can still go there and watch the action, if you are prepared to be up early as it's all over by half eight in the morning.

there's even a specially made little oval thingy to put your fag out on...neatly labelled in case you couldn't work out its purpose on your own.

We press on to Poplar, which again betrays no special distinction, despite being a nodal point on the DLR and the busiest station in terms of through services, and site of the tightest curves of the DLR trackline, and they aren't describing Gaby and mine's corsetry.

The DLR from above, looking out across a rainy Docklands...

From this point we decide to skip on a few stops to our destination of the morning Cutty Sark for Greenwich town centre...

Completing the Jubilee Line - Kilburn to Neasden: Part 1

2008-04-11T16:29:54Z

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

Wandering across the road to get a closer look, I notice the railway bridge is beautifully painted, declaring itself to be 'Metropolitan 1914' and you can see both station entrances from this angle, so my intrepid photographer and I swap places to get the pictures below. There is this fleeting moment of brilliant sunlight, backlighting heavy storm clouds and as we dash back up to the platform it begins to sleet.

We hide in the strange curved waiting room.

View from the platform:

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...

Snow In Surbiton

2008-04-10T20:50:10Z

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!

A few Novembers previous, Cornwall was hit by a sudden dramatic snowfall, with nearly four inches falling in the space of an hour, and it crippled the county for days. My nephew was stuck at school until nine in the evening because the buses couldn't get to them through narrow country lanes. In response B and I had put on sturdy boots and gone for a ramble through the woods, singing carols and listening to the branches crack above us with the sudden weight. It was one of my favourite days ever.

But that was Cornwall - London in bad weather just means misery; waiting in the cold while wearing wet coats and scarves, being stuck on train stations, and never knowing when you'd get home, everything slow and cranky and just plain hard. The idea of trying to get to Neasden or over to West India Quays, when you knew it would be hours and hours and nothing but slog and effort...well, staying in, under a duvet on the sofa with tea and French Fancies and Sunday afternoon costume dramas and light comedies with that 'snowed in' feeling of indulgence and hibernation...well, that's about as good as it gets too...we raided M&S for supplies and retired home to enjoy the weather from inside a warm house...

*(after getting frozen solid on a open station that was a wind tunnel, waiting for a frigging train that was 40 mins delayed, to be followed by the added inconvenience of a rail replacement bus service between Tolworth and Surbiton, not in the mood for numpties being in charge of passenger information. G was going to meet me at the station, so needed to give him an ETA so as to avoid him freezing too.

So; my question to bloke in hi-vi directing people to rail replacement coaches: 'how long is the bus journey time to Surbiton, please?'
Numpty: 'You want that bus there'.
Me:' Yes, I was listening when you annouced that, but I need to know how long it takes, please.'
Numpty: 'oh it goes straight there'
Me: 'Still doesn't answer the question. I have someone coming me, you see. Can you tell me how long it might take, so I can let them know'
Numpty: 'Oh it's a direct service'

Driver 1, joining in: 'Oh, not long, love. 'Bout 5 minutes'
Driver2: 'nah...closer to ten, I'd say'
Driver1, again: 'yeah, you;re probably right...'bout fifteen minutes...possibly'

I then have to try to put my bag in the coach, but it's pitch black and very full, I can't see where there's a gap. I struggle for a bit and decide to just drag it on the bus, and only when I turn to do so, does the driver chap have the grace to open another luggage compartment which is empty. I think he enjoying seeing me struggling).

Still, the snow was pretty, momentarily, and local kids built a snowman outside the flats. Possibly the first time many of them had seen it fall properly. I texted L to see how his kidlets were reacting to the snow; reply came: 'am freezing my nuts off on Wimbledon Common making snow angels' - aww, gives you a fuzzy glow inside; those are the things his kids will remember doing with their dad when they look back on their childhoods...

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

Ideal Home

2008-04-10T19:37:36Z

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.

The station is another of Charles Holden's, built in the early 30's after the Morden Extension on the Northern line. There are delicious little touches around the place that hark back to this only just post-steam age.

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

It's terribly jolly it its coat of smart green and white, with picket fences and hanging baskets. Mum and I are cooing over the details, and how cute it is, and I realise I've now infected my mother with the meme to visit stations. Despite a dicky arm she is gamely firing of wobbly shots for me, and roaming around to get a proper look, waving her stick at interesting signange and saying cheery 'hellos' to fellow commuters. I can see Saga holidays taking up the cause - instead of surfing the grey wave at National Trust properties, we can have coach trips through Metroland.

She's less than pleased about the footbridge to cross for stations in a townwards directions, being nervy about heights. However we make it across and sit in dazzling Spring weather listening to birdsong as we wait for a Piccadilly line to Earl's Court. We'd be warned of snow for the weekend, but so far the weather so glorious that we barely needed jackets, and I had left off wearing a hat.

Just for a change, exterior shot of the pretty brick pavilion shows Mummy Tubewhore heading back to the ticket barriers after a circumnavigation of the car park. I do like North Ealing - it looks like a proper country station should, with housing for the station master 'above the shop'.

Underpants on the ouside

2008-04-09T21:01:22Z

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

Getting on the train at KX...

As we get on, I notice that the carriage reeks of alcohol being metabolised. As it was late afternoon on a Sunday, obviously the partying had been going on for some time for some fellow passengers. Guy in white shirt standing up - by what force of will power I have no idea as he was hammered - was chatting incoherently at the Flash. Bloke in blue scrubs was Flash's mate acting as translator/mediation. Have no idea of the vaguely piratical girl next to him was part of the gang, or just dressed that way by preference.

After the very drunk guy reeled off on his merry way, Flash got back to the purpose of wandering the tube network in sculpted foam musculature: chatting up girls. Clearly using his powers for evil, he tried sparking up a conversation with a pair of giggly, trendy chicks in tight jeans, expressing surprise at the drunk stealing his thunder a bit on the 'making an exhibition of oneself' front.

"I thought I'd be the weirdest thing on the train" he announced chirpily. To which the only possible response was for me to state loudly, "I'll fight you for that title".

But I was not a giggly blonde in tight jeans and so not on his radar, so comment went unnoticed. 'Weird' is not something you can take back to the hire shop in the morning.

Turpike Lane & Manor House

2008-04-09T20:44:09Z

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'.

I determine on circumnavigating the building...hardly an undertaking on Magellan's scale, but for a wet Sunday afternoon in North London, it's momentarily amusing, and after all it's the adventurous spirit that finds interest in the most quotidien of endeavours. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't take long - Turnpike Lane being a squat brick box of the 30's modernist variety, sitting on a traffic island...

I don't think much of the attempt at cafe culture though; tea in polystyrene cups sitting out on a damp pavement...we really don't have the hang of it over here, just don't get the weather to really have it sorted out yet. There's strange mix of envy and suspicion of the Continental lifestyle at work here; on the one hand it looks rather fun and exciting, all this sitting around outside dunking croissants into one's coffee while discussing literary theories over long lunch breaks but on the other hand, such navel gazing and general shirking of the daily grind at the office betrays a basic lack of moral fibre and stalwartness. Plus of course, it's usually too drizzly to really enjoy pavement cafes. Perhaps drizzle is the answer though - one can be everso slightly Continental and sit outside with a rapidly dampening toasted cheese sandwich wearing a fold-up plastic rain mac over one's head, and in true British style fail to enjoy it and secretly dream of a hot foot soak indoors.

Underneath, a warren of tunnels in Clarice Cliff colours. A ceiling support post becomes a rounded triangular passenger information board:

We finish wandering about the multiple choice of exits and carry on one stop further to Manor House.

Ascending from the platform, I am delighted by the bizarre ceiling. It's not exactly a high ceiling, so the large roundels do kinda of push down on you, but it does have a disco space pod feel, very sixties boutique hotel from back when moulded white plastic was the height of chic...I wonder at my sanity that an enjoyable Sunday afternoon is one that involves finding an interesting ceiling far up on the Northern reaches of the Piccadilly line.

Swirly ceiling with added travel information pod loveliness:

Myself and spangle_kittenhad been playing with internal gubbins taken from Manor House over at the Acton Depot the previous day - a delicious slab of toffee-coloured bakelite, all knobs and dials and aching for mad science - so strangly apt to make it here today:

Sadly outside not so exciting...one either popped out from a stairwell in merkatish alarm into suddenly dazzling sunlight:

or on the other side of the street, descended below through a very unexciting brick shed...

Had it not been so cold, perhaps a walk through Finsbury Park, as the station is right outside the boundary wall, but the afternoon was waning late, and there were the joys of Sunday services and rail replacment buses to negotiate yet, so homewards it was...back down to the same shaped tunnels as with the other stations on the Cockfosters extension, but this time tiled in delft blue and cream.

Top of the Piccadilly Line - Bounds Green to Manor Park: Part Two

2008-04-02T22:14:29Z

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...

grubby edges...

Top of the Piccadilly - Bounds Green to Manor House: Part 1

2008-04-02T07:06:26Z

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.

See what I mean about the slight Egyptian styling - it might be an unintentional optical illusion from setting a passageway into a curved tunnel wall, but the gentle flare of the doorway suggests the shape of papyrus flower motifs. And there's just something in the colours...so deco Tutankhamen, even with the classical fluted columns for the uplighters...

Sadly I missed the plaque commemorating a WWII bomb hitting the station and killing several people even if they weren't 'Belgian refuges' as the plaque suggests. More info on Bounds Green's Wikipedia page

Tiz Pity She's a Whore

2008-03-27T21:54:19Z

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

...*OK, so I've been waiting an age to use that post title. (so good I've used it twice)

But seriously, the use of the word 'whore' does caused some raised eyebrows at times, and very sweetly at the Acton Depot was approached by very nice chap at who asked if I was 'the young lady who wrote the blog' who winced when I said 'do you mean 'tubewhore'?' s clearly he didn't like to use such language himself. I can understand that...and was most touched by his gentlemanliness.

So why the contentious name? Well, the honest truth is it just popped into my head on the way home from Tottenham Court Road, and the name hadn't been taken. But of course, these things 'pop into your head' because things have been bubbling under in one's subconscious for a while. There is of course the reference to 'camera whoring' which is deliberately aiming to get your face all over websites, and apparently a derivation of this is 'tube-whoring' in plastering yourself over sites like YouTube. However, wasn't aware of this second meaning till well after I had started the project.

I think the use of the word 'whore' is a form of reclamation. It doesn't take a lot of research to see that the worst accusation that can be thrown at a woman, and also the most familiar way of defamation of character and social control is to slander her sexual continence. Anyone that's ever been through a rape case will know that regularly, the woman's sexual history put on trial, and the number of partners that a woman has had doesn't have to be many for her to be labelled a 'slut' or 'easy', as though that in itself makes it acceptable to be taken by force. This might be the 21st Century, but the rules are still different for men and women.

Many words for 'woman' in various languages have devolved to become insults of a sexual nature, characterising all women as just a sluts, or selling it. It's tradition to put a woman down, especially an upstart challenging the status quo, by inferring she's a whore, anyone's for the right price. Think of the idea of being 'fallen': if applied to a man, it usually implies an heroic death in battle; if a woman, she has 'lost her character' and 'fallen' into disrepute and immorality and now lies beyond the social pale. To be troublesome, a bluestocking, asker of awkward questions, or just an adventurer meant risking one's place in society, to not be treated with the 'respect' due a lady, when 'respect' meant not threatening her physical wellbeing in the most basic manner.

And so, for these reasons, I embrace the term, to take the sting from it and the many times I've had it thrown at me because I've said 'no' (blinding bit of double-think there) and because I'm not demure or quiet. For all the actresses who had to defend their honour and their want to be out in the world beyond polite drawing rooms, I wear the name with a wry smile. Fair exchange is no robbery...and capitalism makes whores of us all.

Hyde Park Corner

2008-03-25T22:46:29Z

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.

Inside the tunnels the walls are tiled in white, remarkably free of spray painted tags; instead they have been decorated with local scenes of gentlefolk promenading in the park over the years.

The parti-coloured line drawings remind me of the Paddington Bear cartoons I loved as a nipper, where Paddington was a three dimensional, colourful bear puppet in a world of black and white animated drawings, rather as though a very high brow graffitist has been channelling Ivor Wood.

As I take pictures, I spot a chap with a dog, excitable spaniel type, very waggy, and ask him is he could take a picture for me. Doggie was being too excitable for chap to get a steady picture; how could you expect a spaniel that can smell how close he is to the park with trees to pee on and squirrels to chase to hold still, and my technical skills are not good enough to blend my clear shot above with this blurry one in some kind of fancy photoshopey fakery, so I beg your indulgence in offering the above to show the Crystal Palace drawing and the below to prove I was there...

Acton Depot Open Day.

2008-03-23T21:45:03Z

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...

Walking into the depot itself is walking into a wall of smell and memory...immediately I'm back in my grandfather's workshop as a very small child...the scent of old machines, dust and time. The smell of heavy cast metal, gearings and grease... Inside every square inch of space is crammed with machines, or trains; or bits of trains, buses, tube carriages and trams; or bearings, gears, switching equipment, switchboards or signage, all of it piled up in what seems almost random order, plonked down where ever there was floor space when the delivery guy turned up. There is a small stand of street lights huddling together like grazing giraffes, a wall of time card ticket punches, the stairway is covered in a variety of signage, now all directing you to nowhere. And filling up the paths there's stall upon stall selling transport ephemera interspersed with model railways - people selling timetables and maps jostle up against dioramas of tiny little tramways pottling up and down tiny high streets overseen by the proud men that have spent hours hiding in the garden shed reproducing Weston-Super-Mare in 1952 in 7mm scale. It's all rather mad and wonderful. I buy lots of posters, baggage forwarding labels and old tram tickets.

No, the picture isn't upside down, the sign is... This is what I loved most about the Depot; unlike most museums, there isn't a sense of preciousness, no hushed reverential silence and things carefully encased in plexiglass and pedestals. Things live where there's room - floor to ceiling there are shelves filled with random stuff...There are signs on some of the exhibits saying 'we have no idea what this is: if you do, please tell a member of staff'.

Upstairs is the Repository of Lost Signs. I want to live there...

It's another case of experiencing lost time. I don't think I saw even a third of what's there, because I was enjoying both exploring everything in detail, and the added fun of bumping into loads of people all sporting silly grins as we played in the antique tube carriages.

Was wonderful to met people who so far have been names on lj comments, and to catch up with old friends all equally guiltless at being able to totally nerd out in safe company. L came up from Wales and my college friend B came in from Cambridge and was persuaded to buy a rather spiffy guard's coat - truth be told I was rather gutted that it didn't fit me...

I got to strap hang, press buttons, and pretend to be a guard...

...the appearance of two goths together did cause some consternation though. L was rocking a very Girl Genius / Dr Watson look of purple organza and bowler hat and I was in vintage and flouncey skirts. This was in stark contrast to the anorak and jeans of the majority of visitors as well as being in the minority being girls. A member of staff asked 'so, who do you represent?' Put two goths together and it seems we are an event all by ourselves.

"Maximum power!!!"

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.

A reminder

2008-02-28T14:15:29Z

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

Baker Street: Details and signage

2008-02-10T16:33:00Z

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:

Scheduled Engineering Works.

2008-02-10T12:03:41Z

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 from velvetdahlia 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 met midnightxpress 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:

Yes, there really is a pub masquerading as a Swiss chalet on a traffic island on the Finchley Road. There's been some form of Swiss Cottage here since the early years of the 19thC, but this one was built in the 60's and has now been dwarfed by high rise office blocks and the Odeon Cinema. I can't find out much about why a Swiss Cottage came to be here exactly, and then why when that one went it was felt necessary to build something else Alpine...it's one of those lovely little weirdnesses about London, like Norway giving us a Christmas tree every year. But yes, in wan February sunshine the stripy poles and wooden shutters try to look jolly.

The station itself dates from the late 30's and has a Clarice Cliff vibe to the warm cream, brown and eau-de-nil tiling on the platforms. Some of the tiles have heraldic animals. The alcoves provide much amusement. It's probably infantile, but I like peeping out from behind things...

The escalators too betray their design roots in the Golden Age of Cinema of the 30's, being bronzed uplighters. They should be illuminating starlets in satin dresses. And I just love the illuminated roundel signage.

I used to know a special effect studio that had an office that backed onto the tube station. They once caused a full evacuation of the station when an experiment with a new smoke formula went wrong and filled the station with dense white smog. These are the same people that had been working on a three-foot mechanical spider for weeks and could no longer decide if it was scary enough. They figured they were too close to the project and needed objective opinion. All very sensible one would think, except their solution was to take the remote controlled - and I say it again 3 foot spider - to the local supermarket and set it off down one of the aisles...cleared the shop in a matter of moments and the store manager beat it to death with a broom. Their reaction to the destruction of the creature was a pragmatic 'well I guess that was convincingly scary, then'.

We finish mucking about and get the train two stops up to West Hampstead. Hampstead is in my head as 'a bit posh' but the rear walls of these houses have been redecorated and not by Lawrence Llewellen-Bowen.

Outside, the brick frontage has a Germanic feel. But as we've decided to see Cloverfield back at the cinema at Finchley Road, we don't really explore further than up and down the platform.

Finchley Road is also above ground. I've been here before visiting friends who lived nearby, but had never noticed that there was a Freud Museum nearby - mostly because I was on autopilot remembering the way to A&D's place...might be worth a return visit.

There are dozens of pigeons squatting on the ledges, puffed up against the cold, squatting on the station building and as G takes pictures they all take to the air in a noisy cloud of clapping wings, dark smudges against the pearly winter sky. We walk round the corner to the O2 Centre. It's appalling; a substitute for actual culture with the escalator up to the Vue cinema built through fake rocks squirting water in broken arcs with fish tanks built into the walls...this is commodification of experience,a Situationist nightmare, if this is modern life, roll on the next Ice Age to re-glaciate this place. We avoid being stuck with cinema food by smuggling in healthier things bought from Sainsburys in the basement. Cloverfield makes me feel nauseous even though I loved it, and like something out of the 19thC G has to loosen my corset for me to avoid fainting!

We return to Paddington in time to finish the day as we started it having tea in a cafe and talking about movies...I trat myself to a Weekend First upgrade on the train home...

Uniformity...

2008-02-06T21:28:43Z

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

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

Didn't get Balham as collected that one back in November 2006.