Sunday, April 29, 2007

The Tube is insane

Interesting thing about my job. Casual dress code, lower pay, flexi hours, but these arts org people are just as heads down as they were at the capital investments firm with their snazzy outfits and high wages.

On the other hand, the staff at both solicitors' offices I've worked at were very chatty.

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According to Doctor Who, the Daleks built the Empire State Building.

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Funny things I read on the message boards on Fridaycities London (Note: I did not write these):

A discussion on the irrationality of commuters' behaviour during train delays and other annoying travel incidents.

-- I’m sat on a delayed tube train in a station, the doors are open and every now and again people go
outside and look down towards the front of the train. What are they
expecting to see? A traffic jam?

-- the moment when people are running for a train and the doors start to
close, so rather than chalk it up as a missed train they jam whatever
body part is nearest into the door to hold it open. Then follows the
moment when everyone wishes the driver would drive on with them trapped
in the door, instead of the prolonged battle by the person to lever the
door open to escape or enter

-- Once, and this is the God’s honest truth, the beeper noises started on
the Metropolitan Line train and half the Circle line train sprinted
over. I stayed where I was because I was comfortable and a bit pissed,
and suffered the glances of smugness from the M passengers. Then the
Circle Line doors beeped and shut, and off we chugged.

-- If you’re ever on a train which stops for more than a minute, you’ll
get updates every 5 – 10 minutes from the driver. Even if it’s only “We
still don’t know how to move the wildebeests from the track” it’s
calming to know that someone, somewhere is in control and feeding you
information.

Who's had the longest delay on London transport.

-- The Silverlink is the slowest, most ponderous & life-draining form of transport known to man ... (I believe it’s called Silverlink, cos customarily that’s the colour of
your hair by the time the twatting thing’s arrived where it’s meant to
be going)

-- Not terribly spectacular, but two hours ten minutes from Stoke
Newington to Soho this morning, including the amount of time taken to
walk the last half mile, the bus having given up totally on Gower
Street.


Did you know that Tube trains have horns?

-- this evening when I was standing on the southbound Northern line
platform at Stockwell, the (delayed) train pulled in and beeped twice.
It was a quite piercing horn. Anyone heard this before?

-- They were installed after a group of mice lobbied parliament…But the thing I can’t understand are the indicators!

-- And the steering wheels.

-- The Met Line’s horn sounds really pained. Like it’s just travelled over
a nail or something. I always feel sorry for it. Poor thing.

-- From the heading of this thread, I’ve now got this picture in my head
of this new London event, “The Running of the Tube Trains”,.. locals
and drunk tourists getting gored as they run along narrow windy streets
pursued by a stampede on wheels. It would explain the indicators and
steering wheels, sort of…

Mouse sightings on the tracks, all over London.

-- I want to know which tube stations have mice running around by the
tracks that I can look at. I haven’t seen any in ages, and I do miss
watching the little loves scurrying around while I wait for TFL [Transport for London] to sort their lives out.

-- There are some at South Kensington that don’t so much scurry as swan.

-- wesbound Central Line at Oxford Circus. I once saw a mouse carrying a chip that was twice as long as its own body there.

-- They say that in London you’re never more than 1 metre away from
someone who’ll tell you that you’re never more than 1 metre away from a
mouse.

-- Have you thought about getting one as a pet instead? There’s one in my shed that you can have for nothing.

21 comments:

L B said...

LOLOLOLOL!!!! Hahaa, very good ones, Olivia!! Excellent! Those trains don't have steering wheels! Or do they?!!

pink jellybaby said...

hehehe i love the little tube mice! they always look so scruffy and dusty!

Beenzzz said...

Mice are so cute, but nah I don't want one as a pet. Mice and rats alike, seem to love the train station.

The Moody Minstrel said...

Rough day, m'lady?

Maybe the horn was trying to scare the stampeding mice away. I guess it worked.

So that's why the Empire State Building has been totally spared from terrorist attack.

Then again, it seems like sci-fi TV/cinema is coming up with explanations for just about every major point of history.

ML said...

I wonder why rodents are drawn to train stations...hmmm...ick!

Leilouta said...

I think mice look really cute. I am lucky to have dozens of squirrels in our backyard. I love watching them dig for nuts with their little feet. They remind me of mice with big hairy tails :)

Anonymous said...

those transport things were great.

jia

neena maiya (guyana gyal) said...

When my brother in England was here late last year, he told us the most amazing, amusing tales of the tube...things he saw, overheard. He has a wicked sense of humour, my brother does, so you can imagine how we howled with laughter.

Olivia said...

LB - sometimes the controls look like steering wheels, but it's actually more like the wheel on a door in a submarine - a lock and release type thing that conrols the speed of the train. That's my guess anyway.

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Pink Jellyb - I think they are quite neat and black with their beady little eyes.

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Beenzzz - Me, I have to have a pet that I can HUG!

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Minstrel - LOL can't believe you still call me m'lady, I don't even remember why you started :P

Go on, give me three other examples of where sci--fi/cinema have explained major points of history!

***

ML - the burrowing has already been done for them. Plus it's warm, dry, but other than windswept crumbs, there's not that much food available except in the more scummy stations.

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Leilouta - you love rodents, you do!

***

Jia Li - Mind. The Gap.

***

Guyana Gyal - methinks this wicked sense of humour runs in the family!

Mikeachim said...

>>"They say that in London you’re never more than 1 metre away from
someone who’ll tell you that you’re never more than 1 metre away from a
mouse."
That's delicious.
....
Oh, and as for scifi explaining major points of history, 2001: A Space Odyssey explained why men like hitting other men over the head with thigh-bones, and the modern equivalents (thigh-bones and men). I think that's quite profound.

Anonymous said...

Hello my darling Oliva, the paragon of elegance and intelligence. This is Alohalani. I've missed you.

AmitL said...

ROFL...at the quotes on commuters' behaviour..(grin at your clarification that you did not write these-I'd have been quite surprised to see a digression from your usual 'good English', otherwise..haha)...What people were trying to convey was quite clear,though..like,the guy wondering why people look down the platform to see if a train is coming,the other guy writing about how people jam their body parts in the doors,et al...a big laugh at the thoughts on mice on tracks...coming back to your first para, let me guess...you prefer this job,than the snazzy outfits/high wages one.Correct??:)(I'd have picked the same)

The Moody Minstrel said...

Go on, give me three other examples of where sci--fi/cinema have explained major points of history!

Oh, no, m'lady! You just HAD to do that! Actually, I DID provide a few examples in my last comment, but I deleted them because it was getting too long! Okay, let me come up with a few:

- The Roswell Incident was caused by time-slipping Ferengi (ST:DS9).
- Mark Twain received inspiration and motivation to write by meeting humans, aliens, and an android who time traveled to his era (ST:TNG).
- Jack the Ripper was abducted by an advanced alien race (the Vorlons) and made to serve them as an interrogator as punishment for his sins (Babylon 5).
- Leonardo da Vinci was just one of several "facets" of an alien whose existence was fractured and scattered through time by a malfunction in his ship's drive...which also inadvertently caused life to develop on Earth (Dr. Who).
- The same guy who wrote the story and screenplay for that last Dr. Who episode (Douglas Adams) also wrote a novel with a virtually identical plot, only the music produced by the computers on the alien's ship also winds up indirectly creating J.S. Bach.
- The Cybermen tried to eliminate life on Earth by sending a ship back in time and blowing it up over the planet at an early stage in development. Because of a miscalculation (and a main character sacrificing himself), the explosion only caused the extinction of the dinosaurs (Dr. Who).
- Stonehenge is really a circle of powerful, evil, and extremely dangerous alien beings frozen there as punishment for their crimes long ago (Dr. Who).
- A teenager going into the past and playing guitar at a dance winds up inadvertently inspiring Chuck Berry (Back to the Future).
- Satan is really a powerful alien being. Incidentally, so are the angels...and apparently God, too (Battlestar Galactica).

There are many others.

BTW, I first started calling you "m'lady" when you posted about eating at a restaurant that was clearly beyond my class level together with people who were clearly beyond my class level. I figured that meant you were beyond my class level, and therefore I should start calling you "m'lady". You agreed.

Olivia said...

Mike - I think I need to watch 2001 again!

***

Alohalani!!! Welcome back, I had given up on you! Thank you so much for coming back. How is your son???

***

Amit - no actually, you may be disappointed to know that if I have to be heads down, I would rather earn more. (As long as I could go in at 10am!)
Living is expensive in this city...

***

Sir Minstrel - my goodness, you have watched them all, haven't you?

Dr Who is awesome, though! Have you seen the latest 3 series with David Tennant?

I remember the titling now - not even the Arts Club did it, you started after I had been to Home House. The photo I posted was grand indeed.

I'm diversifying now, and had a yearning for some go-karting the other day.

Anonymous said...

hello bubble.

Since you like to find things out - why not write something on Henry "Harry" Beck and his impact on the modern world.

And - songs inspired by the london transportation. Starting two "Waterloo Sunset" by the Kinks and "Born Slippy" by underworld.

The mice and rats are your friends - they don't get in the way on the platforms do they? And they never clout you with an overfilled rucksack. The enemy on the underground is person who cannot open their eyes and see that "stand on the right, walk on the left" is the moral duty of the righteous. That and rucksack weares who don't take them off. Nose pickers are frightful but ultimately pathetic. Gropers don't normally bother me, possibly due to height/build. Although a woman did lunge for my lunchbox last week - right in front of her boyfriend. Very strange. I slapped her hand away...

Anonymous said...

ps - Trains are controlled by a mechanical device called a "dead mans handle". It's strongly spring loaded, so if a driver has a heart attack or other sudden death the spring loading pushes the handle back to stop the motors. And just in case that fails there's "moorgate stop" or "moorgate control" to prevent train over runs.

I will get my coat....

Nabeel said...

don't know about the London transport, but here in Chicago, if you accumulate the daily delays in our sucky CTA system .. it's a lot.

Anonymous said...

lol. good stuff.

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