Yesterday saw me sitting on a Northern Line train, staring in horror out of the window. Not at anything particularly horrific – just that the station we had pulled into was Angel and I was trying to get to Waterloo
I was on the wrong bloody branch
To put this into context, I grew up on the Northern line (High Barnet branch, naturally). I am a Northern line girl. Its ramifications are engraved on my soul, tattooed onto the inside of my eyeball. I hadn’t looked at a map, because I didn’t think I needed to (and also because I had managed to pack the Glasgow instead of the London A to Z, but let’s just pass over that one, shall we?). And here I was making the most basic of mistakes, something even newly arrived tourists could master. I have been out of London too long, that’s what it is. I am beginning to lose my city mojo.
It isn’t just the tube lines, either. I found myself walking slowly at times on the – entirely irrelevant – grounds that I wasn’t in a particular hurry to get somewhere (although I did make sure I wasn’t blocking the way of anyone who was). I smiled and exchanged a pleasantry with someone I didn’t know (she made eye contact first). I stood on the escalator instead of sprinting up (on the right, though). And when I wandered down the South Bank among the summer crowds I found that I didn’t automatically want to rip the heads off of the many many people who still – even at my most leisurely pace – got in my way.
And when I got to Foyles on the South Bank, with some time to kill in the heat of the afternoon, and saw that they had put deckchairs out for people to sit in outside the shop, even though my inner Londoner wondered what the catch was* and how much it might cost, my outer visitor – footsore and hot and weary – went and sat down. And spent a very pleasant time as the clouds boiled up over Central London, and the breeze blew across from the river, absorbed in my book.
I’ve been out of London too long all right. Or maybe I’m just beginning to have been out of London long enough.
Oh, and they were free.
*The catch of course is that once you are folded in the embrace of a deckchair, there’s nothing you can do but get out a book and read. And what better advertisement for a book shop can there be than a dozen people all intently reading outside their shop? Very clever.
June 30, 2009 at 11:46 am |
You’ve gained something, not lost something!
June 30, 2009 at 12:30 pm |
Ha ha ha! I feel the same sense of bemusement every time I go back th That London. So many people! So much rushing! So few smiles!
June 30, 2009 at 5:56 pm |
You’re well out of it, just imagine what the daily commute would be like this week! xx
Incidently I’ve never found deckchairs to be very comfortable!
July 1, 2009 at 7:32 am |
Welcome back to the big smoke and nice to see the countryside mentality being used in London rather then switching back into the usual London aggression mode.
July 1, 2009 at 8:24 am |
Not enough suburb though so come to ours on 18 July for an intensive revision session.
July 1, 2009 at 8:33 am |
hehe – thanks all. I’m safely back in the middle of nowhere now, and I won’t be tempted back to the great Wen until the end of August…
July 1, 2009 at 10:28 am |
We all want to know (but everyone else is afraid to ask), how did you recover from the glaring error? Change at Bank and on to the W&C?
July 1, 2009 at 10:50 am |
yes – it meant an endless walk through Bank station whose underground tunnels seem to run underneath the entire City of London.
July 1, 2009 at 10:53 am |
BTW Disgruntled, I’ve changed the blog address again as I’ve made London Underground Life private and deleted Diary of a Station Supervisor
July 1, 2009 at 11:01 am |
ta – i’ll update the link
July 8, 2009 at 3:17 am |
i too grew up on the northern line (edgware branch), and part of being a northernliner is getting on the wrong branch (frequently after going to the pub in central london, but sometimes because you did get on the right line but they decided to change it at euston, for no apparent reason). Ah, this makes me feel nostalgic now.
July 8, 2009 at 3:24 am |
Wow that means if you were travelling on the Northern in the late 80’s early 90’s you might have passed me by when I was working at Camden, small world isn’t it
July 8, 2009 at 7:51 am |
Pete – ah yes, the old indeterminate train destination trick. Actually, the real part of being a northernliner is waking up at High Barnet – or, worse – Mill Hill East having fallen asleep on the train
Blunt Bloke – late 80’s, definitely. Heading to Camden Town to stock up on fashion mistakes… ah, youth.
July 8, 2009 at 8:04 am |
Don’t mention that market as it became the bane of my life.
I used to live in Chalk Farm and the over flow of parking because of the market caused us untold grief, hence £82 a year to park out side my own house grrrr
Worse still was the customer flow at Camden on the weekend, people would come down, look at junk and go home empty handed
July 8, 2009 at 5:37 pm |
My thing was waking up in Woodside Park of all places, with no more trains south. Woodside Park is not only in the middle of a load of houses – hard to navigate after a beer or two – but it also has two exits. I spent hours (maybe even weeks) lost there one night. I was so pleased to find a Night bus. (Of course, I fell asleep on that and ended up in Trafalgar Square, but that’s another story). After that, I started going out in Camden a lot more – that way I’d ensure I’d always get on the right branch north!