Northern Line, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

[caddyman]

There is nothing comparable to the joys of a late-running Northern Line in the middle of spring when the underground temperatures are just beginning to ramp up. Even at its best, the Northern Line is a place where time is a malleable concept, and minutes as measured on the timetable clock vary from between ninety and one hundred and twenty seconds, but rarely the standard and traditional sixty. Anyone who doubts this should take their MP3 player with them and marvel at the amount of three and four minute songs you can squeeze into five Northern Line minutes.

Further joys encountered in the traveling of this route include the stopping for ten minutes in a tunnel for no explained reason. Oddly, it never does this north of Highgate, where the trains emerge from the tunnels to run overland. No, it is a purely underground pleasure, and one to be compounded by spending this time of personal reflection hunched in the curve of the carriage with your nose pressed into some chav's armpit, and hanging one-handed and baboon like from the hand rail that is conveniently placed just too far away across the great unwashed for any involved to be truly comfortable.

On the rare occasion that you can find a seat between Euston and East Finchley, you will find that unlike most other tube trains, the seats are about three inches narrower than is strictly comfortable: a tale of woe that is compounded when you are a person of (ahem) generous girth. Where most people will be merely uncomfortable in these modern carriages designed to 1920s specifications, we larger people end up wedged in, and sitting hunched in gargoyle fashion so that arms and shoulders do not stray too far across the divide to the adjacent seats. This is the only line to do this. The others are spacious and roomy in comparison.

So enjoyable is the experience, I thoroughly recommend it to all. I for one shall repeat it tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

Hurrah.

Comments

[itsjustaname.livejournal.com]

I have noticed the T&W line is always much more crowded than the Edgware line. Going to Edgware I generally have a seat by the time I get to Euston and if not then definitely at Camden but when I travel to T&W I'm standing for ages. I have no idea if this is because there many more people living on that side or if there are less or smaller trains.

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Ah, you see that is because half as many people live on the Edgware branch, and they are served by twice as many trains.

[thalinoviel.livejournal.com]

You forgot to mention Camden Commuter Calisthenics, a programme designed to make commuters fit in those seats by waking them on their morning commute to tell them the train is not going on the right branch after all. After sprinting up the stairs, across to the other platform, down the stairs and missing the train there, generally one can rely on the next train really going from one's original southbound platform necessitating more frenzied maze-running.

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Ah, but I refuse to pay attention - by the time I reach Camden Town of a morning, I am nearly asleep again, and sheltered from the world by my headphones (having found a pair I can use adequately on the underground).

My calisthenics usually take place at Euston...

[itsjustaname.livejournal.com]

Handily it makes no difference to me, on the way into work, which branch I go down after Euston. Makes life so much easier!

[irdm.livejournal.com]

commuting is intrinsicly evil & soul destroying!

[willowing.livejournal.com]

arrrh, in all ways, try avoid tubes, my advice: get a scooter yay! :)

[thalinoviel.livejournal.com]

My advice: do not ride it around corners on icy mornings in January.

[binidj.livejournal.com]

<snigger>You said "girth"</snigger>

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Bin, I give up.

You are a bad, bad, lad.