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

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.

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

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.