Observations from the Tube

I think my first thoughts heading down into the Tube line were a bit of a conversation with my three-year-old self, which is when my Dad took me to London. Somehow I have a strong association of the Tube lines and magical English lollies and so was expecting a bit of a flashback moment when I headed down to the first Tube Station. Alas, Tube Stations do not smell anything like lollies. Perhaps they never have, however now that I am old enough to start my own “When I was your age…” rantings, the next 3 year old I meet will now be lectured on how when I was their age, the tube stations in London’s were a Willy Wonka-esque paradise – and now look at them.

The other thing that surprised me on the Tube, or ‘The Underground’ as it is more formally known, is that catching the Piccadilly Line into the centre of town, we were not actually underground for a lot of the trip. So I got to catch a fair amount of the surrounding landscape between Heathrow and London’s city centre, and it did not appear as densely populated as I had envisaged. Many of the houses that backed on to the train line had reasonably sized backyards (perhaps as compensation for backing on the railway?!) and we also passed a number of parks. OK, maybe London wasn’t going to be too bad.

When we had to switch lines at Winchester I was overwhelmed. On a Saturday afternoon the train was packed – in a way that an Auckland train during rush hour on Tuesday morning will never be. Where did all of these people come from?

There were so many different types of people, it was really fascinating just to watch them. Behind me two girls were having a good old-fashioned gossip in Spanish; sitting right in front of me there was a girl who after looking in her bag pulled out a 250g tub of cottage cheese and ate the whole lot in maybe a minute flat (was I staring too much – probably), next to her was a couple who had obviously come from a huge shopping trip at Harrods – so many people!!!

I found it a real novelty listening to the English accents. I’m not sure what it was, I kind of felt like I had walked on to the set of a Coronation Street meets Eastenders meets The Bill set.

The other interesting thing was when we had to change lines at Green Park on to the Jubilee line. I had never realised how far underground the tube lines actually were. When we changed lines we had to catch two huge escalators up to the Jubilee Line – that was far enough underground, but then we realised that if you wanted to get to the surface from the Jubilee line you would have to go up another huge escalator – well then it really felts as though we were in the bowels of the earth.