Today on the Underground

A regular Tuesday morning in London. Like millions of other commuters around the capital I head for work in something of a daze. Londoners are not known for striking up conversations with each other on commuter trains. Today, however, I witnessed two real-live conversations between strangers. As a result of the derailment on the Northern Line the Bakerloo Line was packed. At the bottom of the escalator at Piccadilly Circus two women had a row about who was pushing who as they tried to get to the top before each other. It wasn’t a deep and meaningful exchange but it was a conversation (of sorts) between two strangers – which was certainly different. The second instance also took place on the escalators but this time Waterloo. The advertisements on the walls were for O2’s lower-cost calls from home service. They are a series of postcodes. A family riding up didn’t understand the message and another tube-rider chipped in with his opinion on the ads. He too failed to understand the message. I guess there’s something in that for O2’s ad agency but for me it was an eye-opener that people are, perhaps, not so self-involved on the London Underground.

On this day…