Travelling on the London Underground, “The Tube”, as us Londoners refer to the system of under/overground transportation that’s been around since 1863, has consumed a vast number of hours throughout my 71 years of life. Of course this should not be confused with the relatively recently acquired Overground that snakes it’s way round, rather than through, Central London and makes a virtue of turning right, when you really want to go left. Neither does it include the recently completed Crossrail or planned Crossrail 2, which worm themselves through the now congested underground space below the Capital. Maybe the strange fondness that I have for “The Tube” stems from the fact that Mr Holden designed the arched Newbury Park station entrance in honour of my birth in 1951. Or was that because of the Festival of Britain, which occurred in the same year? Whatever the truth of the matter, and I know what I believe, I come back to “The Tube” time and time again.

Comprising eleven routes or ‘lines’, I have managed to travel on every one, including “The Drain” between Bank and Waterloo, and have stopped at or passed through 76% of the 270 stations. Only the outer reaches have defeated me, and it irks me that I recently lived close to the last but one station on the North Eastern reaches of the Central Line and have travelled to every station on every branch except Epping.

Central Line 1950s

Initially, my father used to take us “Into Town” to Bank on the Central Line, where he worked on some Saturdays as a sugar dealer’s clerk. Our annual Christmas trips to Selfridges and Wembley’s “Something-on-Ice” shows or Chipperfield’s Circus took me further along the Central Line and introduced me to the Metropolitan Line. When I was old enough to travel alone, I undertook short single station journeys from Newbury Park to school at Barkingside, also on the Central Line, then further afield to Gants Hill and Redbridge. However, my real tube surfing began with Red Rovers!

My friends and I, for a relatively paltry sum, would travel to exotic places like Heathrow, to eat sandwiches and watch planes from the rooftop terraces; to Morden, simply because we thought it was the furthest station away and we could ride a bus to Mortlake, walk beside the Thames to Kew and eat sandwiches. We ate a lot of sandwiches! We’d go round and round the 17 mile circumference Circle Line (coincidentally the same circumference as the much later Large Hadron Collider under Switzerland), just for the fun of it, eating sandwiches, and travel to Earls Court, Olympia and South Kensington on the District Line for exhibitions and museums (“You can’t eat those sandwiches in here!”).

Circle Line 1970s

Later, my love of classical music took me on trips along the District Line to Embankment, for the ridiculously windy walk across Hungerford Bridge to the Royal Festival Hall, and to South Kensington, for the ridiculously long underground walk to the Royal Albert Hall. Returning late at night was often a mad dash round the system to catch the last train home, and on one difficult night, when I was accompanying my sister’s German pen friend to a Promenade Concert (no, I’m not sure why either, but I was a perfect gentleman!), we managed to miss the last Central Line train from Notting Hill Gate. As we waited for my Father to drive across town to collect us at way gone midnight, this rebellious Mädchen thought it hilarious to play ‘knock down Ginger’ on the various high class doors along the street. I don’t know if this was the cause of Mr Hendrix, who lived in the area at the time, ending his life as a result of depression through sleep depravation, but I hope we didn’t bring about the demise of arguably the best guitarist the world ever knew. I very much doubt if my Father would have made the journey from Ilford if it had just been me, but it didn’t stop him making that journey again when my sister and I took him to the Strauss Promenade Concert on 30 July 1966.  Football aficionados will recognise that date as the day the ball DID cross the line in the Eighth Football World Cup, although the Russian linesman stated the line didn’t matter, as the ball rebounded off the net – not the crossbar. However, despite all the controversy, I remember it as the day when the entire population of London seemed to be celebrating along Pall Mall to Piccadilly Circus, as we made our way home from the concert.

After spending six years at Bristol University and twenty one years working in Bristol, which sadly lacked an underground line or even trams and trolley buses, I returned with my family to Rickmansworth, and took to rattling along the Metropolitan line for business and pleasure trips into the metropolis. Working in Hillingdon also introduced me to the other end of the interminably slow Picadilly line. Even now, after a further seventeen years, the journey from Heathrow is long and slow – something the Heathrow Express was built to overcome, but failed miserably to provide a consistent and reliable service for the exorbitant fares. There is now even a consideration that a spur will be built from the High Speed 2 rail line beyond Denham, but that won’t happen (if at all) in my life time.

After the sad death of my wife, I coincidentally returned to my old stomping grounds in Essex and took to the Central Line again. How things had changed! The carriages were even hotter than I remembered them as a teenager, largely because there is now no ability to slide open any windows. There are some misconceived slots labelled ‘ventilation’, with encouragement to slide ‘on’ or ‘off’. But it’s my belief that Trading Standards should be informed of this inaccurate description, as I travel like a boiled prawn overground from West Ruislip in the baking sun, underground from White City in a steam pipe, rising briefly at Stratford to descend once more, before rising again for the baking above ground stretch to Theydon Bois.

But I see that it’s all about to change. Transport for London, under its great but politically temporary leader, Boris Johnson, has announced its intention to commission some comfortable, through access, air conditioned tube trains for use on the Piccadilly, Bakerloo, Central and, for some strange reason, the Waterloo and City lines, and I only have to wait until 2022/32. So, let’s see, by the time I’m 71/81 I might be able to travel to work in comfort. Hold on, I won’t be travelling to work when I’m 71/81!

Metropolitan Line 2013

However, prior to my retirement, I travelled to work on the new, upgraded, comfortable, non-rattley, air-comforted (there are very few fully ‘air-conditioned’ installations anywhere), walk-through S stock trains. There have been a few changes to the Tube in the 60+ years I’ve been underground. Fire-extinguishers and emergency light candles have been removed – often by schoolboys, but more recently by policies. Smoking no longer blights our journeys. Alcohol has been banned – though not everybody realises that. Step-free access has improved – but needs to improve a lot more. Ticketing has become more slick – although thundering into the back of somebody at the turnstile who is required to “seek assistance” is still an annoyance, as is somebody thundering into you, trying to avoid paying the due fare.

Some things never change. The expectation that the first train to arrive will be destined for your station is as silly as it ever was. The laws of “The Tube” prevent that eventuality. I may want to go to West Ruislip in the morning, but I must wait for two travelling to Ealing Broadway before mine arrives. As a youth, I always wanted Hainault via Newbury Park, but no, two Epping or Hainault via Woodford Trains had to pass before mine arrived. Of course, now I live near Epping, the reverse applies.

There are still a few stations I need to visit, but hopefully I will achieve that before I go to the great turnstile in the sky. I wonder if He accepts Oyster?

It’s actually departing from Theydon Bois, Northbound.