"So, How was your journey?"

Going back to my roots with London Underground Ad

Just got in from a leaving party at work, (Bon Voyage Alick, you'll be missed), and after staring rather hazily at a cross platform ad at Leicester Square, I thought, "Crikey this is one of the reasons why I began GoingUnderground in the first place".


The ad focusses on one of those days when you are stuffed in the Tube with your face in somone's armpit and you feel the need to really moan about your journey, when someone asks how it was. In the New Year of 1999, I thought that I fancied building a website, but wanted one where I could wax lyrical about something I felt other people might want to wax lyrical about too. The Tube seemed the obvious thing to me, as I can't remember the amount of conversations I've had over the years with people saying "You would not believe the journey I had into work today".

At the leaving party, a number of us were talking about those "old" sites like Fortunecity, where you could build a site for nothing, and they were all in "streets" roughly divided into categories - Goingunderground still exists in some rarely updated shape and form at http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/finsbury/254/ (beware the horrible pop ups), and I think I chose victorian as a place to house my site because of the Victorian nature of the Tube and I think Finsbury meant that it was a UK related or a London related site. Christ knows now, to be honest, but I've got a lot to thank Fortunecity for, even though I now pay for my hosting of goingunderground elsewhere.

Anyway, yesterday morning, I really felt like the woman in the ad above, as the Northern Line was acting as normal, meaning there were long delays between each train and even though it was 9.50am during a holiday week, I was on a crowded train with no prospect of a seat. Even the female breakfast show presenter on Heart FM (Harriet Scott) had been moaning about the Northern Line like mad and saying how she now walks extra stops rather than put up with it.

Apparently it's even harder to sell your house or flat if it's on the Northern Line route, so it's not called The Misery Line for nothing. My sympathies to all fellow Northern Line passengers and woe betide the person who asks us how our journey was. Incidentally, how was your journey today?