10 things you might not know about the London Underground

What We Talk about When We Talk about the Tube: The District Line by John Lanchester


This is one of a series of short Penguin paperbacks, commissioned to celebrate 150 years of the London Underground. Lanchester was assigned the District LIne, and his elegantly written 87 pages are an engaging mix of the historical, the personal and the journalistic. He books himself a ride with a train driver all the way from Upminster to Richmond and back, a three and half hour trip, noting that the driver's job is so solitary that it makes even being a writer seem sociable.

Here's some of what I learnt:

1. The Tube is properly the name of the lines that were tunnelled - so not the earliest, which used the 'cut and cover' method for those parts near the centre of London where they had to go underground.

2. So "the Tube is a tube, but the Underground is by no means all underground." In fact, only 45% of the whole network is underground, including more than half the stations on the District Line.

3. The various lines were originally run by different companies, often hostile to each other. A ticket for one line could not be used on the others.

4. The District LIne is the only line that crosses the Thames by bridge (at both Kew and Putney). It also goes under a river: the Westbourne (no, I hadn't heard of it either) runs above the platform at Sloane Square station, through a pipe.

5. The driver has to keep a hand on the lever to make the train move, twisting it to a horizontal angle: once let go, it springs back to the vertical and the train stops. This is the famous 'dead man's handle'.

6. Underground drivers are given their work schedule 110 weeks in advance: they know when they'll be on and off shift two years ahead.

7. At its busiest, the Underground network carries more than 600,000 people - more than the population of Glasgow, the fourth biggest city in the UK.

8. The earliest line, the Metropolitan, opened in 1863. This was before electrification, so steam trains went through the tunnels. It was followed by the District (1868) and the Circle (1884).

9. The Paris Metro didn't open until 1900, and was a more centrally planned system, with everywhere in the centre of the city deliberately within range of a station. But London's more chaotic early start kept the city's lead over Paris in population and prosperity.

10. The tunnels in the tube have a diameter of 11 foot 8 and a half inches. There is no room for air conditioning so if the train stops on a hot day, the temperature in the carriages can quickly exceed the 35 degrees Centigrade, which is the legal limit for the transport of livestock. If the train is really stuck, the power in the line will be switched off, the lights in the tunnel switched on and the passengers led to the next station through an opening in the front of the driver's cab.

There's a lot to be said for finding out a bit of basic information about the world that's around you every day. Perhaps earlier generations were more aware of the wonder of the Underground, as we are today with the Internet. Here's a small piece of evidence of that, quoted by Lanchester: T.S.Eliot's acknowledgment of the difference between the tube and the Underground, in his poem East Coker:

Or as, when an underground train, in the tube,
stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades
into silence

The underground, not in the tube: the Central Line on the way to South Ruislip

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The cliché market

What it says on the tin - SELL
How xxxx is that? - SELL
To be honest - SELL
Back in the day - BUY
The clue is in the name - HOLD
One size fits all - SELL
What part of xxxx do you not understand? - BUY
Cherry-pick - SELL
Tell me about it - HOLD
You know what? - SELL
Customer facing - HOLD
Are you OK there? (the new "Can I help you?") - BUY
I'm running late (why does this sound like less of an offence than simply "I'm late"?) - HOLD
Literally - SELL (I heard someone discussing a TV programme: "I was literally glued to the sofa.")
I was like: "...." - HOLD
I'm on it - BUY
...Whatever - HOLD
Not a problem (the new 'no problem') - HOLD
Back in the day - BUY
No pressure then! - SELL (or preferably BURY)

Where are they now:

Know what I mean?
At the end of the day
Going forward
360 degree

Politicians only: 

Hard-working families
Up and down the country
Schools and hospitals
I take the view that...
Aspiration Nation (cp Trident Gum: Mastication for the Nation)

The meaning of life, courtesy of Harvard Business School

How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen


There’s an interesting idea behind this book: a prof from Harvard Business School, having overcome a life-threatening cancer, considers how we would live our lives if we used the business lessons he teaches his high-flying students to apply to companies.

For instance, just as a business often makes the mistake of focusing on the product it could make rather than the needs of its customers, so in our relationships, instead of assuming what selflessness would be for our partner, we need to explore their needs – which may be very different from our assumptions.

Christensen apparently has the perfect marriage, and is a committed Christian - so committed that, as a young man, with great strength of character/bloody-mindedness, he refused to play an important football game on a Sunday, threatening his team’s success in a championship. (The team won anyway: make of that what you will.) This aspect of his life is somewhat unhelpful to his readers, because what he tells us about himself – which is quite a lot – is obviously hugely influenced by his faith in God, rather than in the principles of business.

But there is some real meat here. I liked the idea that a person’s capabilities are the product of their Resources (talents, learning, material goods, time, for instance), Processes (ways of thinking, experience of situations, skills) and Priorities (values, decisions). In providing Resources for our children in the form of special classes and other ‘outsourced’ experiences, are we denying them the ability to develop their own Processes and Priorities through having to organise their own time?

Look at Dell (the computer company), Christensen says: they let Asus grow from their outsourcing manufacturer to becoming their product development centre – until Asus took what they’d learnt and grew their own computer business. So don’t outsource the key capabilities on which the future of your business – or your life – will depend. If parents want to shape their children’s priorities, they need to be there when the kids are developing their Processes and Priorities.

In the end, Christensen’s religious insights – such as how he prayed for an hour every night as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford before dedicating his life to God – rather get in the way. And beside the honesty and openness (including the admission of failures) there is slight but unavoidable smugness. Try this:

“My wife Christine, and I started, when we were newly engaged, with an end goal – a specific family culture – in mind …We wanted our children to love each other and support each other. We decided we wanted our children to have an instinct to obey God. We decided we wanted them to be kind. And finally, we decided we wanted them to love work.”

Although he tries to avoid sounding too preachy by adding that “every family should choose a culture that’s right for them”, that doesn’t quite ring true. If I said, for instance, that I don’t believe that I'll be able to give my children “an instinct to obey God”, wouldn’t that necessarily be a challenge to his values, rather than just another choice?

In the end, this is a book with its heart in the right place, and, what drew me to it, the question ‘how will you measure your life?’ is surely worth thinking about, however much or little of Christensen’s answer you take on board.

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