Tubular

I love riding the tube in London. It's a smorgasbord of people for a people watcher to watch. I might be an avid people watcher.

Everyone is so close and they're all going to different places via the same route and 90% of them have ear phones in and some have too much luggage or just a traveler's backpack (a bit like me) and some people carry books with their thumbs stuck on a certain page and every once in a while a woman will have a plastic bag with her terribly fashionable and terribly uncomfortable shoes in it as she wears trainers with a black pencil skirt and white blouse and a blazer.
Some people talk too loudly to those sitting next to them, often in French or Italian or Spanish and sometimes in English. Some sit in utter silence and seem like they're never getting off that train.

Waves of people. Mass movements that have been finely orchestrated. A few stragglers desperately looking at maps and signs and back at the maps in their hands and then to the front of the train to try and figure out where that train is really heading and if they really want to be heading that direction.

I might just spend an afternoon riding the train. But probably not.

When I first got here that Thursday night I did not have my ear phones in listening to music. Every time I left I refrained from turning on my ipod but for a different reason than when I was in Oxford. When I was in Oxford I wanted all the natural sounds of the place in my ears. Here I just wanted to be alert and aware of all my surroundings not because they were beautiful, but because I didn't want to get mugged! Ha ha. That's partially true. I just didn't want to miss bus or train stops and I didn't want to be distracted if someone was oh so very kindly giving me directions.

But I've been here long enough that on my walk to the Limehouse tube station I am comfortable enough to have an ear phone in. I know the stops and changes well enough on the tube that I can have one ear phone in an still be able to pay attention to where the train is and where it is heading. I'm not good enough to read also. I think you have to have lived here for months before that works for you.