London underground

I have gone on Holiday to the remarkable world of the United States of America.
I am here stocking up on shoes, clothes, food that I can't get easily or in fact at all in London.
I am enjoying seeing my parents even though they live 100's of miles apart in the same country, and also putting to rest rumours of clothes that I can find here.I was told the truth by two shop attendants within moments of walking into a store.

Rumour number one laid to rest is
Old Navy has a tall clothes on their shop floor.I was told tall was an online exclusive only!

Rumour Number two
A very tall lady with an impressive inseam of 38 told me that the best place to get my jeans was American eagle and Banana Republic for the fancy clothes.

Thank you anonymous beautiful tall ladies of America, I love you dearly.
Anyway I think I may call individual stores from London next time to save me all this trouble.
Aside from all these shannegans I also realised that I missed London dearly and I used the internet alot.
SO for comfort, because I could spend my morning relaxing and not waking up going into the cold/dark/two beautiful a day to be going into work, so I could stuff myself into a train that was stuffy/overheated/overcrowded I decided to consult my Google reader and check up on all the things I was missing in London.

One of my favourite blogs, Going underground () started talking One under, which is what the LUL staff call people who inadvertently end up under a train.The official announcement seems to be _ we are experiencing delays due to a passenger under a train. This is their way of giving you lots of information but no information at all. Who jumped, where did they jump, why did they jump, were they pushed, is the driver ok, are they still alive, how long will that take to clean up, does this mean I will be late? These questions all go unanswered. They never normally end up in the paper either so you have no way of knowing what happened to this genderless, ageless, motiveless person.

London Underground are financially bound to keep trains moving at all time s and I suppose they learn to chose words careful to keep us sheeplike masses informed as without alarming us. They have many ways of describing delays. Some official lines they give for delays include

We would like to apologise for delays on the tube due to passenger action.

This line is normally delivered with so much sarcasm such scathing, vitriolic venom that you feel sorry for the person who it was directed at. You feel sorry for the idiot who pulled the passenger alarm because someone had fainted cos they were too dumb to realise the tubes were hot so they needed to take water with them. You vow silently never to be one of those idiots. See also the description of a passenger action here.


We would like to apologise for delays on the tube due to a customer incident.

Also delivered with sarcasm, slightly less though, which indicates that
it was something between two passengers, for example, passengers fighting. Probably at the foot of the escalator.Or as they got out of a train.

The whole mention of suicide bombers reminds me that, there were some suicide bombers on the trains in London. That happened in 2004, I think, but for some reason my mind is drawn not to that terrible event but to Wookies. Wookies and the film Four Lions, a brilliant film about incompetence and featured these classic lines

Control- This is control. The target is a bear.
Sniper 1- I see a bear. Clear to fire?
Control - Yes, engage the bear. (Costumed figure falls.)
Sniper 2 - No, that's a Wookie!
Sniper 2 to Control - Is a wookie a bear?
Control - Negative, a Wookie is not a bear.
Sniper 1 - I took out the bear.
Sniper 2 -That wasn't a bear, it was a Wookie! Wait, there's the Honey Monster. Sniper 2 to Control - Control, is the Honey Monster a bear?

Its good in writing but even better when you hear the clip, its the sheer anger and confusion in both their voices that really does it for me. As these guys were suicide bombers and I was after all thinking about the tube, I wondered how many suicides took place on the tube.
I thought the LUL website itself would be useless, so would the TFL one.
I tried googling for hints, all i could come up up with was a few studies using data from 2003.
I found some news articles which stated their sources as

Office of National Statistics


but the best source of all was the BBC always the champion who stated the Rail Safety and Standards Board would be the best place for information.
And it was depressingly


I am so glad I am on holiday and not on trains in London, I am going to bed to enjoy the heat and the fact I don't have to wake up early to take the tube tomorrow.
One last fact before i go, did you know that in the American state of Georgia, they decided to do away with public transport completely? Well for a few months anyway, because they did not have any money. yes, this happened in America.


Nite