Pigeons on the London Underground

Brian's Pigeon Cam

You know there's something mad about blogs when you get a blogging pigeon making a film on the Tube. Even madder when you find that the pigeon has dedicated the video to you! So many thanks to Brian, who took a pigeon's eye view of the London Underground


Click on the picture above & press play when it opens to see what the Tube looks like to feathered commuters who are only about five inches high. I don't know how he managed to take it without more people looking at him. He said "Did it at night coz I figured prob less obvious - till I found out a pigeon with a cam round it's neck is totally obvious - esp at night."

He's also done an excellent job keeping his head relatively still. I think it's a cool little video and perhaps people will stop calling pigeons vermin now. When did you ever see a rat with a video-cam? Pigeons are in a league of their own as fare evading commuters, although sometimes I'd rather they didn't sit on the seats!

London Underground Sock Quiz Results

And the winner is.......

I think this is only the second quiz I've held where no one got all the answers correct and it was the date of the last steam trains carrying passengers which threw everyone who entered.

So the answers are:

1. The London Transport Museum will open in the spring next year. How much money will have been spent on the improvements?

£18.6 million

2. When the London Underground began in 1863, steam trains were used underground. When did the last steam train carrying passengers run on the Tube?

29th May 2000 - Steam on the Met special this threw everyone.

3. The Bakerloo Line celebrated its centenary earlier this year. Which line celebrated its centenary immediately before the Bakerloo & in what year?

Central line, 2000

4. In the lifts at Covent Garden (the nearest Tube station to the museum) there used to be a recording of a famous voice saying "Turn right into the Piazza for one of my favourite museums - The London Transport Museum". Whose voice was it?

Loyd Grossman

5. In what year do you think the black socks were made? I don't know the exact year, but when's the latest they could have been produced?

I was looking for 1994 as they have Aldwych on them - although IanD has a point in saying that they could have been made later

6. The socks are supposedly men's socks fitting size 6 - 11. What's my shoe size?

7 or 8 depending on the shop.

Jonny Lyon, Nicola and Jon Justice got most correct and went into Neil's paperclip selection, and the winner of the delightful pair of socks is.......

Jon Justice.

Thanks to those who entered, and goodness knows how many paperclips Neil will need for the next quiz, as even with five prizes, there's still a large amount of entries!

Friday Quiz - Tube Stations with celebrity names

When will I be famous?

A few weeks ago Heart FM's breakfast show did a phone-in where people had to come up with celebrities that had London places in their names. I quite liked some basic ones like Harry Enfield, but then they got a bit more inventive with Patsy Kensington and Whitney Euston. So can you name a celebrity that has a Tube Station in their name. You are allowed to have some poetic licence so I will let you get away with ones like St Paul's Gascoigne.


I don't think we'll come up with enough to make a Tube Map out of them (although that never stopped Simon Patterson with The Great Bear - see detail above), but I imagine there are quite a few.

Please only give one name each (anyone showing off and giving loads will be disqualified) and you have to give a name that is different to everyone elses. You have until Sunday 11th June 23.59 GMT to enter. As usual please give you email address and/or website/blog in the comments below when you enter.

And the prize(s), I'm feeling generous and seem to have acquired lots of tins of "London Tea" (whatever that is) with London Underground Maps on them. So five lucky people who are selected from the entries will win a tin.

There's only enough in each caddy to make five or six cups of tea, so don't think you can have a massive tea party if you win!

Have fun!

London Underground Fashion Victims

Fashion Victims on the Tube

Here's Friday's look at people who I've seen as slaves to fashion. This week is more of a reflection of fashion trends, as I didn't manage to spot any complete horrors this week - or rather the people who've gone out on a limb to take a style "and make it their own" - why hasn't Louis Walsh said that on Celebrity X Factor yet?

Tattered hems on jeans

Now I know a number of people who like this look (you know who you are!!!), but I personally don't see the point of deliberately buying jeans that you know are going to drag along the floor and look tatty. Perhaps those of you who wear your jeans like this would care to tell me!


Trainers with peasant skirts

I think the peasant / gypsy skirt boho look is almost over, (at least I haven't seen pictures of Sienna Miller flouncing around in them lately) but I could be wrong. But surely if you're going to wear a very floaty summery skirt like this one, wouldn't you wear slightly different shoes.


They're not even Converses, but very heavy looking adidas trainers.

Cuffs and Tattoos

I really hate large tattoos. It's all very well looking like a Robbie Williams clone when you're a young muscular whipper snapper. But what's going to happen when a lot of these people reach their fifties and sixties? Personally I think they're going to look even worse on them than they do now.


Tattered knees and Metallic pumps

Just returning to the tattered jeans, this lady had gone for the worn knees approach. I don't quite know how you get your jeans to wear like this naturally. Perhaps you scrub the floors a lot - no idea!


She's teamed these with a pair of metallic ballet style pumps. Please, please, please can someone tell me when the metallic look is going away?

That's it for this week. The previous entry for London Underground fashion victims is here and all of them together can be seen on the following Flickr set.

Compensation for Tube Passengers

Should commuters get compensated for a bad service?

Thanks to Steve Everett for letting me know that the passengers who were stuck on the Victoria Line for over two hours on Monday are to be given £100 each for the "distress" and "disruption" they were caused. This is quite unusual as none of the 150 passengers required medical attention and the compensation appears to have been unprompted & is possibly another way of blaming Metronet for the signal failure that led to the problems.

'TfL works hard to give passengers the best possible service but in this case the service wasn't up to scratch,' the spokesman said. 'Therefore we believe this one-off payment is the right thing to do given the distress caused to our passengers during their journey.'

This is great as I imagine it must have been fairly upsetting to be stuck on a tube for that long, not to mention the massive delay (although it could be argued that a hundred quid isn't enough). But I wonder how far TfL will go with compesation in the future? Is this setting a precedent?

We all know that we can get our fare back for being delayed by more than 15 minutes (although I wonder how many people do it because of the paperwork and simply forgetting about it). Perhaps all passengers on the Northern Line deserve compensation for the distress of travelling on the Misery Line.


Yesterday Metro reported that a woman is claiming compensation from Southern trains for alleged distress because the toilets on her train are rarely working. "She claims she has been forced to take early maternity leave because the trains cannot cope with her need to go to the toilet every 45 minutes." It'll be interesting to see if she wins!

I think I could quite rightly claim compensation every time I see that I have to get on a packed London Underground train. I know that it's going to be uncomfortable, I might get a crick in my neck. I might be stuck next to someone really sweaty and that causes me distress! I could also claim compensation for the amount of times I come across a chocolate machine on the Tube that isn't working. I have the expectation of getting chocolate and when I see it's not working, I'm distressed.

I bet a lawyer could probably have a field day working out the types of compensation we could get for bad service, delays and breakdowns on the Tube. Is there anything you feel you should be compensated for on your London Underground journey?