Camberwell New Road

Taken from the 36 bus (it has an upstairs; sometimes the 436 comes along first - it's a bendy bus, upon which: no comment). Both have announcements of the name of the upcoming bus stop. It's not been long since bus stops had names - once upon a time travelling by bus was a mysterious process, but now there are maps and information all over the place - well done London Transport - oh, that's been renamed: Transport For London.

The photos are small, but don't you get a sense of what a colourful route it is? And now's my chance to find the names of the roads along the route - Kennington Lane, Durham Street, Harleyford Road, Kennington Oval, Harleyford Street, Camberwell New Road, Camberwell Church Street.

The photos were all taken along Camberwell New Road - a turnpike in 1818, it's now the longest Georgian road in England.

Highbury & Islington to Charing Cross

The circles derived from reading "Lines" by Tim Ingold:
The hub-and-spokes model of place (left) compared with the place as a knot of entangled lifelines (right). In the diagram on the left, the circle represents a place, the dots are its living occupants and the straight lines indicate the connectors of a transport network. In the diagram on the right, the lines are living inhabitants, and the knot in the middle is a place.

So, "being on the tube" is a place?

Elsewhere

How good not to be travelling on the Tokyo underground, along with 8 million people a day.

"To the uninitiated, the striking thing about these images from photographer Michael Wolf's new book Tokyo Compression, aside from the lengths to which otherwise sane people will go to wedge themselves into an already bulging carriage, must be the looks of resignation among the victims. But it is the ability to tolerate an elbow in the back and a cheek unceremoniously pasted against a window that sets Tokyo's commuters apart. There are few arguments, and fights are almost unheard of; it's as if the powerless, massed ranks of the travelling public have entered into a non-aggression pact – and one that is observed, for the most part, in near silence.

"That doesn't mean Tokyoites are above misbehaving in transit. An epidemic of groping led to the introduction of women-only carriages. Frequent breakdowns in etiquette were the inspiration behind a monthly Do It At Home poster campaign to remind commuters of their manners. The list of transgressions ranges from the obvious (cranking up the volume on an iPod) to the more idiosyncratic (turning a wet umbrella into a makeshift nine-iron for a spot of golf swing practice). " (Guardian, 1 December)

Charteris Road, N4

Peckham Road, SE5

Interchange

Commercial / Broadway interchange of the Skytrain's Millenium and Expo lines, Vancouver.

Stairs to platform level

"The Tube Train" by Cyril E. Power is a color linocut from 1934 that is one of a series in the show that deal with the London Underground. [It] gets at the kind abstracted humanity that riding public transport seems to engender."

One of the prints in the "Rhythms of Modern Life" exhibition in Miami.

Kensal Rise to Crouch Hill - via Barking

As it was a beautiful midsummer morning, after changing trains (6:57), I stayed on to the end of the line (always wanted to do that!), photographing (through a dirty window, often into the sunlight) at each station. As the route was new to me, and there were announcements, I wrote down the names of the stations:
Gospel Oak
Upper Holloway
Crouch Hill
Harringay Green Lanes
South Tottenham
Blackhorse Road
Walthamstow Queen's Road
Leyton Midland Road
Leytonstone High Road
Wanstead Park
Woodgrange Park
Barking
-- and back.
While transcribing the names, I fell into my own trap - starting reading each page from the top. It's not written starting from the top of each page - for the line to be continuous, it goes from side to side down the right-hand page, then at the outer edge it continues onto the bottom of the left-hand page, and then it travels up the left-hand page to continue onto the top of the right-hand page. (Easy when you know how... and obvious when you know where to look.)

Bus 6, Kensal Rise to Regent Street

Camera in fixed position (upstairs), snapping at each bus stop. Sunday morning.

Liverpool Street Station (Underground)

Westbound Hammersmith & City line (and Circle line) platform -

On the buses

Route 35, south to Liverpool Street (to save a 10-minute walk).

Along Oxford Street

Travelling west. A little later -
Dance buskers near Oxford Circus. Traffic was slow, their music was loud and their performance exuberant. The crowd were loving it, especially the mock-ballet bit.

Overground - new train

Three continuous carriages on the Richmond-Stratford line, with a conductor who signals "ready to depart" with the morse code for the number seven: two long, three short. Or is it - two short and then three short (ie, I and S)? You hear it so often you can't remember because you're actually ignoring it.

Crouch Hill Station

Two or three freight trains between each passenger train, it seems. Could be just the time of day.

Routemaster

Leicester Square station

Finding yourself on the Northern Line platform and needing to be on the Piccadilly Line platform.

Holborn station - escalators

From Piccadilly Line to Central Line, and from Central Line to street level.

(In March 2010 I could run up 43 steps on the first escalator, and up 107 steps in all. Since finishing the art foundation course I no longer run up the escalators three times a week; my performance has definitely declined.)

Russell Square Station

175 steps, spiralling upward.

Listening

As Gordon Craig said of woodcutting (in 1924): "It is a work which I found allowed one to listen, if not to speak , while practising it."

He listened to the novels of Dumas. While TravelWriting I'm listening to announcement after announcement - to people talking on mobile phones - to snatches of conversations - to ambient noise.