The Tube Map Is Not The Territory

When I was standing on Homerton High Street in east London the other day a cyclist stopped and asked in an American accent if I could tell him how to get to Bermondsey and then Stratford. I had to explain to this psychogeographer that while Bermondsey might come before Stratford if you are travelling from central London on the Jubilee line, to get to the second location from Hackney he needed to go east and to get to the first he would have to go south. The cyclist decided he wanted to go to Stratford so I directed him east through Hackney Marshes. I should have added that if he checked out the Lee Valley carefully he might find some dogging going on; and this would have proved more fun than attempting to use a tube map to guide himself around Lud’s Town! The way many people rely on the subway to get around London leads to some really wacky misreadings of the city’s actual topography, and the cyclist who asked me for directions had come up with one of the craziest I’ve encountered in my entire life! You couldn’t make it up!

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!