Nick Seeber's blog

Hierarchy of seats on the Underground - detailed analysis

Given that my standard public transport route to work (Walk-Train-Bus/Walk) avoids the tube, and that I recently started cycling in on most days, I don't travel on the tube much. However, I agree with Meg Pickard that there is a definite hierarchy of seats within each carriage.

In the reference diagram below, the preferred pecking order of one end of a Hammersmith & City line carriage is dissected:

Position 1 is supreme, because you have only one neighbour, and (usually) a wider seat, with windows behind and beside you, plus a door which might give some hope of a breeze.

Position 2 ...

Check it out...

Gill on Fish, and dyslexia

Whilst looking for the address of Fish Club*, a restaurant around the corner from my house which I wanted to review on Yelp, I came across a Times restaurant review that AA Gill did a while back. Whilst the review was useful, what was really interesting was the first two thirds or so of the review, where he was talking about dyslexia:

I was asked by the nice facilitator what dyslexia had ever done for me. I said it had given me a brilliant lifelong excuse not to do things. I’m excused forms. I don’t do phone numbers or thank-you cards. I don’t text. I’m not Sudoku-, crossword- or Scrabble-friendly. And I don’t do quizzes, tests or exams.

It's a good, down-to-earth and succinct dissection of people's attitudes to dyslexia, and as you would imagine, it skewers a few myths in the process (emphasis mine):

In truth, of course, dyslexics end up in the art room or the music studio or the drama class after school, because it’s the only place they aren’t special-needs remedial. They get good because they can’t do anything else. We can be every bit as culturally rubbish as you — it just tends to take us longer to find out.

...

The people who really suffer with dyslexia are parents — mostly mothers, who get hysterical about statementing and special teachers and vivas and computers with coloured screens. They hurry their frightened and guilty children around the small coterie of nice-little-earner experts who repeatedly make them do spatial-awareness tests and talk in quiet, smiley voices.

School is never going to be a place for a dyslexic. The spine of education is words and numbers. But if you can get over the English bourgeois, obsessive snobbery with hardback reading, and just remember that the vast majority of people who ever lived never read a line of Jane Austen, then dyslexia should be a problem that, while it’s worse than having an annoying laugh, isn’t nearly as bad as halitosis or premature ejaculation. If you’ve got it, get over it; if your kid’s got it, forget about it.

Whilst on the subject, I highly recommend Gill's book The Angry Island, which has a passage on War Memorials which should be part of the History syllabus.

*The Fish Club website has the nasty 'design' feature of re-sizing your browser window to 1024 pixels wide. I was tempted to dock a star from the Yelp review just for that...

Five things I learned on my first day cycling to work

The weekend before last I bought a new bike, and today I cycled to work for the first time. It went pretty well, although I'd cycled part of the route yesterday to make sure I knew where I was going.

I'm lucky that at work we have underground parking for bikes, and showers. It took me about 35 minutes cycling time, and with 10 minutes for showering I was still at my desk in roughly the same time it would normally take me using overland train and bus. Plus I felt fantastic!

It was a real learning curve, and I've tried to think what advice I would give my past self if I could. Here goes...

#1 - Follow the other cyclists

Being London, there were loads of cyclists all over the place, most of whom were going similar routes to me -- so I just followed them most of the time. This helped with working out how to cross roads or how to position myself at junctions. I expect I'll only need to do this for a while, until I learn it all myself. In the meantime though, it's really useful.

#2 - Light yourself up like a Christmas tree

As it was getting light this morning, the difference between people with lights and without wasn't very noticeable -- but in the evening it was massive. And lights on their own aren't much good either, they need to be flashing (ideally randomly) and you should be wearing a high-visibility jacket or cover on your rucksack. I had the lights already, but invested in some hi-vis gear on my way home. I'm really glad I did, once it got dark I felt a lot more visible and safer.

#3 - Use cycle lanes on main roads, not little back streets

Despite the traffic moving faster, paradoxically I felt safer on main roads (even ones without cycle lanes) than I did a little "quiet" back streets. The problem with back streets is that although there fairly quiet, cars tend to pull out from behind buildings a lot, and because the streets are narrow there's less space between you and cars. Also, obviously, it's much slower and you have to negotiate more junctions (DANGER DANGER DANGER), whereas on main roads you can just keep going pretty quickly for ages.

#4 Check your route ahead of time so that you know roughly where you're going...

I did plan my route home on the Internet, so although I hadn't memorised it I didn't need to take a map with me. This really helped, as I would have hated to have to be checking a map all the time, especially as it was really dark and getting quite cold. This leads me onto my last point...

Transport for London do some good guides, plus you can customise the TFL Journey Planner to give you cycle routes.

#5 - ...but go with the flow!

I ended up taking a wrong turn around Vauxhall and went down the A3 instead of Lavender Hill. It wasn't a big deal, as I knew I'd end up at Clapham Common, so I just carried on even though it probably took me an extra half a mile. I figured it was safer and quicker just to head the way I knew rather than trying to find my way back onto the route I'd chosen.

In summary, I'm really pleased and am looking forward to doing the route again tomorrow. Except slightly wiser -- and maybe in better time!

The Gay Blades - electrifying Camden

I don't really go to gigs: they're noisy, smelly, crowded - and I have to pretend I know about music and display some sense of rhythm (which I don't have - my girlfriend compared my clapping to that of a performing seal, though noting "at least seals can keep time").

Sometimes, however, it can be a fantastic experience.

Last week we went to a small gig at Dingwalls in Camden. The main act was The Spinto Band, but before they came on there were a number of support bands, which were all pretty good with one exception: The Gay Blades. They rocked.

The frontman - Clark Westfield - is something of a character:

If you get a chance I can highly recommend seeing them live. It's an experience you won't forget soon.

For a more educated appraisal see The Guardian...

Michael McIntyre - Live at the Apollo

If you haven't seen it already, the first episode of the new series of Live at the Apollo is on BBC iPlayer. Catch it while you can, it's got three comedy stars: Michael McIntyre introduced, and the two main acts were both quality - Rich Hall [who it turns out is the inspiration for Moe the Bartender in The Simpsons - fame indeed] and Rhod Gilbert.

I was very chuffed, actually, as I've seen two of the three live. Michael MacIntyre was on a couple of years ago at The Tattershall Castle's* weekly stand-up comedy Monday Club, and then last month I saw Rich Hall doing the same act as he did at the Apollo at Old Rope (weekly on Mondays from 8ish at The Pheonix, £5).

*The Tattershall Castle is a boat permanently moored on the North Bank of the Thames near Embankment. It's an experience.