For the past two weeks I’ve been a London resident (well a Monday to Friday resident). I’ve been flat-sitting in Highgate for Tom and Hannah while their place was empty. A tenant moved in this week, so that’s the end of my second home in the capital.
For me, living in Highgate means my normal commute of around two hours is reduced to about 45 minutes. It’s still quite a long time, but Highgate is on the High Barnet/Mill Hill branch of the Northern Line so to get home from work I have to take the Victoria Line to Euston and then change for the Northern Line. If the first train is an Edgware train, you either have to wait for a High Barnet one or, if there’s a long wait for that, go on the Camden where the Charing Cross and Bank loops converge and wait for a High Barnet train there.
It can involve a fair bit of platform hopping and great frustration if you just miss a train because you were stuck behind a fat person, someone pulling a house-sized bag or dolly daydream walking and texting. Since the incident with the nun last year, I’ve resolved not to push anyone on the tube, so I often get held up and there’s no worse Northern Line experience than the doors of a High Barnet train closing in your face, looking up and seeing the board say Edgware 8 mins.
Sometimes it works perfectly - you get in the end carriage of the tube at Victoria, this aligns you exactly with the connecting passage at Euston between northbound Victoria and northbound Northern Line; out of the Victoria line, there’s a train just pulling in on the other platform, which gives you enough time to nip across the passageway and onto the Northern line. If the doors are beeping, pile on and change at Camden if you have to; if there’s time, walk down so your exit is aligned with the exit at Highgate. It’s a precise science, commuting.
The other big difference between the Northern Line and virtually any other other Tube line, but especially the Victoria Line, is the speed of the trains. The Victoria Line is like the fast lane of the motorway; the Northern Line is like a single track road on the Isle of Mull - it’s slow. So slow that sometimes I get absorbed in my newspaper or book; I might notice Archway go past and find I’ve read two or three pages without knowing where I am. I panic and think I’ve missed my stop, but I can read another three pages before the tube train rattles into Highgate.
I don’t think I could learn to love the Northen Line and in the summer, I’d choose to walk to Finsbury Park along the Parkland Walk, the old railway line that goes through Crouch End and is now a footpath.
Tom and Hannah’s flat has seemed very different without them. It’s all very familiar, of course, and I’ve grown to like it more and more, but it seems quite bare and empty with just the main furnishings. I’ve been sleeping on the bed settee in a sleeping bag and managing with a knife, a dessert-spoon and a tea-spoon; one plastic bowl and the glass plate out of the microwave. One night, I’d planned to make myself a tuna sandwich, but only realised I hadn’t got a tin opener when I picked up the tin - that was a sparse evening.
I thought about having a pint in the Woodman - my favourite Highgate pub (except Wednesdays when it’s Jazz Night) - but it’s not the same without Tom, so I desisted. Nothing worse than getting all maudlin in the pub; sobbing into my Deuchars IPA and telling the Polish barmaid: “I used to come in here with my son, but now he lives in Brussels.” Worse still, if I stumbled in on Blues Night, I could end up suicidal!
Anyway, Northern Line excepted, it’s been nice living in London for a couple of weeks, even if it did take me 45 minutes to travel seven miles.
For me, living in Highgate means my normal commute of around two hours is reduced to about 45 minutes. It’s still quite a long time, but Highgate is on the High Barnet/Mill Hill branch of the Northern Line so to get home from work I have to take the Victoria Line to Euston and then change for the Northern Line. If the first train is an Edgware train, you either have to wait for a High Barnet one or, if there’s a long wait for that, go on the Camden where the Charing Cross and Bank loops converge and wait for a High Barnet train there.
It can involve a fair bit of platform hopping and great frustration if you just miss a train because you were stuck behind a fat person, someone pulling a house-sized bag or dolly daydream walking and texting. Since the incident with the nun last year, I’ve resolved not to push anyone on the tube, so I often get held up and there’s no worse Northern Line experience than the doors of a High Barnet train closing in your face, looking up and seeing the board say Edgware 8 mins.
Sometimes it works perfectly - you get in the end carriage of the tube at Victoria, this aligns you exactly with the connecting passage at Euston between northbound Victoria and northbound Northern Line; out of the Victoria line, there’s a train just pulling in on the other platform, which gives you enough time to nip across the passageway and onto the Northern line. If the doors are beeping, pile on and change at Camden if you have to; if there’s time, walk down so your exit is aligned with the exit at Highgate. It’s a precise science, commuting.
The other big difference between the Northern Line and virtually any other other Tube line, but especially the Victoria Line, is the speed of the trains. The Victoria Line is like the fast lane of the motorway; the Northern Line is like a single track road on the Isle of Mull - it’s slow. So slow that sometimes I get absorbed in my newspaper or book; I might notice Archway go past and find I’ve read two or three pages without knowing where I am. I panic and think I’ve missed my stop, but I can read another three pages before the tube train rattles into Highgate.
I don’t think I could learn to love the Northen Line and in the summer, I’d choose to walk to Finsbury Park along the Parkland Walk, the old railway line that goes through Crouch End and is now a footpath.
Tom and Hannah’s flat has seemed very different without them. It’s all very familiar, of course, and I’ve grown to like it more and more, but it seems quite bare and empty with just the main furnishings. I’ve been sleeping on the bed settee in a sleeping bag and managing with a knife, a dessert-spoon and a tea-spoon; one plastic bowl and the glass plate out of the microwave. One night, I’d planned to make myself a tuna sandwich, but only realised I hadn’t got a tin opener when I picked up the tin - that was a sparse evening.
I thought about having a pint in the Woodman - my favourite Highgate pub (except Wednesdays when it’s Jazz Night) - but it’s not the same without Tom, so I desisted. Nothing worse than getting all maudlin in the pub; sobbing into my Deuchars IPA and telling the Polish barmaid: “I used to come in here with my son, but now he lives in Brussels.” Worse still, if I stumbled in on Blues Night, I could end up suicidal!
Anyway, Northern Line excepted, it’s been nice living in London for a couple of weeks, even if it did take me 45 minutes to travel seven miles.
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