There’s a fine tribute, of sorts, to this London institution in the Sunday Telegraph. These details are too good not to pass on:

“How do Tube drivers obtain the cups of hot tea they often carry? (There are kettles waiting at “tea points” around the network.) As you head west and face the direction of travel from Shepherd’s Bush on the Central Line, the eastbound platform is on your right, but at the next stop, White City, the eastbound platform is on your left. Why? (The answer is far too fraught to set out here.) Is there really a man who goes around the system killing pigeons with a hawk? (Yes.)”

“Tea points.”

Sometimes I miss the old place.

And here’s more on the tube, this time from the pub philosopher over at his blog:

“The Tube Map is one of the recognised images of London, along with Big Ben, St. Paul’s and Trafalgar Square. The city has been shaped by the Tube. The network is over a century old and London would not have grown in the way that it has without the Underground. Even if you live out in the most dismal suburb, the presence of that little coloured line on the map, or the familiar red circle sign on a street corner near your house, means that you are plugged in to one of the greatest cities in the world. If that is taken away, you suddenly feel stranded and isolated. Londoners get very angry when things go wrong with the Tube or it is threatened in any way. It holds together this huge, diverse city. The cohesiveness of London depends on the Underground. Without it, the city would fall apart. To strike at the Tube, then, is both a physical and a psychological blow to London. The city’s arteries have been cut and London bleeds.

“It won’t bleed to death though. We have faced bomb attacks many times before. As recently as 2001, a car bomb exploded in the high street near where I live. It was the tail end of an IRA bombing campaign that had gone on for years. Throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, Londoners picked themselves up and just got on with life.

“This Sunday, we will be paying tribute to the generation that fought the Second World War. They had to endure bomb attacks that were far worse than anything we can imagine. Our parents and grand-parents didn’t cower in their homes and refuse to go into town. In the evenings, they would go to the pub or go dancing, not when they thought their might be an air-raid but when they knew there was going to be one. I have always felt that those of us who are adults now have something to prove to our forebears. Now is the time to show some of that steel.”