Thursday 13th September

There are misleading signs on the Underground and there are mis-directions. I know I took at least a couple of years to understand the complexity of the Underground, and though I like to think myself an expert I am sure there a few bits of it, like the Western reaches of the District Line that are still a mystery to me.  I can clearly remember wandering round and round Baker Street station in the mid-seventies completely lost as the signs were so misleading.  Sometimes this is by accident, arrows that appear to point to the end of the platform but are meant to indicate an exit partly hidden to the left.  Also the ever-improving platforms have so many signs and indicators hanging that signs are obscured and only hove into view if you walk down the platform.  These are all forgivable, and in a way add to the very nature of the tube; a secret language that Londoners know and visitors are perplexed by.

However we are now being subjected not just to misleading, but mis-directing signs.  During the Olympics quite a few stations became one-way entry or exit, supposedly for crowd control but one suspects an element of sadism was afoot.  But before the Olympics became an excuse there were still deliberate examples of sending people the wrong way.  At Kings Cross, one of the most complicated stations the indicator signs for different lines have had stickers placed over the arrows, pointing you in completely the wrong direction.  If you follow them you end up walking for ages down tunnels which bring you out a very short distance from where you started.  There is a perfectly good short link between the Victoria line and the Northern and Piccadilly, however this is now completely unsigned.  Only those who remember it still use it, and one has to ask why?  Why deliberately send people walking down endless corridors when a perfectly good short link exists.  Madness?  Sadism, or Stupidity?  You decide.