So Much Further To Go

  As I write this, Qatar and Ecuador are about to face off in the first match of the 2022 Men’s World Cup. A clash with a deep history, with geopolitical intrigue interwoven between each pass. You’ll be able to cut the tension in the Al Bayt stadium with a knife. Probably. I don’t know. I’m not watching. In my own, petty, inconsequential way, I want to make a futile and useless gesture. So, I’m going to boycott the World Cup. I'm the first to admit that I'm a fickle football fan, with a relationship driven more from masochism than joy through supporting both Forest and England, both masters of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. But the World Cup was different. A festival of football, of wall charts stuck to the fridge, of ludicrous europop anthems, of Ally McCoist dispensing a brief history of Stalin’s dacha in the midst of a dull 0-0. The excitement of TV being wheeled into the school hall at 7am for us to glimpse the exoticism of Japan, to be thrilled and ultimately...

I found myself at Amersham, as one does, staring down the tube map. Zone 9 (or Buckinghamshire, as it is sometimes known) is on the outer extremes of the urban agglomeration that is London. Stretching in front of me was a collection of places I’d never really heard of, never mind visited. And it occurred to me that these places may not merely be stops on one branch of one tube, but rather a glancing window into a whole hidden world. I could have painstakingly researched the etymology of each stop, teasing out the nuggets of intrigue, and woven these into a tale of people and place that covers the Chilterns through to the roaring heart of the City. Instead, I’ve just made it up. So, join me on a journey through the imagination, via Neasden, of the Metropolitan line 1 , with extraordinarily little bearing on reality 2 . Amersham “Amersham,” she whispered. In the half light, she could swear that she saw his silhouette in her doorway. She looked again, and he was gone. Alice would ...