Tunnel Visions: Journeys of an Underground Philosopher - Tapa dura

Urban madness witnessed from an Underground platform.

Christopher Ross, philosopher and traveller, decided to cease his journeyings and go underground, quite literally. Seeking an antidote to incurable restlessness he chose to work for a year as a Station Assistant on Platform 6 (northbound Victoria Line) at Oxford Circus Station. After Training School, where he is taught how not to electrocute himself and always to look in the eye a member of the public as they are assaulting you, he faces up to his new duties with a mixture of curiosity and foreboding. What, exactly, will he find deep under the surface of London?

Tunnel Visions is a delightful mixture of lived experience in the sureal world of London’s Underground and the more elevated ideas, thoughts and imaginings that experience provokes. Oxford Circus Station, complete with its weeping wall, its streakers, buskers, onanists and cupboard containing one employee whose ideal working day was to sleep soundly 100 feet below ground, is a Plato’s Cave of reflection and human comedy. Christopher Ross, a still point in the whirling stream of the bizarre and otheworldly life below ground, has written a profoundly funny book.

Platform 6 at Oxford Circus is not an exciting place. Not very much happens there. Thousands of people pass along it every day, noticing nothing. Christopher Ross, philosopher and traveller, decidied it was ideal. The perfect place to watch people – and to think about their lives. But how could he remain a hidden observer? The answer was, he thought, quite simple: put on a hi-visibility vest and join the Underground as a humble Station Assistant. Once he had the required training – learning how to avoid being eletrocuted, and to look members of the public in the eye while they are assaulting you – he was ready. Then down he went.

Tunnel Visions is a delightful mixture of lived experience in the surreal subterrania of London's Underground and the more elevated ideas, thoughts and imaginings that experience provoked. Oxford Circus Station, complete with its weeping wall, its streakers, buskers, onanists and cupboard containing one employee whose ideal day is to sleep soundly 100 feet below ground, is a Plato's cave of reflection and human comedy. Christopher Ross provides a still point in the whriling stream of the bizarre and otherwordly life under London. He's a subversive of the subway, a witness to the urban madness of the Underground platorm, and has written a profoundly funny book.