Tunnel Visions: Journeys of an Underground Philosopher

by Christopher Ross (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2001

  $3.25

  Christopherr 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 mixture of lived experience in the surreal 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.

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $3.40

  When Christopher Ross put on a hi-visibility vest and joined London Underground as a station assistant, he discovered a Plato's cave of reflection and human comedy, populated by streakers, buskers, onanists and angry commuters. A meditation on life, a philosophical enquiry into human nature and a profoundly funny dissection of urban madness. Christopher Ross, philosopher and traveller, decided to cease his journeyings and go underground, working for a year as a station assistant on Platform 6 (northbound Victoria Line) at Oxford Circus. After training school, where he is taught how not to electrocute himself and always to look a member of the public in the eye as they are assaulting you, he faces up to his new duties with a mixture of curiosity and foreboding. '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 otherworldly life below ground, has written a profoundly funny book.