The tubes: a South Londoner's view

On holiday in Uganda I spent some idle moments thinking about the multicoloured spider's web of underground lines which criss-cross the capital.

The coloured tubes criss cross our Capital
The cities of London and Westminster
A rainbow web linking ancient villages
Now urban towns in our unique city.

Black starts where the placid Wandle flows
Takes bowler hatted gents to city offices
And wealthy shoppers to big department stores
Bifurcating to Edgware and High Barnet in the North

Blue carries parcel laden travelers from all parts
To cheap hostels in musty Earl's Court streets
Where the Regency facades of Hangover Square
Hide many sins in dusty little rented rooms

Green runs from the leafy South Western suburbs
Along the mighty Thames to the city and out again
Ending at the marshy urban plains of the East
Whose topography first gave London its name.

Yellow follows Green in one long round trip
Giving drunken revelers the chance to try our pubs
In a circular route to vomit soaked oblivion
A pointless exercise in self humiliation.

Orange is the colour of the new built Overland
Which links diverse outlying parts of town
To the White City shopping conglomeration
And Clapham Junction's many starts and ends.

Red crosses the capital from Eastern woodlands
To the lawyers' chambers called temples
Stopping at the West End and Royal parks
Before taking us back to Ealing in the West.

London's ebb and flow pulses along these tubes
With its morning and evening transhumances
Between its heart where money dominates
And the leafy suburbs where people live and breathe.