I arrived at a smoke blackened building, that once fulfilled the function of a public library in a mean part of that London district known as Whitechapel. There, leading down into the station, was a set of concrete steps which I proceeded to descend by placing one foot on the top step and the other foot on the step below. I repeated this procedure until I came to a set of stainless steel and plastic barrier gates with a yellow cone atop them. Having been used to this procedure I removed my blue 'oyster' card from my waistcoat ticket pocket and held it momentarily to the yellow cone. In a trice the portal opened to me to accommodate my passage and allow me to proceed down some more stairs to the crowded platform. An electric powered dot matrix indicator board advised me that a train to my destination was scheduled to arrive in two minutes and that what the Company calls, but most passengers do not consider, a 'good service' was running on all other lines. I attended on the station platform for around three minutes until a red white and blue painted train arrived at the station I was instructed by a disembodied voice to 'mind the gap' and to 'allow passengers off the train first'. I made sure that I did so and boarded the train along with the other surge of humanity and animals that also wished to take this particular conveyance away from the station.
(That's enough Dickens...Ed)
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