"Fruit and veg"

As I've said here before, I don't much like the Underground. More accurately, I have a bit of love/hate relationship with it. I love it iconographically and for how quintessentially London it is, but given the opportunity, I'd much rather walk. And by opportunity, I usually mean time.

Today, I needed to be at Liverpool Street Station for a nine-thirty meeting, which meant getting up at seven to catch the unfortunately popular 07:55 from Worcester Park to Waterloo. My anticipated one stop dash thence to Bank on the Waterloo and City Line was scuppered by delays, so I had an unpleasantly snug journey up to Embankment followed by a relatively pleasant - i.e. every breath I took didn't taste of someone else's breakfast - trip 'round to Liverpool Street on the Circle Line.

(Incidentally, why don't they just advertise Circle Line platforms as 'clockwise' or 'anti-clockwise'? All stations are effectively westbound from Liverpool Street so, after my meeting, I found the platform for Euston Square by trial and error. (I mean, it being the Circle Line, either platform would have done but one route was more circuitous than that other!))

Anyway, from moment of getting on the train at Worcester Park, the experience was all rather inorganic, if you ignore the huge, warm, mass of humanity. The metal, cloth, plastic and glass of the trains, the concrete of the platforms and underground tunnels. There's nothing natural or growing, unless you count the grime and detritus generated by the lack of rubbish bins. Emerging up into a station is not much better, even at a mainline station, as the shop fronts present a plastic façade to the concourse.

It was rather joyous, then, to find this grocery stall at the exit from the Underground at Liverpool Street station. Not only for the sudden burst of organic colour, which was quite dazzling, almost overwhelming, but also because it was lovely to see something so old-fashioned, so non-corporate and so *human* there amidst the hard, impersonal environment of the cattle-run of commuting.