A view of the life of a major world city from the perpective of a philosopher, traveller and Japanese martial arts expert who happens to find himself working part-time as a Station Assistant on Platform 6 of Oxford Circus tube station, central London.

The streakers, the jumpers, the onanists, the blind, the straight, the self-righteous, the buskers, the professional beggars, the lost souls, the stupid and the insane.

The Weeping Wall and the staff member who choses to spend his time fast asleep in a cupboard 100 feet below ground.

Ross has smuggled carpets in Dubai, herded camels in the Australian desert, appeared as a Jesuit priest in a Japanese daytime TV soap...and much else besides.

A difficult book to categorise because it's part-memoir and part-philosophical treatise, but packed full too of entertaining anecdotes and much humour.

Reviewer Tony Parsons described it quite well:

"Brilliantly welds the life of a city and the life of a mind...Totally original..."

One of the many valid points Ross makes is that the training given to LU staff is a completely inadequate preparation for the reality of the job.

It's easy enough to pass a Multiple Choice examination on "Soft Skills"- Transactional Analysis, and so on- if you've been told the answers half a dozen times in the course of the previous classroom hour. Of course, you'll forget everything learned by this method within the next 4-5 days- unless you NEED to retain it in your memory for the everyday tasks the job entails.

One example: You're told in the classroom that if you're threatened by a potentially violent member of the public you move to a "place of safety". A few years ago, the place of safety was a kind of wooden sentry box. Then, one memorable night, the wooden sentry box- with the staff member inside- was hurled onto the live tracks by the disgruntled customer. That's the point at which LU started concreting the "places of safety" to the floor. Too little, too late. As always.

And nothing you learn in the classroom prepares you for a ticketless incontinent vagrant with scabies.

Everything you need to know about handling such situations you learned long before you ever filled in an application form to join the London Underground.

That brings backs tons of memories of stupid training I've enjoyed - ahum.

For example, this was about a year ago.
Every 2 year we have a sort of team-building day with everybody working in our departement.
That's roughly some 250 persons - social assistants, head-social-assistants, secretaries, cleaning personell, ...
Last year we started with something called an info-tainer (expensive word for 'you tell them stuff that sounds like it means something' and make a joke about it that sound like it's supposed to be funny' for pay).
The subject at hand was 'communication' - the vast majority of people in the room have studied to become a social assistant (like myself), as you might imagine 'communication' is one of the key elements in that study AND all of the people there are used to work with people who aren't exactly easy to communicate with on an everyday basis. That doesn't mean that nobody can't teach us anything anymore, but that you won't get far with cheap everyday knoweldge.

BUT when you put people together in a room, you get a smooth looking guy to be your info-tainer and you make it part of the job, than those people tend to shut their brains off.

EXERCISE: TALK TO EACH OTHER - WHILE TALKING 'A' WILL START LOOKING AWAY FROM 'B'
REACTION FOR B: OOH, THAT'S WEIRD, IT WAS LIKE HE WASN'T INTERESTED IN WHAT I HAD TO SAY.
INFO-TAINER: YOU SEE LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, YOU HAVE TO LOOK TO PEOPLE WHILE TALKING TO THEM
ME:

EXERCISE: COMPARE YOUR STYLE OF COMMUNICATION TO AN ANIMAL AND TELL YOUR NEIGHBOUR ABOUT IT
NEIGHBOUR: WHAT ANIMAL D...
ME: I DON'T
NEIGHBOUR: UH? ... BUT THE EXERCISE SAID ...
ME: FUCK THE EXERCISE, I DON'T COMPARE MYSELF TO ANIMALS, IT'S STUPID AND HE WON'T TEACH YOU ANYTHING WITH IT
NEIGHBOUR: YEAH, BUT IF YOU REALLY H...
ME: A SEA-CUCUMBER
NEIGHBOUR:
RANDOM PERSON ASKED TO GIVE HER IDEA: I'M LIKE A DOG, REALLY LOYAL (ME: AND THIS HAS WHAT TO DO WITH COMMUNICATION?)
INFO-TAINER: VERY GOOD, AND YOU YOUNG LADY?
YOUNG LADY: OOH, I'M LIKE A CAT. MOSTLY I'M REALLY GENTLE, BUT SOMETIMES I CAN BE REALLY MEAN TOO.
INFO-TAINER: VERY GOOD. YOU SEE, PEOPLE ARE JUST LIKE ANIMALS. NOW, MOVING ON ...
ME TO NEIGHBOUR: SEE, IT'S STUPID, HE DIDN'T LEARN ANYONE ANYTHING.