Listen With Others

Thanks to Craft for a Happy way to the begin the New Year, with a classic little Listener, including obligatory railway map and colouring-in. The epynomous LINEBACKER was Charles Pearson who campaigned for the building of the Metropolitan Railway, which opened on 10^th January 1863, 160 years ago give or take a few days. He was the City of London’s Solicitor and a good egg, not in it for the money, and I’ll applaud him too for supporting the disestablishment of the C of E (while being glad it survived) at the same time eyeing the Archbishop across the road as MP for Lambeth… My great-grandfather Joseph King Thomson might strangely have been named after King’s Cross Station in 1852, the year of its opening (the family lived nearby in honest (I hope) poverty, and his elder brother acquired Garibaldi as a middle name when he was the talk of the town in his birth year). They would have seen and heard and probably smelled the work going on.

The clashes resolved as the initials of the original stations of the line, in their proper positions: Paddington Bishops Road; Edgware Road, Baker Street, Portland Road, Gower Street, King’s Cross and Farringdon Street. The “modern equivalent” was spelled out as TUB EF ROMP ADDINGTO TONTO FAR RING DON.

The clues were fair and concise (5d “Vintage Times puzzle” > CRUX was excellent) and all in all it made for a very good solve. I approve of there being a few tortuous ones too, but if the series is thrive, this is a good way to mark the start of its new year.