{"id":325,"date":"2013-01-10T07:45:34","date_gmt":"2013-01-09T20:45:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/conspiracyofwords.com\/?p=325"},"modified":"2013-01-10T08:44:06","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T21:44:06","slug":"10-january-1863-the-london-underground-worlds-oldest-underground-railway-opens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/conspiracyofwords.com\/?p=325","title":{"rendered":"10 January 1863 \u2013\u00a0The London Underground (world’s oldest underground railway) opens"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have always been fascinated with underground spaces. Caves, tunnels, mines and drains.<\/p>\n

Partly, no doubt, it is the lure of the forbidden. Adventure on the cheap. Jump a fence, ignore a sign proclaiming Confined space \u2013\u00a0entry prohibited<\/i> and you enter a part of the landscape or a part of the city that most people will not even be aware of, let alone enter.<\/p>\n

Partly too, though, it is because of what these hidden spaces represent. Natural formations that bear witness to geologic time \u2013\u00a0mind-bogglingly slow interactions of rock and water \u2013 as well as upthrust and drift on a planetary scale. Or the submerged spaces of our urban infrastructure that are literally life-giving \u2013\u00a0transporting our waste, protecting us from floods, moving us secretly from one part of the city to the other.<\/p>\n

Somehow it feels right to get in touch with these forces. To acknowledge them on occasion, at least, with my fleeting presence.<\/p>\n

One of the most deeply peaceful moments of my adult life came while on holiday on Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands off Ireland\u2019s west coast. At the base of the towering outer wall of the Iron Age ringfort Dun Eochla, I found a crawl-space, a small tunnel leading to a tiny curved chamber, just large enough to curl up in, near the centre of the three-metre wide wall. I lay there for a while in the dim quiet, under the stacked stone of the fort\u2019s walls and the weight of centuries.<\/p>\n

When I returned to the friends who were waiting for me outside the wall, for a time I couldn’t speak.<\/p>\n

File under: <\/i>only wrong if you get caught | written by torchlight<\/p>\n

(Image source: Wikipedia<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have always been fascinated with underground spaces. Caves, tunnels, mines and drains. Partly, no doubt, it is the lure of the forbidden. Adventure on the cheap. 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