La metropolitana di Londra affascina un po’ tutti. E ogni tanto ispira imprese addirittura maniacali, come fotografare tutte le 270 stazioni con l’iPhone, passare da tutte le fermate in tempo da record o ... metterle in musica! Vi presentiamo tre ‘tube geeks’ geniali. By Mark Worden LANGUAGE LEVEL C1 (ADVANCED)

Speaker: Mark Worden (Standard British accent)

Last year Mike Strevens photographed all 270 London Underground stations with his iPhone. As he explains, he published his work on Instagram:

Mike Strevens (Standard British accent)

I don’t think I could have done it in any other way, actually: if I were just taking the photographs for myself and publishing them later on, I think I might have got bored very easily, but it was… people were really… it was almost like a… like a TV series, really, that people wanted to see what happened at the end, and people were trying to guess what the last station would be, and in the end it was quite inevitable that I chose my local station, Arsenal, to finish on! So!

Geoff Marshall, on the other hand, is in Guinness World Records for having visited all 270 stations in 16 hours 20 minutes and 27 seconds, while comedian Jay Foreman is the co-author, with Jon Gracey, of the “Every Tube Station Song.” This lists all 270 stations in three minutes. When not travelling on the Underground Geoff works as a cameraman. As he and Jay explain, he was the perfect choice when it came to filming the video of “The Every Tube Station Song”:

Geoff Marshall (Standard British accent)

There’s another website which you should all look at called, if you’re visiting London, called londonist.com and I do make a series of videos for them which... called “Secrets of the Underground,” which point out all the little facts and figures and things that you can see on the Tube. So Jay knew I did this, Jay knew I was capable of making, you know, a quality video. He had an amazing song. 

Jay Foreman (Standard British accent)

I knew you had a camera!

Geoff Marshall

And we had a camera, and so it just kind of like “happened.” And so I... I filmed it, you sung it, and we went sneakily around a few Tube stations over a couple of days!

Jay Foreman

Well, this is the incredible thing: there are... there are loads of scenes in that video ‘cause we filmed it on the... well, a lot of it is green screen but a lot of it is actually on the Underground itself: we’re filming in stations and on trains and outside stations. So, to make the film, we needed as much knowledge as we could possibly get about where are the best stations, so, for example, I said, “We need a station that has a map on show outside and is well lit.”

Geoff Marshall

And I just went, “St. John’s Wood!”

Jay Foreman

Yeah, exactly! And...

Geoff Marshall

‘Cause I knew it without having to...

Jay Foreman

... can you name the station, for example, if it exists, that has two escalators going up and two going down...

Geoff Marshall

I went “Holborn!”

Jay Foreman

This is what... this is why, if I was ever going to make this video, I’d have to make it with this expert here. So it was very fortuitous.

Geoff Marshall

Yeah, in terms of... what do they... what do they call that in the film world, where someone chooses the locations? It’s like a... it’s a location manager, isn’t it? So I was like...

Jay Foreman

You were location manager.

Geoff Marshall

I was the perfect location manager for the Tube because I knew instinctively where was the best place to go!

Jay Foreman

Otherwise we literally – and I don’t throw this around – otherwise we literally couldn’t have done it!

(Mike Strevens, Geoff Marshall and Jay Foreman were talking to Mark Worden)

To see “The Every Tube Station Song” and other funny songs, click here: http://www.youtube.com/user/jayforeman51

To see Mike Strevens’s video “270 Stations in 15 Seconds”, click here: http://instagram.com/tube270#

To see the Londonist, click here: http://londonist.com/

To see Geoff Marshall other London Undeground projects, click here:
www.geofftech.co.uk/tube/
www.stationmasterapp.com

To read the main article (Underground Culture, Speak Up February 2014), click here

SPEAK UP EXPLAINS

If I were just taking the photos for myself. Se stessi facendo le foto solo per me stesso. Ci sono due modi per dire “Se fossi in te” in inglese: If I were you è quello tradizionale e più corretto (che utilizza il congiuntivo), mentre If I was you è più contemporaneo (ma meno corretto). Qui Mike Strevens sta usando il verbo essere come ausiliare del past continuous perché sta parlando di un’azione continua nel passato (cioè, quella di andare in giro a fotografare la metropolitana londinese).

A while ago. Un po’ di tempo fa. La parola while ha vari significati: come congiunzione significa “mentre” ma come sostantivo indica un breve periodo di tempo. C’è anche un verbo: to while away (time), passare il tempo senza fare niente di utile.

Literally – and I don’t throw this around. “‘Letteralmente’ non è il tipo di parola che uso ogni giorno”. Il senso letterale di to throw around è “buttare in giro” ma il senso figurato è “usare spesso, senza pensarci”.