Zoning

The Shoddy Blog has been built on various foundations, including movie reviews and Cat pictures. One of the stalwarts of this site is travel posts, or to be more exact, posts where I whine like a bitch about my journeys to and from work. I had an email recently asking me what exactly "Zone Six" meant, and it made me realise that there is a portion of my readers who have never been to London, so are not familiar with the zoning system here.

I’m never more inspired than when I’m educating you Godless Heathens, so the next post will be an in-depth description of the London Zones.

London is such an enormous concrete cluster fuck, that the powers that be decided to separate the various locations into a radial Zoning system. This makes it easier for travellers to locate places, and to make accurate travel plans based on the distances. It also makes it easier for the transport Authority to divide up the travel costs and rip you off accordingly. I currently purchase a zone 1 -6 travel card each and every week, which sets me back £43 a pop. Convert that back into your own currency, and feel free to vomit blood.

The Zone system spreads across London like a giant Dart Board. Refer to my gracious diagram Heathens:

Zone One (The Bulls Eye) is the central part of London, the hub. It’s where you can find Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben. It’s where you can party with the likes of Kate Moss and Pete Doherty (though I don’t recommend it), and it is also the location of Victoria, where I used to work last year.

The Zones spread outwards into increasing numbers, until you reach the outer limit of Zone 6. This is where you’ll find Heathrow Airport. It’s also where you will find Feltham, the desolate shit-hole my office moved to in late November, and I’ve been there ever since.

I will now take you from station to station on the South West Train service, starting with Victoria (my old office), and ending in Feltham (my current office). To give you a better idea of this treacherous expedition, I have used Atrayu’s own journey across Fantasia as a step by step metaphor.

Zone 1 – Victoria Station
Atrayu enters the Crystal Palace

Atrayu enters the Palace to hear his destiny. His mission? To save the Child Princess by finding the amulet…or the ring...or team up with Samuel L Jackson and fight Pandas…or something. I actually can’t remember.


Zone 2 – Clapham Junction Station
Atrayu wades through the Swamp of Sadness.

"Artax you stupid Bastard! It’s a Swamp of Sadness! Think Happy Thoughts! Think about ice cream and blow jobs! Damn it, it’s all that Emo music you listen to isn’t it!?"


Zone 3 – Mortlake Station
Atrayu greets Morla the wise

Atrayu climbs up a swamp tree to find out that the mountain in front of him, is in fact a giant talking turtle with bad Hay-fever. It’s at this exact point that Atrayu realises the land of Fantasia, might be a little bit bat shit crazy.

Zone 4 – Richmond Station
Atrayu meets the Goblin Scientist.

Ugly little people who dress in shitty ill-fitting clothing. In London, we call those Chavs.

Zone 5 – Whitton Station

Laser eyed Griffin Bitches. Walk between them with a clear mind and a pure heart and you will pass through unscathed. With just a few metres to go, Atrayu suddenly remembers that Birthday when he fingered his cousin behind the Garden Shed. He almost gets zapped.

Zone 6 – Feltham Station
The journey comes to an end.

In the original ending of The Never Ending Story, it turns out that Atrayu was just a New York Pizza Delivery boy who was wondering through an Art Gallery tripping balls off some bad Acid. All the wonderful creatures of Fantasia were just paintings and sculptures come to life by Atrayu’s hallucinating mind. The Rock-biter was just a sculpture. Falcor the luck dragon? A white Cocker-Spaniel Atrayu threw out a fifth floor window in a drug-fucked fury.

This ending is still available on bootleg copies, and a lot of critics agree that is superior to the final cinematic version.

So there you go, a walkthrough of London and all it’s Zoning glory. In hindsight, using Atrayu as a metaphor for myself was an excellent idea, as we are exactly alike. The heart of a warrior, a thirst for adventure, and chiselled boyish good looks so handsome that even the most cock-weary of militant Lesbians want to sit on his face. My god, we could be twins.

I’ve never slain a giant wolf, but the other night I did hunt down a spider in my bedroom and killed it with my bare hands. True, it did turn out to be just a bit of lint, but that didn’t stop me from letting out a deep Warrior’s howl into the night.