Have you ever considered how utterly weird sleep is?
We do it daily, willingly abandoning consciousness because that's how we're hardwired, and enter a restful yet restless world we barely remember. If you ever stop and think about it, sleep is utterly weird.
We spend a significant proportion of our lives out cold, maybe a quarter to a third of our time on Earth. Average life expectancy may be 81 but if you factor out the part we spend asleep it's more like 56. That's a lot of potential experience we're missing out on.
All us mammals do it, from koalas who sleep 22 hours a day to elephants who barely do two. It's a critical part of how biology works. And yet even though humans have mastered all kinds of other conditions we've never found a way to avoid sleep, not long term, because the need for sleep ultimately defeats us.
Sleep is essential for restitution, allowing various biological processes to reset our cells and prepare us for tomorrow. We can't fight it, not forever, and get tetchier the longer we try to stave it off. But if we try to sleep too early we can't nod off because we're not really in control of when we sleep, our bodies are.
Over millennia our bodies have adapted to a circadian rhythm, sleeping at night so we can make best use of daylight hours. These cycles also nudge us to be tired at night and, if undisturbed, wake us at a roughly regular time unaided. We can't fight against it, it's evolution.
Of an evening, every evening, we willingly head for a mattress and lie down until we lose consciousness. It's so weird how we all consent to this, tens of thousands of times, with no idea of what we look like, what we're doing and what's going on around us until we wake up.
We have no direct control over falling asleep, not without pharmaceutical assistance. You can't lie there and flip a switch, it either happens or it doesn't, and the best we can do is create conditions that make dropping off most likely. A restful run-up, a pillow, the lights off, soothing sounds or silence, empty thoughts, whatever, or just general exhaustion in the hope it's tired us out.
You never, ever remember the moment of falling asleep, despite the fact you've done it more times than you've had hot dinners. Sleep is a hole you fall into without ever noticing, or get increasingly frustrated about if it doesn't happen.
Waking up, however, is something we have gained control over. The alarm clock rouses us on cue, which is slightly more reliable than expecting someone else to do it for us. Its existence has also enabled society to impose a working day on its citizens, there no longer being any excuse for not being punctual in the morning.
Dreams are weird, relentlessly so, as is the fact we dream at all. Throughout the night we enter manic visual sequences, often dramatic, invariably improbable, but only remember some of the action if we happen to wake in the middle.
While we're dreaming it's like these events are actually happening to us, be that meeting a long-lost relative or falling off a cliff. The adrenalin rush during the wilder episodes must be insane. If anyone ever invents the technology to download our dreams and replay them to us while we're awake, Hollywood is over.
We organise our lives around a working day that matches daylight hours and a quiet period overnight when the vast majority of the population is asleep. Imagine how different everything would be if the majority of our economic and recreational activity wasn't focused into a smaller proportion of the day.
We sleep most when we're young but neither consistently or reliably, which can make parenting absolute hell. Babies are notorious for not sleeping when you'd like them to, also for screaming loudly when awake, all of which contributes to making parents stressed and seriously sleepless themselves. If infant sleep patterns weren't so fractious, maybe we'd have more children.
We organise our homes around sleep. A special room where we can lose consciousness, often several rooms so nobody gets disturbed. If it weren't for sleep we could all live in smaller houses, costing less and occupying less space, maybe even solve the housing crisis altogether. It really does rule our lives.
We have many weaknesses, our species, but one is that we all need to be unconscious for lengthy intervals. It's driven our need for shelter to make nobody attacks us overnight, protecting us not just from predators but from criminals and miscreants. We all need a lock on the door to make sure nobody intrudes while we can't notice.
We spend a lot of money decorating our bedrooms to make them look nice, then only use them for a narrow proportion of the day and spend most of our time unconscious with the light off. Transatlantic flights are an even bigger waste of money, where the more you spend the easier it is to sleep and miss all the luxurious service you've paid so much for.
The hotel business exists mainly because we have to sleep. When away from home it's important to have somewhere to fall unconscious, ideally in comfort, and then be overcharged for breakfast in the morning. If we didn't need to sleep we could mostly make do with left luggage instead.
Our mealtimes all revolve around the fact we need to sleep and that most of us do that simultaneously. Breakfast kickstarts us, lunch is often the light meal midway between sleeps and dinner is the stodgier one we eat later so we can sleep it off. Hospitality wouldn't work so efficiently if we could all drop in any time.
Someone needs to work overnight, and those who accept the challenge have to fight against their bodies' natural desire to sleep. Shift workers have the toughest of battles, notionally adapting but never quite in sync, and all because sleep punishes those unable to fit the norm.
Every night we go to sleep on the understanding there's a tiny tiny probability we won't wake up. It hasn't happened yet or you wouldn't be reading this but it always could. Some say it's the best way to go but who's to say, given that nobody can come back and tell us what it's like. Sleep may one day claim us but we still sleep anyway, we've no choice.
Sleep shapes our lives, forces us to comply, creates the maddest nightmares and makes us ignorant of a third of our existence. Sleep delights some and is feared by others, especially by those who regularly fail to achieve it. Sleep is a horizon we cross daily, a state of mind, a necessity, an escape.
But mainly sleep is utterly weird, and we hardly ever consider how utterly weird it is.
Watford tube station was 100 years old yesterday. There were celebrations.
Not Watford Junction which opened in 1837 (and on its current site in 1858). Not Watford High Street on the Overground which opened in 1862. Not Watford North on the St Albans line which opened in 1910. Not Watford West or Watford Stadium Halt on the Croxley Green branch which last saw a train in 1996. Not Watford Vicarage Road station which was never built. I refer instead to Watford tube station which opened on Monday 2nd November 1925, and is just one of the many stations in the Watford area that never met its full potential.
The Metropolitan Railway's branch line proved expensive to build, not least because of the unavoidable contours hereabouts. A lofty crossing of the Gade valley was required, this despite Croxley station half a mile away being in a cutting. The viaduct runs first above the Grand Union Canal - this span since replaced in metal - and then on brick arches to the River Gade. From a train window there's briefly a great view across the canal basin at Two Bridges before the tracks land on a sturdy embankment, which gradually reduces in height until the platforms at Watford end below street level. This is not how the tube extension was supposed to terminate.
Watfordstation is another from the architectural playbook of Charles Clark, and like Croxley has an Arts and Crafts-influenced vernacular. The roof is tall, broad and tiled, with three gabled dormers and thin brick chimneystacks rising all around. A bold blue canopy protrudes in front of the main entrance to announce the station's name, again just as at Croxley. This time there are two retail units, both tiny, the cafe on the right still with an original shopfront. The shop on the left is externally shabbier, and may still be called News Box but newspapers haven't been part of its main offering for a while. And behind that is a teensy office for A1 Taxis, ideally located because the vast majority of the population of Watford live nowhere near the station so an additional ride is very welcome.
The main problem for railway companies attempting to pass through Watford had been the Earls of Essex whose estate at Cassiobury House covered most of the land northwest of the town. A century earlier they'd complained about the "iron horse" invading their property and forced the London and Birmingham Railway to bend to the east to avoid the estate. Now they were refusing direct access to the Metropolitan Railway in its attempts to reach Watford town centre, a situation which eased slightly in 1909 when the 7th Earl sold off some of his land for housing and a wedge of parkland. But the new line could go no further than a dell round the back of Watford Boys Grammar School, prohibited from continuing on a viaduct across the delights of Cassiobury Park. Generations of schoolboys have benefited from that decision, but objectively things would've been much better if the Met had ever reached the High Street.
Passengers who did make it to the outcast station on Cassiobury Park Avenue found themselves entering a spacious ticket hall, noticeably taller and wider than at Croxley. It was once worthy of two ticket windows, now there are two ticket machines and a cosy back office. It once had a telephone kiosk in a recess, now it has a cash dispenser. It still has a hardwood door to the ladies toilets, these apparently retaining the original cubicles and wood-block floor although obviously I haven't confirmed that. In a bold move the paddles on the gateline are currently sponsored by Harrow College ('only a 19 minute tube ride away'). The door to Station Approach is now firmly locked but the passageway does have an Oyster pad should it ever need to be opened.
The finest feature at Watford station may well be the mauve and sea-green tiling. These were the Metropolitan Railway's corporate colours at the time and they radiate around the ticket hall but more particularly down the stairs. A gorgeous gridded design flanks you on the descent, the tones luxuriously muted with craftsmanship worthy of a stately mansion's wet room. There are a lot of steps, and from what I saw yesterday these are still proving tough for those with walking sticks or pushchairs. Watford isn't even on the long-list for step-free access, it being expensive to force a lift into a split-level Grade II listed building, although I think I can see where you might otherwise shoehorn a shaft.
Watford has a broad islandplatform, generally with only one occupied so it's easy to deduce which side the next train will be leaving. A large W-shaped canopy helps keep the doors to three carriages dry, and could potentially shield four were the buffers not quite so far away from the station building. All the supports are attractively painted in what's now Metropolitan purple. There's no real need to use the far end of the platform, that is unless you've arrived on an incoming train and been careless enough to sit at the rear. The waiting room is similarly superfluous, it generally being much easier to wait on a train, but is delightfully basic with a herringbone floor and two long built-in benches. The gents is just round the back, and this time I can confirm a level of historic originality.
Yesterday's celebrations focused on the waiting room where folk from Watford Museum had set up a small display, mainly because there wasn't room for a big one. They focused on the arrival of Metro-land in the town illustrated with several evocative photographs, then squeezed in a table at the rear where younger visitors could be crafty with relevant postcards. Upstairs the London Transport Museum had pasted several of their archive images down a side corridor like a little gallery, one of which made me go "Oh I remember that sign" and another "oh I've got that timetable". But the main centenary action was a free guided tour led by one of the team's more colourful characters, leading folk round the open parts of a station in a way I entirely predicted back in 2011.
Had all gone to plan Watford station would have closed to passenger traffic a few years ago when the Metropolitanlineextension to Watford Junction opened. But Boris's boondoggle project floundered after he left the Mayoralty, and all that remains today is an landmark block of flats beside an unbuilt tube station at Cassiobridge and an empty corridor across Watford's new Health Campus. The first attempt to extend the line came in 1927 when the Metropolitan Railway purchased the The Empress Winter Gardens and Tea Lounge on Watford High Street with the intention of creating a better-frequented terminus. But tunnelling under Cassiobury Park or the WBGS playing fields proved entirely impractical, plans stalled and a shuttle bus connecting the station to the shops had to suffice instead.
The site of what might have been Watford Central station is now a Wetherspoons where you can buy a pint of Ruddles for less than a single fare to Croxley, and all dreams of extending the line are now practically dead. It's a shame because it took me 20 minutes to walk from where the terminus should have been to where it actually is, but also a joy because it means a brilliant station building has just celebrated its centenary. Happy 100th birthday to Watford and Croxley, on the branch line that was never as useful as originally intended but totally changed my life.
Hurrah, my local tube station is 100 years old today.
Croxley Green station opened to the public on Monday 2nd November 1925, linking my home village to the Metropolitan Railway and kickstarting substantial suburban development. Watford station also opened as the terminus of a short spur line and that's where TfL have chosen to celebrate the big birthday, complete with fully-booked tours and a museum display in the waiting room. My job today is thus to celebrate Croxley station instead, the rustic halt with the heritage lamps, which I was fortunate enough to have at the bottom of my road while I was growing up.
Royal assent for the new line was granted in 1912 but the First World War intervened and it took until 1923 for the go-ahead to be given. The branch line would bear off the existing railway near Croxley Hall Farm and run in a deep cutting through Croxleyhall Woods, with a separate curve dug to provide access from Rickmansworth as well as London. Carving through so much chalk proved difficult and expensive, with the £387,000 costs shared between the Metropolitan Railway and LNER who funded the line as a joint project. The railway despoiled the woods dividing them into several segments, but as a child I never minded because a woodland walk thus offered the opportunity to stand on the blue bridge overlooking the junction and watchtrains rattling round the curve, ideally more than once.
Even more woodland was almost lost in 2004 when evil infraco Metronet applied to insert a large track maintenance depot between the railway and the canal. The land had originally been gravel workings associated with the railway, hence TfL technically had rights over some of the land. Local residents formed a campaign group called Keep Croxley Green and adopted the unusual tactic of attempting to declare Long Valley Wood as a "village green" by dint of it being used for "lawful sports and pastimes, as of right, for not less than 20 years". The subsequent red tape disrupted timelines sufficiently for TfL to withdraw their plans and look elsewhere, and Herts County Council officially approved the application on 11th September 2007 which means they won't be coming back. The woods still look lovely, especially at the height of autumn.
Croxley station was built on a bend in Watford Road, then just a lane, close to the Red House pub at the bottom of New Road. Six cottages had to be demolished to make way, replaced just down the road and built of new-fangled concrete. The station instead got a cosy domestic vibe courtesy of Charles Clark, chief architect of the Metropolitan Railway, who delivered 25 stations in total including Farringdon, Northwood Hills and Kingsbury. Here he designed what could have been a large house - all the better to inspire later residential sales - with a symmetrical multi-gabled roof and four tall chimney stacks. The dormer windows mark an early example of over-station development. The small shop unit on the right no longer sells sweets and newspapers but is used as a cab office.
Stepping inside the building was always exciting because it usually meant a trip up to London. I remember a board to the left of the ticket office window with all the last train times attached as plastic numbers, all arriving long after I'd have gone to bed. The sale of tickets was restricted to a machine in 2007 and since then the office behind has been an over-sized hideaway out of which any members of staff rarely venture. At least the gateline was shut on my latest visit rather than gaping open, suggesting someone really was in there. On the opposite wall is the door to the ladies toilets and also access to the car park, of which more in a minute. What there isn't is a next train departure board, most likely because the signalling's so old hat out here that it couldn't display any useful London-bound information anyway.
The nicest stairs are those down to the 'just Watford' platform, these broad and still with an original handrail down the middle. TfL know it's not worth advertising here so all the poster frames are filled with artworks celebrating the 100th anniversary of the roundel in 2008. Even more neglected is the panel at the top of the stairs remembering 'Steam on the Met '98', its photos faded and mostly unstuck, thus tumbled down skew-whiff behind grubby glass. The other stairs are unpostered and narrower, this because one strip was sectioned off in the 1970s to create an access route from the car park. Those who park here have to troop all the way up to the ticket hall, pass through the gateline and then all the way back down to the platform barely two steps from where they started. TfL could easily add step-free access here simply by removing the screen, but the opposite platform's wedged against an embankment so would be much harder to facilitate.
Only the near end of each platform has a canopy and also a waiting room, one of these still with the remains of a fireplace in the corner. The London-bound hideaway is much better used than the tumbleweed Watford-bound alternative. Best of all there's a gents toilet on each platform, functional but not unpleasant, to balance out the single ladies toilet upstairs in the ticket hall. Croxley is the only station on the Metropolitan line to have two gents toilets, indeed the only other double-gents on the network are at Snaresbrook and Woodford. Supposedly the facilities here are only open 05:30-10:00 and 15:30-19:30 (weekdays only) due to anti-social behaviour and vandalism, though I visited out of hours and they were unlocked. As a reminder of a long-gone era when the Underground designed stations for passengers' benefit rather than budgetary bottom lines, they bring welcome relief.
The far end of each platform has possibly the station's finest feature, the line of heritage lampposts stretching off into the distance. They're illuminated by something a bit more energy-friendly these days but still splendid, especially since being given a fresh paint job earlier in the summer. Intermingled are the cameras and loudspeakers added in the 2000s, thankfully not as intrusively as at many other stations, perhaps because Metronet learned their lesson elsewhere. Autumn is not the season to judge the planters on the down platform so I won't. I will however note that a lot of flats could be built in the adjacent car park, which itself replaced a goods yard, should TfL ever fancy making money at the expense of the 95 commuters who'd be permanently kicked out.
The first train actually pulled into these platforms at 12.18pm on Saturday 31st October 1925, drawn by electric locomotive Sarah Siddons. Aboard the Rothschild Saloon were Lord Aberconway (Chairman of the Metropolitan) and Lord Faringdon (Deputy Chairman of LNER) who were here to perform the official opening. Passenger services began on 2nd November, the centenary we celebrate today, with Met trains to Baker Street interspersed with LNER services to Marylebone. The latter didn't survive past the General Strike in 1926, but you can still get up to town in under 45 minutes on the Met and many's the time I have. As for the name of the station it proved confusing having two Croxley Green stations in the same village so this one became plain Croxley in 1949, and has easily outlived the other.
All the fuss may be at Watford today but don't forget lovely old Croxley, because the entire line is now a centenarian, not just its stunted terminus.
The Index of Multiple Deprivation is a government statistic calculated by the Office of National Statistics every five years or so, and 2025's data has just been released.
The whole of England is divided up into 33755 areas, each containing about 1500 residents. Each area is given a deprivation score based on factors including income, employment, health, education and crime. All 33755 areas are then ranked. Jaywick in Essex comes out top because it's the most deprived area in the country, and Harpenden in Herts comes bottom. That ordered list is then divided into 10 equal groups (or deciles), each containing about 3375 areas. 1 is the most deprived decile and 10 is the least. Not everyone who lives in decile 1 is poor, and not everyone who lives in decile 10 is rich, but that's how their area averages out. You can check the deprivation where you live in this BBC news article, and gov.uk has a drillable map here.
Here's a map of Tower Hamlets with areas coloured according to decile. The dark red areas like Bromley-by-Bow, Poplar and Shadwell are the most deprived (1), and the dark blue area in Wapping is the least deprived (10). The borough is very mixed, with much urban poverty but also some riverside affluence.
Across England there are an equal number of 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, 7s, 8s, 9s and 10s, because that's how deciles work.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
But across London the spread is somewhat different.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
4%
14%
17%
14%
12%
9%
9%
8%
7%
6%
Deciles 6 and 7 occur in proportions very close to the national average. But London has more 2s, 3s and 4s than expected (that's the not-particularly well off). It also has fewer 9s and 10s and a lot fewer 1s (because the extremes aren't as abundant).
I did a full borough breakdown last time such figures were published in 2019 so won't drill down again. This time I thought I'd try something different and identify London's most deprived and least deprived areas, then visit both.
I'm not sure where I was expecting to end up. Maybe Newham or Barking for the most deprived and Kensington or Richmond for the least. Instead I ended up in two seemingly unremarkable neighbourhoods in northwest London, seven miles apart, which you won't be expecting either.
The most deprived area in London: Brent 021B (nationally 238th out of 33755)
Shuffle all of London's 4994 Lower Layer Super Output Areas into order and the most deprived is in Neasden, just off the North Circular. The irregular wedge includes Brent Park Tesco and also IKEA, which may have multiple bedrooms but nobody lives in them so they don't count. Instead the data refers to a chain of disjoint streets beside the Dudding Hill freight line, a true mix of housing styles from Victorian terraces to postwar infill. It doesn't help that one end merges into a scrappy trading estate, nor that London's second largest power station looms over the other.
This is Taylors Lane Power Station, a gas powered hulk with two tall concrete chimneys, built to replace a coal-fired belcher which helps explain the shabby workers terraces opposite. They're by no means the worst London has to offer, just poorly sited, some stoneclad and some pebbledashed with just enough room out front for a couple of bins. At the end of of the road is Energen Close, built on the site of the famous bread roll factory, also the location of a nasty shooting in 2020. Bridge Road has bigger gardens and street trees, also a rebuilt primary school, but also haunted-looking passers-by in shabby anoraks. And beyond that is Woodhayes Road, a wall of scrappy two-up two-downs which backs onto a canal feeder, as shown here complete with rotting discarded mattress.
I've seen worse, I thought, as I squeezed past a Lime bike and weaved through an alleyway between two sets of allotments. On the far side was Yeats Close, a Beckton-ish backwater of 1980s townhouses, all of a decent size and with parking for Audis, Qashqais and BMWs as well as other lesser vehicles. The Hallowe'en decorations, where families had bothered, were well up to standard. Only round the last bend did the white van count suddenly increase to epidemic proportions, all unbranded, also trucks overflowing with trash and a couple of discarded fridges.
And here we find the Lynton Close Traveller site, opened in 1996 with 31 caravan pitches but currently with 74 crammed in, which Brent council recently decreed a fire risk so threatened widespread eviction. They've since withdrawn that threat, having decided that adding fire alarms would help, but far more families live here than was ever intended. I doubt the Travellers consider themselves deprived but the underlying statistics have a different view, and I suspect this is why an otherwise merely-lowly patch of Neasden finds itself London's sole representative on a list of England's 1%-most-deprived.
The least deprived area in London: Harrow 004D (nationally 33700th out of 33755)
Nowhere in the supposedly posh parts of inner London registers in the upper echelon of the 10s. The runners up in the spreadsheet are all in quietly genteel parts of outer London, for example Upminster, Eastcote, Hayes or Coombe. But by this measure the least deprived neighbourhood in the whole of the capital is, unexpectedly, a cluster of streets to the north of the shops in Hatch End. The only reason you'd have been here, unless it's home, is that the walking route from the London Loop to Hatch End station passes down Grimsdyke Avenue.
These are characterful 1930s houses, not Metro-land style because we're on the wrong line but big and bricky with rustic gables. Garages are built in, Volvos are parked outside anyway, and along the avenue pine cones drop abundantly onto broad verges. But these are still technically semis, even if neighbours are a good distance apart, and I didn't see a single Waitrose vehicle only Tesco. Also being un-deprived doesn't mean no problems, as I noted when a man in a white protective suit emerged from building works at a house on Hallam Gardens and entered the back of an asbestos removal trailer. If this is truly London's best-off area, where are all the detacheds?
They were a bit further back on streets not added until the 1960s, where large townhouses have broader frontage and less shrubbery. The sparsest are on Scot Grove, a loopy cul-de-sac with a central lawn I wanted to cut across but was warned off by a snobby sign saying 'Private Green, Please Keep To The Road'. I walked around for almost half an hour impressed by the unbroken niceness of it all but still unconvinced that Harrow 004D deserved its abundant crown. Again it must be down to the arbitrary borders of the statistical unit, also the fact that the Index of Multiple Deprivation isn't all about wealth and status. The least deprived areas aren't necessarily where you'd think they are, they're cosy suburban avenues rather than posh gated boltholes.
