I had my first true London experience of the tube in peak hour. I left work fairly promptly so I got to the tube station before 6 PM. The first train pulled up and it was packed with people in suits. Still, two or three hardy souls beside me managed forced their way in.

‘I’ll just wait for the next one,’ I thought. I was in no hurry — I had a free newspaper to read.

A minute later, the next train arrived and unbelievably, it was even fuller than the last one. Again, I didn’t try to get in. I didn’t have the heart to compete with the other city commuters, so desperate to go home that they were running up and down the platform looking for an entry point, their suitcases and rolling luggages flying alongside them.

‘It’s going to be like this until 7 o’clock, isn’t it?’ I realised. Up the tube line were two major stations. Their larger passenger catchment meant that the carriages would no doubt be filled before a train got to my little station. Although it meant a ten minute walk in the wrong direction, I began thinking I’d have better luck getting on at one of those bigger stations upstream.

The next train arrived two minutes later. What a relief! It was only three-quarters full so I folded myself in, along with the large backlog of bypassed commuters from my platform. This one train managed to clear almost the entire queue.

When our train arrived at the next tube station, I saw a waiting crowd as big as the one that had been at my station. There was no way anyone could get on. It was the same story at the next station too.

‘Don’t worry, people. The backlog is being cleared one station at a time — your platform is next.’

This prompted a mental image of a common dance figure from traditional English or ceilidh dancing. You’re standing in a line and the person at the other end pivots and starts skipping down towards you. As he or she moves, the next person peels off and follows so that you watch a string of people skip past. You know that any second now, you too will be skipping past the spot on which you are now standing.

London is famous for its red double decker buses and its Underground of Tube trains. It’s an excellent system, despite how Londoners like to moan about it. True, tube trains do seem to break down a lot and buses do get stuck in traffic jams. But normally, getting from point to point in London is pain free.

If you have an Oyster card, a single trip from zone 1 to zone 2 during peak time costs £2 (AU$4.60). That’s one trip — not a two hour pass, not a return. If I took the tube to and from work, it’d cost me $9.20 every day. A monthly ticket is £89 (AU$207).

On the other hand, a bus trip at any time of the day and through any zone costs £0.90 (AU$2.05). It takes me about fifteen minutes extra to get to work (50 minutes door-to-door, compared to 35 minutes). I can handle that. I haven’t yet had any luck with buses coming home during peak hour. Buses get stuck in traffic jams.

The pattern I’ve settled into is to take the bus to work in the morning and the tube back home in the evening. I get off one stop early so that I limit my travel to Zone 1. A zone 1 trip costs £1.50 (AU$3.45) instead of £2. I walk about 15 minutes to get home from Zone 1, instead of 8 minutes from my local zone 2 station.

I guess I could travel to work from a zone 1 station as well. Therefore, my daily bus adventures are only saving me £0.60 (AU$1.40) a day. Darn! I thought I was saving more than that. I’m saving about £12 (AU$28) a month — that’s enough for one dinner out in town.