1 MARCH 2003, Page 79

Q. While mostly agreeing with your problem solutions, the answer

to the unaccustomed Tube traveller (8 February) I thought a tad unhelpful. Anyway, if his acquaintances are travelling by Tube — touché! I live in outer London, which happens to have a good District Line/Piccadilly service. If someone

stands in the quick lane on the escalator, I merely regard them as strangers to the ways of the capital, and ask them to make way. The old joke about the panting arrival of the Parisienne party latecomer, apologising to her hostess that she had come by Metro, whose reply was, ca existe?' is passé.

W.R.. London, W6

A. Nevertheless, thank you for recounting it and thereby supplying readers with more material for their own repertoires. And thank you for enlarging the debate about Tube travel. Meanwhile. A.C.. of London W8, has also written to express her view that it is the duty of the thinking classes to travel by Tube in order, as with state schools, to force standards to improve. Tube travel, she has found, is always 'exciting'. At night, she says, 'the Tube is like a wonderful, non-stop party — so many lovely glamorous young people from all over the world'.