If you wish to travel a short disitance across London, say from Aldgate East to Ladbroke Grove, you will generally place yourself inside a rusting cylinder of metal made in 1970 and pray. Today I was in this very situation, but unusually began having unusual thoughts passing through my mind. This was probably the result of sitting on a stationary tube train for an hour, in extreme heat, and a dwindling supply of oxygen.

If you live in London you will have observed an unusual new custom developing, over the last 2 months or so. If you do not live in our great metropolis, i will explain in non-elitist, London is the centre of the universe turn of phrase. In recent time we have began recieving a free morning newspaper in London called the 'Metro', however the true genius of this enterprise is not the paper itself, but its delivery mechanism. I believe the idea originates from the butane lighter industry, it works as follows:

Metro produce enough newspapers for 50% of underground passengers, traveling between 6.30am and 9.30am, to read. These are placed in neat piles at the entrances of Underground stations and picked up by people along thier journeys. This relying on the basic human instinct to pick up pieces of paper with the word FREE on them. Once upon the train, those boarding the train will notice everybody is reading the same newspaper. This will slow drive said individual insane wishing to know what is so interesting in the newspaper that everyone seems to be reading it.

Here the pure genius of the distribution system comes into play, the content of Metro is limited in such a way as to only supply enough interesting reading matter for 20 minute tube journey. As such the original owner of any copy of Metro, not assigning any value to it ( it was FREE )abandons it on the train after an average of 20 minutes or at the end of thier journey. Where upon the now insanely curious onlooker, in total disregard for normal social etiquette, will lunge across the carriage to grab the abandoned copy. By the end of the day, by printing a relatively small number of copies, Metro has reached a massive number of the London population.

Next time you are on the Underground at that time in the morning, observe this new urban ritual, and participate if you wish to blend in to the local culture.