"Down In The Tube Station At Midnight" by The Jam - What Does It Mean?

maybe he was in Dollis Hill, wherethe tube station indeed provides a handy cut through

I DO THIS.

But the song is "Down In the Tube Station at Midnight!" I always pictured it as underground.

mmm, lessee... one crafty pork pie please.

Also, the first line 'The distant echo - of faraway voices boarding faraway trains', suggests a big station, possibly one with British Rail connections

A bloke's in the tube station on his way home(lots of descripton), buys a ticket, gets spotted by thugs, they ask him for money, he gets beat up and they take his keys, the bloke worries because the thugs will get into his house and the bloke's wife will think it's him ("'Cause they took the keys and she'll think it's me."). Now by the time he gets home the wine his wife had pulled the cork on will be flat, and the curry he has will be cold.

check out the weller tattoo

Is Weller thick enough to print his adress on his keyring?? How the hell are the muggers going to know where the hell he lives by just stealing his keys?

I think this part shows the attack took place close to home because he seems sure that they will know the area well enough to get there without directions

Perhaps the thugs are local thugs who have seen him around. Perhaps they have a grudge.

Plum, because a yellow ticket would be banana but it doesn't scan.

Cheers otherwise.

I refer anyone to a station like Bank (there are many others) where you go down into the tube station to cross the junction. They do have said Cadbury's machines (though they normally are jammed) and they are a very good place to go if you are looking for a kicking.

I am surprised in my brief scan of this that noone has mentioned he is very unlikely to be getting a train. Turn of midnight, your kind of pissing in the wind with LU.

i'll field this one: as the older among us remember, there wasn't much of a premium on male colognes in Britain in the 70s. Brut 33 had to enlist the help of renowned boxer Henry Cooper to give their product the required masculine cache. Several other companies tried to jump on this bandwagon, often with disastrous results. I refer in particular to Estee Lauders' short-lived flirtation with macho chic: the scents 'pubs' and 'wormwood scrubs' were withdrawn from stores in 1979 after catastrophic sales. generally being seen as a sign of downward mobility by consumers, the bouquet of sweat, fear, fermenting fruit and woodbines these colognes gave off never took off in the UK, except in Northern Ireland.

Could Weller have been intimating that his assailants were Irish? republicans, even?

Or is that for another thread?

The entire lyric is clearly all slightly paranoid conjecture about what might have happened to him if he had attempted to go home by tube, rather than taking a taxi like any sane person would do if they'd bought a curry and didn't want it to get cold before they got it home to their wife.

He's obviously imagining all this after having comsumed best part of that bottle of wine, hence why so much of it appears not to make sense.

The clearly nonsensical bit about pulling out a plum occurs when he's temporarily distracted from his reveries by the discovery that the pudding that his wife's served up after the curry, is in fact plums and custard when he'd evidently been expecting something different; possibly rhubarb.

xpost wait I like Stewart's version.

I read to many thrillers

I put in the money and pull out a plum, Behind me
Whispers in the shadows - gruff blazing voices, Hating, waiting
"Hey boy" they shout - "have you got any money?"
And I said - "I've a little money and a take away curry,

He's not saying "I've a little money and a take-away curry and a plum". Though, with drunken thugs in front of him, he's not going to hide this Fruit&Nut from them and anger them further, is he?
So the "plum" must refer to the curry, that he just took out of the machine. Probably a vegetable curry or it refers to a chutney, whatever. Or it really is just a clever Jack Horner reference.

In any case, it sheds light on why he's down in the tube station: to get the curry. He might live next door, for all we know.

there are wheels within wheels in this song

*punk/post-punk

I spy plums

https://i.imgur.com/4lY2DaB.jpg

taco laser dick