June 2011. Looked better than it actually was in the end, but an interesting throught stream from someone who took a part time job on the underground to think. ( )

Ross' book is essentially musings on the meanings of work. A long-term traveller, he returned to the UK to get a job on the London Underground. His idea was to get a job that was essentially classified as 'beneath him', giving him time to observe himself, and others, and ponder the lives of himself, his colleagues and the passengers from his new perspective. He thus describes himself as an 'underground philosopher'.

I was drawn to Ross' work because I have made decisions similar to him regarding my life and career, and for fairly similar reasons. I wanted to know if he saw his world in a similar way to me, once he had shorn it of the encumberments of ambition, engagement and stress. The short answer is pretty much 'yes'. Despite this, however, I struggled to engage with Tunnel Visions. When Ross says the word 'philosophy' he means homespun saws that rarely rise above the level of bumper sticker wisdom (you know, the 'you don't have to be crazy to work here but it helps' type). This was disappointing, because having got to the stage of believing Ross and I were kindred spirits, I failed to learn anything new about myself from him. Perhaps this would be a good read for anyone stuck in the rat race, wondering what it means, but for someone who has already left that world behind, Tunnel Visions did very little for me.

Sub-titled 'Journeys of an Underground Philosopher',this excellent book can indeed be read as either an interesting journey into the world of Philosopy or as the story of Christopher Ross going about his (on one level)somewhat mundane job as a Station Assistant on the London Underground. In the course of the book he deals with buskers,angry travelers,suicides,all sorts of nutters and a bomb alert. While one cannot always agree with his conclusions either on the philosophy front or with his work on the underground,this is a book that I feel everyone should read and learn from. ( )