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DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. "Many times the wrong train took me to the right place." (Paulo Coelho)

First up this week, Underground …  
I feel momentary panic piling into the crowded backseat of an unfamiliar car. Similar panic strikes entering a cave or castle, losing sight of sky as darkness envelopes. Yet the deepest London Underground station (Hampstead, more than 180 feet below the surface of the city) frights me not at all. Boy to man, I've always been nutty about the Tube. I love the Underground map, created by Harry Beck in 1931. It looks like an electrical circuitry design. I find it easy to use, despite it having little connection to geographic reality. It is quintessentially English and Londonish. I'm delighted imagining Underground travel all over under the great city. No panic at all.   
The Tube Map Is Full Of Lies

Second up this week, Upbraid …  
When but a stripling I'd read "upbraid" and imagine a girl's hair braided to somehow extend up, above her head, like a vanity plume. That didn't make sense, however. So, I looked it up and was so disappointed when Merriam-Webster suggested that "upbraid" meant "to criticize severely : find fault with." Phooey. That has nothing to do with decorative hair weaving, does it? Upbraid comes from the Old English ūpbregdan, probably from ūp (up) + bregdan (to snatch). Braid comes from the Old English bregdan (to snatch, or plait, apparently). Thank you dictionary! Now I look forward to an upbraiding in which a rudely wielded vanity plume might rightly be used to critically beat me into submission. 
11 Different Types of Braids to Amaze Everyone

Third up this week, Uppermost …  
The tippy-topmost in anything, right? Except I don't think of "uppermost" that way. When I first began in the wine business, a winemaker (grizzled and old, it seemed to me, but no more than ten years separated us) said his job was to identify the highest and best use of each vineyard's fruit. Seasons changed, vineyard yields varied, and he needed to make the best wine possible. Something that honored the grapes from whence came the wine. Something that still worked within the wineries hopes and dreams (and marketing positioning). "You might be able to force a square peg into a round hole," he said. "But you shouldn't." So, occasionally, there were new wines because … that's where the grapes led him. Uppermost. Highest and best use. Honor what the source offers. 
What is the Highest and Best Use of Your Time? 

A Book I'm Enjoying That Makes Me Feel A Nerd:
Abandoned Stations on London's Underground: A Photographic Record, by J. E. Connor 
From the Author's Preface: "This book is a companion to my previous volume London's Disused Underground Stations …" 
Now I want that previous volume, too. Enough said.   

And a bit more:

Harviston End, by Peter Ling

"I looked out of the train,
And I suddenly saw the empty station
As we hurtled through, with a hollow roar . . .
'Harviston End' . . . It was dark and dead"


And that's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver’s poem Sometimes …  

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.