Spotted this poster on the tube on Saturday but couldn’t photograph it: I thought “Damn, it’ll be taken down for certain by the time I have my camera with me. Sunday it was still up in a few stations, including a very prominent spot in the very busy Waterloo station. This image is lifted from the
Going Underground blog, because it’s not as blurry as the photos I took.
The image on the newspaper, if you’re having trouble making it out, is of London getting blown up real good (that’s the London Eye on the left). By unfortunate coincidence, the novel came out last Thursday, and
the whole advertising campaign got pulled at the last minute, but some posters made it onto the Tube.
I walked into work today. Not all the way, just some of it, thanks to some idiot leaving their bag on the platform. There’s a lot of this going on now. Ever since I got here there have been constant reminders to passengers telling them to report unattended luggage for just this reason, but now everyone feels obliged to take this seriously, and so there are a lot more delays than usual.*
So this morning on the Tube everything was back to normal. Several lines are still closed or partly closed down but given that, as someone on the web calculated a few weeks ago, the London Underground is only fully functional 22% of the time, this counts as normal. One thing the terrorists seem to have overlooked is that Londoners have made it a point of pride over the centuries that their city is so ramshackle and inefficiently run that by all rights it shouldn’t function at all.
A friend working for a railway company at Euston station has wondered if the terrorists got it wrong: three trains and one bus, all not quite at the busiest stations in the north of London (Kings Cross-St Pancras, Liverpool Street, Paddington, and Euston).
Filed under: London by Ben.H
oh dear, poor Chris Cleave and his poor publishing timing.
Ahaha, is it just me or is there something especially delightful about the misery of a traveller if they happen to be american?(note, i have a few american friends and they too seem to share my enjoyment)
Yes, it's only a pity they didn't do a controlled explosion of his luggage as well.