Around Town...

The Tube, somewhere underground

The Sun Never Shines On The Tube. NEVER!

Sunglasses worn on the tube has to be one of the most irritating sights in all of Christendom! Spotted six such cretins on today’s journey and not a white stick in sight (there were two fools with un-ironic rock star pretensions in my carriage alone). We are underground! For the entire duration!! The nocturnal subterranean world does not require any additional shading…it’s plenty dingy as it is!?!

Admittedly the lighting is a little harsh on the tube itself – I'm sure the Guantanamo detention centre must use the very same light bulb supplier. However only Stevie Wonder (& friends) should be permitted to be seen in sunnies down here. And even an undisputed icon such as Mr Wonder would have the good grace not to wear his accessorized with an air of woefully miss-placed smugness!

Bad enough to push them atop your head like some Sloaney headband, but to actually proudly sport them with brazen bravado makes me want to commit acts of random violence. Chiefly to their appalling sunglasses!?!

Mostly they are of the Wayfarer and Aviator variety, typically coupled with a pair of espadrilles and an ironic trouser turn-up, so you can probably deduce what type we are talking here. However there was one Marilyn Manson-wannabe whose transgression I'll permit, purely on the grounds that his sunglasses were at least covering the majority of his face, so in turn doing a major service to society...

Boat drinks to the naked eye!

Metro Flickers...

London is in the grip of a mania. A serious malady which seems to afflict 9 out of 10 tube users. That pitiful excuse of a newspaper, artlessly named ‘Metro’, appears to be surgically attached to the hands of my fellow commuters!?!

For those not totally familiar - Metro is a free 'newspaper' distributed in the mornings, primarily at tube stations. Some poor soul has to stand in all the weather that the gods can muster, handing them out to the grabbing paws of the ungrateful masses, who seemingly possess an insatiable thirst for day old gossip, recycled reportage and a Daily Express-esque political bias. The particularly acute cases will throw themselves at a dog-eared copy as if it was the last mouldy loaf, left on the shelf in a particularly bleak 80's-era communist satellite state! Why people are quite so keen to get hold of a copy is a mystery on a par with the Bermuda Triangle, the Mary Celeste and Donald Trump’s ‘hair’. I certainly wouldn't have it within 100 metres of tomorrow's fish & chips. Nor The Donald’s comb-over for that matter...

To give some sense of the calibre of journalism in question; one of my recent favourites was a page 3 splash (i.e. the third most important event on the planet...) which featured a jellybean that allegedly resembled the face of Kate Middleton. The headline read "Future Queen Seen on Bean". It would be rather humorous if I didn't suspect that the majority of Metro readers actually do qualify this as news, as opposed to Syria, Libya and the slow painful death of the NHS.

However there is an interesting contradiction in effect. It is very much a love/hate relationship. The savagery with which some readers attack the Metro is bewildering; it's almost as if they are grossly offended by its contents and want to be rid of the inconvenience as quickly possible. The angry snap of paper rings out the length of the tube carriage, as each page is turned with a ferocity that wouldn't look out of place on a piranha. And yet these same people greedily grab at a stray copy like some starving gannet. I confess it leaves me utterly perplexed and more importantly, doubting the sanity of the majority of the Londoners who surround me on the crawl to work each morning...

Boat drinks books!

Strange times/signs indeed...

Now I’m pretty certain this is not official London Underground signage…



I really have no idea how I even spotted that the standard issue security warning by the tube door had been replaced with a recipe for a margarita (yes, you read right - a recipe for a margarita…). I mean how often do we actually take in our surroundings whilst riding the tube for the billionth time?!? Particularly those of us who are avid readers (a.k.a fellow passenger avoiders). I can only guess that the part-time alcoholic in me was drawn to the word tequila!

I’ve googled this sign/art installation/cultural commentary using a multitude of combinations and phrases but to no avail, so if anyone knows the answer, please enlighten me!

My hunch is that its purpose/message is to highlight the fact that we never look at these signs even though they are concerned with our personal safety. So they can basically be replaced with anything and yet we are all none the wiser, nor do we care.

Or perhaps there is just someone out there that really loves a good margarita…

Boat Drinks but never tequila!