Walking to walk by St.Paul’s

DSC_0871_DxO, originally uploaded by Waxy Dan.

Ever since bastarding First Capital Connect decided, in their malicious conspiracy with London Underground, to fuck my shit up by closing Blackfriars for a million years and add 20 minutes to my commute (more on the home leg of my journey)… I’ve had to walk between stations.

It’s not all bad though – I stroll along the Thames for a a few minutes, which makes me feel very much a part of city… Under the rail bridge, by the Tate Modern and a jolly strut up the steps of the Milleniun Bridge to St.Paul’s. It’s a wonderful view – a wonderful design that once, before the bridge was in place, must have been a stunning entry to the city from the river.

It’s not all boring either – this morning I got to see some cops rugby tackle a Scandinavian midget who was foaming at the mouth right onto his new leisure wear.

Commuting the world over

My bro sent me a link to an Economist article about commuting:

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13047681&source=hptextfeature&CFID=42663560&CFTOKEN=79051700#london

The paragraphs on “human-body accidents” is quite disturbing.

I think the section on London is a tad misleading though; as the commute from Cambridge doesn’t really illustrate the trials of the tube. You bastard Cambridgites.

Weird Commuters No.2

A woman sitting across from me on the tube.

A fixed scowl, of determination or concentration I don’t know. A bright scarlet coat and scuffed leather boots, she writes in a large moleskin notebook. She lays out a whole spectrum of coloured markers on her lap and begins to carefully annotate her words.

What I expect to see when I voyeuristicly glance at her notes is a bulk of text or graphs with precise and meaningful coloured marginal notes. What I see are 5 or 6 words to a page, spread across with varying widths and at crazy angles, with a veritable rainbow of whirling seemingly-random lines and squiggles all over, each laid down with such care. Complete gibberish.

Precise careful squiggly gibberish.

I’m reminded of this song by Underworld “8 Ball” (forgive the fan video on YouTube):