London Transport Apologises No. 2

Jan 132013

London Transport wishes to apologise for the fact that, due to earlier passenger action, all Bakerloo Line trains are currently hiding in a big shed in Willesden and refusing to come out.

[This piece originally appeared in Smoke 6.]

Tagged with: London Transport Apologises, Transport, Tube

Looking back through the clouds…

Iain And Will Have A Cup Of Tea

by Matt Haynes
Iain stared glumly across the stained formica. “It’s like I was telling the sculptor Rachel Whiteread, Will, when I was explaining to her how Hackney’s pre-Games decontamination and realignment into a fugitive cartography of designer lock-ups and guerrilla sofa bars had created a hallucinatory Ballardian nexus of dystopian interzones and put me right off the idea of getting a cat – some of the ley lines they dug up to build the Basketball Arena had been there since the days of King Lud.” [read more...]

The Lucky Cat Watches

by Jess Sully
I waltz with a Spiders-From-Mars-era Bowie who only falls over once on his stack heels; at the end of the song we bow to each other solemnly, then I race onward to dance arm-in-arm with men, women, a giraffe. “Let’s get wasted on rum and ginger!” Slipping on the beer-sodden floor, clambering straight back up, tights subtly laddered. By a mysterious osmosis, we end up at the front at the same time, waving our white sunhats in the air with joy. [read more...]

It Grows On You, Like A Rash

by Jess Sully
A known introvert from a town with wide skies and a vast, shimmering expanse of sea, I didn’t think I’d be happy among the hemmed-in crowds. What I didn’t realise then is that within the anonymity of the ever-flowing throng, those shoals of fast-moving fish who swoop and turn as one entity, I could move silently, unobtrusive and unremarkable. Public transport would take me just about anywhere I wished to go; I could be entirely independent. And now I know, too, that sometimes at low tide the Thames smells of brine and seaweed. [read more...]