To get to central London from my mother’s, you take a double-decker bus to Richmond, and then a train. The bus stops are named after the nearest pub, “The Fox & Duck” in this case.
At Richmond, this man was on the opposite platform. I wanted a picture because of the odd way he had wound his elbow around the back of his head, but by the time I’d got my camera out he’d stopped.
He had a bag full of machines to keep himself occupied, but he was more interested in the other man’s newspaper. The London afternoon paper is free, and still as trashy as it always was – the 1970s Evening Standard headline I’ll never forget is “I Ate Nurse Judy”, about some travelers who had been stranded on top of a mountain after an air crash – it’s handed out at station entrances, and nowadays all its revenue comes from advertising. Despite the free papers, most of the passengers I saw seemed to be more interested in tapping out messages on tiny telephones. What are they doing? Playing games? Perhaps they’re reading newspapers online.
If I were a grumpy old man, I’d say that far too many of the passengers have their feet on the seats.
Through Sheen, Mortlake, Barnes, Putney, Wandsworth, Clapham Junction – this could be anywhere. The only thing that marks it out as London is…well, nothing, really…
until you come to Queenstown Road (this stop for Battersea Dog’s Home). You may remember Battersea from when I wrote about Battersea Power Station. It’s still standing (just) derelict nearby. My daughter suggested a new use for it, she would like to combine the two things Battersea is most famous for:
And then shortly before Waterloo comes the Shard, London’s new tallest building,
designed by the great Renzo Piano. The name comes from its top, which is composed of jagged bits of glass that extend up beyond the top storeys.
There’s nothing behind the glass but daylight, and there are gaps between the pieces, so the top is diaphanous and ephemeral. It seems to be disappearing into the moving clouds,
like Frank Lloyd Wright’s futuristic, 1956 proposal for a mile-high skyscraper (why were his clouds lying diagonally, I wonder?)
Nowadays all over London are signs and announcements about what to do when you alight from a train or bus. Is this word used elsewhere too? I don’t think so, it’s a prissy, Pooterish sort of word. Anyway, at Waterloo I alighted, minding the gap, and headed for Bloomsbury, which I’ll show you tomorrow.
A Bad Guide 
It is “alighted”, then, and not “alit”? I honestly don’t know which of those past tense forms sounds more Pooterish.
I confess that I am slightly enchanted by “alight”, especially in contrast to “disembark”.
The Germans have aussteigen to go with einsteigen and umsteigen–all very logical, except that I get tired of all that climbing.
They oughta have hired Renzo Ukelele.
I seem to recall something about his estimate for the elevatoring being off by an order of magnitude.
That’s right. In other words, you couldn’t get the people up there without all the floorspace being taken up with elevators. Poor old Frank was just sad that no one would give him a high rise to design, and he went a bit overboard with the machismo drawings. Me, I wouldn’t have let him build anything higher that two storeys.
Notice how in later years he began to resemble Dr Who.*
* i.e. William Hartnall, the first doctor.
I used to share an office with Dr Hu.
I love these two posts (their order doesn’t matter)
“alight” : well, here we’re lucky and content if we descend “alive” from our public transportation…
Of course, the reason why the clouds in Frank Lloyd Wright’s proposal are diagonal is because that way they transmit the idea of velocity and movement (haven’t you read comics?)
…and Dr Hu was sharing with Dr Me. It sounds like the ‘Hu’s on first’ joke.
I hadn’t thought about the comics, but of course. And late 1950s is the right time frame for comics. Frank should be in a Superman outfit or at least be wearing his underpants over his trousers to reassure potential clients.
This suggests to me that I have failed to be sufficiently marmot-aware throughout my life.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2193986/The-real-life-Mowgli-Schoolboy-Matteo-Walch-forms-special-relationship-colony-alpine-marmots.html
Yes, me too. I wonder if there are marmots in Norway. I wonder how he became their friend. They do seem just as interested in him as he is in them, unlike tamer creatures: say, a horse.
I quite like his grey jersey too.
Thank you very much, dearie.
Nowadays all over London are signs and announcements about what to do when you alight from a train or bus. Is this word used elsewhere too? I don’t think so, it’s a prissy, Pooterish sort of word. Anyway, at Waterloo I alighted, minding the gap
Oh, it’s the passengers that alight from a train or bus? What a revelation! I always thought that it was the vehicle themselves that got alighted (or alit), when somebody turned their engine on (allumer) at the “alighting platform” mentioned on a signboard at the Vacoas bus station. It never occurred to me that it could mean the place where passengers would disembark. (I’ll take a photograph for you.)
I believe that people were alighting from horses before there were motorized vehicles.
alighting from horses – What, you mean they were making the horse lighter by getting off?
Any photographs will be gratefully received and displayed, Sig.
AJP: if you read the Evening Standard regularly, it is quite a good newspaper. There is some good serious reporting in it apaprt form the celebrity rubbish everyone but he Financial Times (the only real newspaper left, IMHO). The Standard is certainly streets ahead of the tabloids.
The ‘Nurse Judy’ headline I remember from the 70s could easily have been in the Evening News, the Northcliffe-owned other evening paper at that time, rather than the Standard. My apologies to Lord Beaverbrook if that’s so. I’ve never read the Financial Times, but I like the pink newsprint and I keep meaning to. My problem with reading any paper on the train is that I hate getting the ink on my hands.
The FT on a Saturday is a good read. The answer to the ink problem is famously to have one’s man iron the papers before breakfast.
Well why can’t the Standard and the FT have their own men who iron all the papers before sending them out?
That would certainly solve the unemployment problem. Or finish off the newspapers a few years before they all die off anyway.
Actually, my memory is that not all the papers are equally bad at ink-spreading, so perhaps one or two had a technological part-solution.
I think I remember that there used to be something in the ink to stop it rubbing off (lead?), and that they removed it in the 1980s because someone thought it might be bad for us, even worse than inky hands. In the meantime perhaps some publishers have found a substitute.
“If I were a grumpy old man, I’d say that far too many of the passengers have their feet on the seats.” ► Not-so-grumpy Scots seem to have had the same thoughts.
Yes, I’ve seen that sign on London trains recently too. It doesn’t seem to stop people, though.
No, I saw a young person doing it on the train right under that sign, and next to her father who didn’t seem to mind at all.