On the Beat

On Thursday, the tube I was on stopped at Oxford Circus, and I noticed that the walls of the tunnel were being stripped of layers of posters and cleaned.

Yesterday I went back and got off the tube to have a better look. It felt like I was an archaeologist, looking down through the layers to different ages.

It also looked like abstract paintings – particularly those by Clyfford Still: jagged lightning cutting across the walls.

I took a lot of pictures; here are some of them.

(Also, when I got back from Oxford Circus and was sitting comfortably at my laptop, looking through my friends page, I saw this post by the rather wonderful tubewhore, who had exactly the same idea, although she was at Leicester Square; perhaps they are scraping the posters away throughout the West End.)

( more pictures beneath the cut )

You may have seen this ad; I saw it a couple of weeks ago in the cinema, and loved it, and it was on during the rugby world cup on British tv on Saturday.

But fiendish_cat and frankie_ecap haven't seen it.



This story in the Independent describes how it was made.

Myself, I really love the whale.

There was a bus strike in Edinburgh today – part of the public-sector unions’ day of action.

To avoid travel-hassle, I anticipated working from home – having a rather lazy day catching up on reading, a bit of writing, and no work email.

Instead, a meeting was arranged in London which I had to go to, rather changing my plans.

Going back to the airport, I was caught in a heavy hail storm. The hail was blown nearly horizontal, and when it finally fell, it bounced off the pavement; in the three minutes it took to walk from our office in London to Bank, my legs – unprotected by umbrella and coat – were soaked.

I sat in the front of the DLR train, listening to Quadraphenia – it is rather a superb album.

There was a really stunning complete rainbow, stretching an arch over the derelict Millenium Mills building by Silvertown. The colours were bright against the stormy black sky. At the end of the rainbow was a huge white liner that always seems to be in the docks there.

The Tate and Lyle factory opposite London City Airport looked like a giant Mondrian construction.

And I didn’t have my camera with me. Doh!