London underground

I have gone on Holiday to the remarkable world of the United States of America.
I am here stocking up on shoes, clothes, food that I can't get easily or in fact at all in London.
I am enjoying seeing my parents even though they live 100's of miles apart in the same country, and also putting to rest rumours of clothes that I can find here.I was told the truth by two shop attendants within moments of walking into a store.

Rumour number one laid to rest is
Old Navy has a tall clothes on their shop floor.I was told tall was an online exclusive only!

Rumour Number two
A very tall lady with an impressive inseam of 38 told me that the best place to get my jeans was American eagle and Banana Republic for the fancy clothes.

Thank you anonymous beautiful tall ladies of America, I love you dearly.
Anyway I think I may call individual stores from London next time to save me all this trouble.
Aside from all these shannegans I also realised that I missed London dearly and I used the internet alot.
SO for comfort, because I could spend my morning relaxing and not waking up going into the cold/dark/two beautiful a day to be going into work, so I could stuff myself into a train that was stuffy/overheated/overcrowded I decided to consult my Google reader and check up on all the things I was missing in London.

One of my favourite blogs, Going underground () started talking One under, which is what the LUL staff call people who inadvertently end up under a train.The official announcement seems to be _ we are experiencing delays due to a passenger under a train. This is their way of giving you lots of information but no information at all. Who jumped, where did they jump, why did they jump, were they pushed, is the driver ok, are they still alive, how long will that take to clean up, does this mean I will be late? These questions all go unanswered. They never normally end up in the paper either so you have no way of knowing what happened to this genderless, ageless, motiveless person.

London Underground are financially bound to keep trains moving at all time s and I suppose they learn to chose words careful to keep us sheeplike masses informed as without alarming us. They have many ways of describing delays. Some official lines they give for delays include

We would like to apologise for delays on the tube due to passenger action.

This line is normally delivered with so much sarcasm such scathing, vitriolic venom that you feel sorry for the person who it was directed at. You feel sorry for the idiot who pulled the passenger alarm because someone had fainted cos they were too dumb to realise the tubes were hot so they needed to take water with them. You vow silently never to be one of those idiots. See also the description of a passenger action here.


We would like to apologise for delays on the tube due to a customer incident.

Also delivered with sarcasm, slightly less though, which indicates that
it was something between two passengers, for example, passengers fighting. Probably at the foot of the escalator.Or as they got out of a train.

The whole mention of suicide bombers reminds me that, there were some suicide bombers on the trains in London. That happened in 2004, I think, but for some reason my mind is drawn not to that terrible event but to Wookies. Wookies and the film Four Lions, a brilliant film about incompetence and featured these classic lines

Control- This is control. The target is a bear.
Sniper 1- I see a bear. Clear to fire?
Control - Yes, engage the bear. (Costumed figure falls.)
Sniper 2 - No, that's a Wookie!
Sniper 2 to Control - Is a wookie a bear?
Control - Negative, a Wookie is not a bear.
Sniper 1 - I took out the bear.
Sniper 2 -That wasn't a bear, it was a Wookie! Wait, there's the Honey Monster. Sniper 2 to Control - Control, is the Honey Monster a bear?

Its good in writing but even better when you hear the clip, its the sheer anger and confusion in both their voices that really does it for me. As these guys were suicide bombers and I was after all thinking about the tube, I wondered how many suicides took place on the tube.
I thought the LUL website itself would be useless, so would the TFL one.
I tried googling for hints, all i could come up up with was a few studies using data from 2003.
I found some news articles which stated their sources as

Office of National Statistics


but the best source of all was the BBC always the champion who stated the Rail Safety and Standards Board would be the best place for information.
And it was depressingly


I am so glad I am on holiday and not on trains in London, I am going to bed to enjoy the heat and the fact I don't have to wake up early to take the tube tomorrow.
One last fact before i go, did you know that in the American state of Georgia, they decided to do away with public transport completely? Well for a few months anyway, because they did not have any money. yes, this happened in America.


Nite

Words I have had difficulty spelling today

I am writing this blog entry because frankly I am terrible at spelling.
I first realised I would have a problem when in primary school the word

beautiful

presented me with difficulties to spell in a spelling test.
being young, finding everything scary challenging and almost frankly impossible, I was not bothered.
I was more concerned about getting my mom to get me cheap leatherette moulded shoes,instead of the expensive, handmade leather buckle down shoes my mom had especially made for me.
I was also concentrating on getting to grade 5 where I would be able to use calculators in class. this would sort out all my math problems and would save me having to figure out long division. I remember explaining this to my brother who was fascinated and probably spent his time rubbing his hands together expectantly as well.
Anyway, I eventually did figure out how to spell beautiful. I did it beautifully and elegantly too.
I did try to look for help without really telling anyone that I could not spell this simple word. I scanned endlessly in the pages of "First Aid in English". oh that book, how I remembered it's blue cover and white writing. the white cross on it cover reminded me of the red cross's cross, and I somehow imagined that reading this book touching its cross would magically heal my fractured grasp of the English language and push me to the top classes of my school. Therefore affording me the envy and respect of my school mates while giving me a podium on which to communicate with my mother. She tended to give you stuff listen to you more as you got older or achieved school stuff.Think of all the goodies I could have! A new school bag, a new uniform with buttons that did not keep popping off and sweets and extra money so I could buy a box drink and all the stuff I wanted from that air conditioned store by my school that did not like to let school children in unless you were very well behaved.Bliss and joy.

Anyway I have struggled silently with so may words since then I have decided to combat this in some way. I definitely needed to do something about this. Words such as acroymns,Socratic and psychiatric would trip me up no longer.
i would be freeeee.

Of course, this word, biometeorology. I often use it in my day to day out goings, and why not.


Here is my word of today, I don't know why I can't spell it, I just spelled it now with no problem.
To try and familiarise myself with the word dyslexia, I did a google search. I was very pleased to find that dyslexia is a blanket term for a variety of learning difficulties. So people have just been using it as a politically correct term for stupid. I am going to have to learn or unlearn my bad writing habits. i can remember hating spelling in school, I was really bad at it! Spelling test gave me sweaty palms and made me feel weird.