Tag Archives: waterloo station

OLYMPICS

February 16, 2012 By in PICTURES, WORDS Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 16 Comments

2012 is, of course, the year of the London Olympics. Being an adult, I have no interest in the Olympic games, instead, the only Olympics I’m interested in are the glass-reinforced plastic modular structures used in car parks and train stations:

The Olympic system has been at the forefront of modular building technology for 35 years and has earned a worldwide reputation for reliability and superior design.

Typical applications for the accommodation of personnel include: security posts and gatehouses; car park kiosks; factory offices; vehicle checkpoints and vending kiosks.

There’s a small Olympic unit at Raynes Park station:

The dark blue colour fits in nicely with the surroundings:

On closer inspection, you can see that the unit wasn’t originally that blue colour, it’s been painted. You can see where the painter has gone over the edges of the label:

It’s nice that they left the label there though, didn’t cover it up or paint over it. If you want to stop snoring ZQuiet. Send glasdon a telex, their number is 67350.

The larger Olympic units at Wimbledon are red:

Although for some reason, they seem to have replaced the original GRP door with a wooden panel one:

I’d like to think they’ve used a wooden panel door to make the Olympic unit appear more “homely”, but I suspect the original door got broken and it was cheaper to just use a normal door than to replace the whole panel1. It’s a shame though, as the straight lines of the wooden door panels don’t really fit with the contours of the rest of the structure.

At least at Waterloo, they have the proper doors3:

I started looking online for information about modular building systems like the Olympic. CB Fabrications do a nice range of GRP buildings. Their gallery page is wonderful.

In some of the images, the kiosks and huts look completely alien and out of place, like they’ve been photoshopped in on top of unrelated and surreal backgrounds:

With others, there are no visual clues whatsoever to help you work out when the picture was taken:

That photo could have been taken at any point in the last forty years.

Some of them are date stamped, sadly. That ruins the fun.

This shot of the interior of one unit shows a car through the window:

I don’t know anything about cars, so I asked on Twitter if anyone could identify it:

Several people identified it as a Ford Fiesta, but there was uncertainty over which type:

Soon though, people seemed to decide it was a Mk IV. This assessment, for example, seemed quite convincing:

The matter still wasn’t settled though, as some believed it could be a Mazda 121:

The confusion comes from the fact that the Ford Fiesta Mk IV and the Mazda 121 shared the same design:

As an exercise in badge engineering, the Mazda 121 and Ford Fiesta were built on the same production lines and used almost all the same parts.

Really though, it doesn’t matter if it’s a Ford Fiesta Mk IV or a Mazda 121. The Fiesta was produced from 1995 to 2002 when it was replaced by the MK V, and the Mazda from 1996 until it was withdrawn from the UK market in 1999. All I was really interested in were the dates.

The knowledge displayed by a few people reminded me of the television series You Bet. I’ve been thinking about You Bet quite a lot lately. The other week, I saw Joe Lycett at Josie Long’s night Lost Treasures Of The Black Heart. Afterwards, I was talking to someone about it and I mentioned that Joe Lycett used to appear on the BBC One series Epic Win. The person I was talking to had never heard of Epic Win, so I explained that it was sort of an updated version of You Bet. They’d never heard of You Bet either, so I tried to explain what it was, but the more I tried to explain, the more implausible it seemed.

You Bet was basically a celebrity panel show, where guests would bet on whether or not members of the public would be able to successfully complete particular challenges. Usually, the members of the public would be people with a special skill or knowledge of a specific subject and this would be tested against the clock.

Here is a man who knows a lot about buses, being mocked by Matthew Kelly:

Here is a blindfolded German teenager, dressed as a harlequin, attempting to identify the country of origin of a series of postage stamps by taste alone:

I love that this was shown on prime time television. Saturday night entertainment. Millions of people watching a man lick stamps.

The fact the concept was basically stolen wholesale to make Epic Win suggests there is still an appetite for this sort of thing, but in updating it, they robbed it of much of its charm, filling it with pointless stunts like this:

That man seems like an awful human being. Imagine being stuck next to him on a coach, gargling the national anthem the whole time and expecting you to be impressed. Not like Andy Hine, he seems nice and polite:

——
NOTES
1. I’ve had a look at the Glasdon brochure and you’ll see on page 22 that they’d need to order a PA6 panel to replace the door.
2. You’ll see that the doors at Waterloo don’t have windows, these are the “blank” PA5 door panels.
3. The title of the programme puts me off too. The inescapable “epic win”/”epic fail” dichotomy is a depressing fact of modern life. There are no humble achievements or minor mistakes, just epic wins or epic fails. Failure can so often be more interesting than the short termist “win”. We need to fail, it’s how we learn. But the all-caps FAIL does not allow for an examination of what went wrong, it simply shuts down the conversation and blocks all thought. In fact, it doesn’t just prevent any further thought, its use is also an illustration of a lack of thought itself. The debate is killed at both ends each time it is used. Please stop using these phrases, I beg you.

PLATFORM 6: VERY SLIGHT UPDATE

June 30, 2011 By in PICTURES, WORDS Tags: , , , , 9 Comments

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m trying to find out what this advert, exposed as part of the renovation works at Waterloo, relates too:

Something which ended in the letter “e” was opposite platform six (I assume it’s opposite, it could have been “beside” platform six, but that seems like a slightly odd choice of words).

At the bottom of the poster, it says “Promoted by Ian Fletcher” and then “[something] Children, Pembridge Hall, Pembridge Square, London, W2″

Tom Cleaver pointed out in the comments to yesterday’s post that up until 1981, Mencap used to be called “National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children” and that they were based in Pembridge Hall, as this advert shows:

So, the “[something]” in front of “Children” is “Handicapped”. It also means whatever it was which was opposite platform six was there before Mencap changed its name in 1981. But what could this early version of Mencap be offering “instantly” opposite platform six?

Also, a couple of people mentioned that the “6″ looked a bit odd, as if it had been altered in some way. On my way home yesterday, I took another photo from the other side of the poster:

The six has been stuck on. This means either whatever it was used to be opposite a different platform and was moved, or that it was a generic poster, perhaps used in lots of different stations with the platform numbers added later.

The quest continues.

PLATFORM 6

June 29, 2011 By in PICTURES, WORDS Tags: , , , , , , , 27 Comments

Back in March, I had an idea of spending full day at Waterloo station. I’d take a day off work, get the same train I normally get each morning, but rather than continuing my onward journey, I’d stay in the station all day and then get the same train I normally get to go home.

It didn’t quite work out as planned and I only spent half the day at the station. Little did I know however, just how significant my timing would be. I took the 31st March off work and, though I knew that there were plans to “improve” the station, I hadn’t realised the station would change so quickly. The next day, the Sloe bar closed. Over the next few weeks, the Proteus retail units which ran along the centre of the concourse were dismantled one by one. This video captured a moment in history:

A long mezzanine floor of retail units is being built along the length of the wall facing the platforms. 1,860 square metres. 17 new “retailing opportunities”. You can’t stand in the way of progress. There’s no point living in one style and dying in another.

As part of the redevelopment, the retail units which used to surround the steps down to the Underground opposite platforms seven and eight (Cranberry, Upper Crust, Thresher, Tie Rack and TM Lewin) have also been removed. During this process, a fragment of an old poster has been revealed above the steps:

Someone was being invited to visit something (ending in “e”) which used to be somewhere near platform six (I’m guessing it’s “opposite platform 6″, or possibly “beside platform 6″, but opposite seems more likely) and whatever it was offered instantly. But who was being invited to visit what near platform six and what was available instantly?

There’s something written in small red lettering along the bottom of the advert. On the left it says “Promoted by Ian Fletcher” and then on the right it says “[something] Children, Pembridge Hall, Pembridge Square, London, W2″.

Pembridge Hall is an independent school for girls:

The school is a non-selective day school for girls aged 4 to 11 situated in Notting Hill, West London. The school opened in 1979 and was originally run by a religious order of nuns. In 1983 it moved to 18 Pembridge Square. In September 2002 it was sold to the Alpha Plus Group and in 2003 expanded into number 10 Pembridge Square and became a three-form entry school. The Alpha Plus Group Board carries out the corporate governance responsibility for all of the schools and colleges in the group.

Nuns? Anyway, let’s assume we’re looking at something from the early 1980s. It sort of looks like it’s from that period, it has that kind of Preedy brown lettering, and I need to start somewhere.

I started looking on Google for photos of Waterloo from the 1980s. I found these beautiful pictures from 1987:

My train normally leaves from that platform.

This one is good:

You can almost see something by platform six, but I don’t think it’s the same thing as in the torn advert.

Both those pictures come from this collection of photos which is part of a quite incredible website, Nosher.net and features a remarkable wealth of images from the last thirty years or so:

Perhaps in fifty or a hundred years’ time, people will look at these photos with the same curiosity as we do those of Victorian times: a brief glimpse of how life was, of strange people, strange fashions or strange activities that were once considered harmless (even though it currently remains legal to photograph almost everything in the UK). The photos are from various sources, from scans of varying quality through to a couple of gorgeous Pentax digital SLRs – the *ist D and the K10D. They’re simply a documentary of an average existence.

“Simply a documentary of an average existence” – that is a wonderful phrase.

I also found this brilliant set of photos:

There are lots of other fantastic photo sets on Steve White2008′s Flickr stream.

These photos are beautiful, but they still haven’t help me solve the mystery. I remembered the video to West End Girls by the Pet Shop Boys. There’s a bit where Neil and Chris walk through Waterloo station. It was a long shot, but maybe that would offer some sort of clue:

I like Neil’s coat.

Unfortunately, even though they walk right past platform six, there’s still nothing which helps me.

One day, I’ll find out what used to be opposite platform six. I won’t give up until I do.

EDIT: A very slight update.

INCIDENT 657: COMMON ASSAULT

May 30, 2011 By in WORDS Tags: , , , , , , , 51 Comments

On Saturday afternoon, I went in to central London as I am perfectly entitled to do.

I went to the London Graphic Centre and bought a desk tidy in the shape of a large pencil sharpener:

After that, I went to the Cross Keys pub on Endell Street, where I was very impressed by the selection of switches behind the bar:

From there, I walked to Waterloo station to get the train home. I walked up the steps to the station and entered through the “Victory Arch” entrance (entrance 5 on this map). As I entered the station, a group of men started chanting “YOU FAGGOT! YOU FAGGOT!” at me. I stopped. I walked over to them.

“Sorry, what?” I said.
“What’s your problem?” replied the leader of the group.
“I just want to know what it was you were shouting at me. It was ‘You faggot’, wasn’t it? Why did you shout that at me?”
“It wasn’t ‘You faggot’, it was ‘You maggot’” lied a girl who was with the group.
“No, it wasn’t ‘You maggot’, it was ‘You faggot’. You chanted ‘You faggot’ at me”
“Listen mate, fuck off” said the group leader, ignoring the girl’s disingenuous and flawed attempt to resolve the tension, although quite why she thought I’d consider it acceptable for a group of people to chant “You maggot” at me is a mystery.
“No, I won’t fuck off. You called me a ‘faggot’. Why do you think that’s OK to shout at someone?”

By this point, the group leader was becoming visibly angry. He pushed me. He told me to fuck off. I refused to fuck off. He pushed me again. I asked him to stop pushing me. He was standing so close to me that I could smell his breath. His breath stank. I’m not sure quite how to describe the stink. It would be glib to describe it simply as the stench of hatred and ignorance. It was more than that. There was a horrible warmth to it as well. Not an emotional warmth, a physical warmth. I could feel the heat of his breath on my skin, and each time he spoke, I could feel tiny dots of spit landing on my face. And then there was this awful smell. I kept moving back but he’d move even closer. I briefly considered explaining to him that he had really foul breath, but decided against it. In retrospect, I think this was probably the right decision.

“Look mate,” one of his friends came over and tried to reason with me, “you’ve got two options. Either you fuck off or he drags you outside and kicks the shit out of you”.
“No, there’s another option. You could apologise for what you said.”

This suggestion was rejected as the group leader repeated the original two options a second time.

“What about my option?” I asked.
“Fuck off” came the reply. He shoved me to the ground1. I landed on my elbow. It hurt.

I was on the floor. I was in shock. I stood up. A man came over to us. He showed some sort of ID to the man with the bad breath. He said he was a policeman. The man with the bad breath and his friends walked off. The man with the ID started to walk away. “Hold on,” I said, “so you’re a policeman?”
“Leave it” he replied.
“No, if you’re a policeman, shouldn’t you have done something sooner, before I got shoved to the ground?”
“I just saved you from getting a kicking.”
“Well, can you give me your name or something?”

He ignored me and walked off. I followed him. I never saw his ID. Maybe he wasn’t a policeman at all, he just had some sort of identification which looked police-ish. Maybe he was a traffic warden or something like that. But then that would be a bit of a weird thing to do. They could easily have realised he wasn’t a policeman and beat him up as well. So was he a policeman? And if so, surely he should have been more helpful? He disappeared down the escalator. Should I have been grateful for his intervention or resentful for his unwillingness to explain who he was?

I went to the information desk. I said I wanted to report a crime and asked where I needed to go. “You go out through Exit 2, down the escalator, turn right and then follow the signs”. This is important to remember. If you are attacked on the concourse of Waterloo station and want to report a crime, simply go out through Exit 2, go down the escalator, turn right and then follow the signs. I went out through Exit 2, went down the escalator, turned right and followed the signs. I found a door with a buzzer. It wasn’t really very clear which button I was supposed to press. Fortunately, there was a policeman standing outside. “Hi,” I said, “I want to report a crime, do you know which button I’m meant to press or who I’m supposed to talk to?”
“That would be me,” he replied and opened the door.

Now, if you are ever assaulted in or around Waterloo station, and you go out through Exit 2, down the escalator, turn right and follow the signs to the British Transport Police offices, I cannot recommend PC Rakesh Phian highly enough. He was lovely. Calm and understanding, he listened patiently to what I had to say. He was really nice. I think he even offered me a cup of tea. As I explained what happened, all the emotions I’d managed to keep contained up until that point came out. The anger, the fear, the frustration. I felt like an idiot for letting all this happen. Then I felt angry at myself for thinking that. I was the fucking victim here.

In a way, I knew it was futile reporting this incident to the police. You could even argue that given the fact I wasn’t actually hurt, reporting it is a waste of police resources. But I don’t think it is. I think it’s important. It’s crucial. It is fucking unacceptable for anyone to shout abuse at anyone in this way. I could have ignored the abuse, I could have ignored the fact I was physically assaulted. But to do so is to is to ignore prejudice in its most explicit form. We have a duty to react to this sort of stuff whenever we see it. An obligation. We need to make it clear that we are not going to fucking take this any more. We are going to answer back. Because if we don’t, we’re saying this is OK. That this is how life is.

I think that’s wrong. I won’t accept that.

——
NOTES
1 I can’t really remember what happened at this point when he pushed me. I thought he sort of just shoved me to the floor, but the next morning, I realised that one of the buttons had come off my shirt, so I guess he must have sort of grabbed me and then pushed me over.

FOUND POUND

April 21, 2011 By in PICTURES, WORDS Tags: , , 14 Comments

After my ordeal, I was in need of a drink. The Sloe bar is now closed, as part of Network Rail’s redevelopment plans for Waterloo station which will provide seventeen new retailing opportunities as part of a 20,000 sq ft new balcony floor which will run along one side of the station.

So instead I went to Bonaparte’s. Bonaparte’s is very slightly nicer than the Wellesley, the other alternative now that the Sloe bar is no more. I bought a pint of Amstel (£3.60, the price recently went up by 10p). As I sat down, I noticed something on the floor by one of the other tables:

That small dot on the black tiles to the right of the chair is a pound coin. It’s hard to see in that photo, so I have zoomed in:

It’s still not very easy to see, so I have labelled it:

A pound coin! Just lying on the floor! I decided that, even though the pound coin did not belong to me, I would take it anyway. I would apply the rule known as “finders, keepers”:

Finders, keepers is the adage with the premise that when something is unowned or abandoned, whoever finds it can claim it. Of particular difficulty is how best to define when exactly something is unowned or abandoned, which can lead to legal or ethical disputes.

I was unconcerned about the legal or ethical implications of taking this pound coin. I would take it and to hell with the consequences. However, I didn’t want to get up and walk over to the pound coin and pick it up. That would be too obvious. Someone might see what I was planning and get in before me. I decided to play the long game. I would wait it out. Finish my drink and then, as I was leaving, bend down and pick up the coin.

Of course, there are risks with this strategy. The longer I waited, the more chance there was that someone else might see the coin and pick it up. But I am fearless. I sat there, acting as if I was just a normal man having a quiet pint. No indication that behind those calm, expressionless eyes, there was a mind carefully plotting the crime of the century.

A man came and sat at a table near the pound coin. My heart was racing, he was bound to steal the coin I thought. I cursed my arrogance. That pound could have been mine! I tried to remain calm. Maybe he hadn’t seen the coin. Who was I trying to kid? The pub was almost empty. He could have sat anywhere. He deliberately sat near the coin so he could claim it himself.

I returned to my pint, feeling despondent. Who was this criminal mastermind who had thwarted my plans? I watched him carefully as he sat there. At one point, he got up. “This is it”, I thought. “He’s making his move”. But wasn’t it too soon? He walked past the coin and approached a woman sitting on her own. He said something to her, she shook her head and he walked back towards his table. I have no idea what he said, perhaps it was just a simple question – asking to pinch a cigarette – or maybe it was an invitation to dinner. Whatever it was, the exchange took only a couple of seconds. What a brilliant tactic. So simple. The exchange with the woman was just a ruse. He had no interest in her. It was just an excuse to get up and then “notice” the coin on the return journey. I almost applauded.

But then he didn’t pick up the coin. He went back to his seat. I was confused. He sneezed into his hands, then rubbed his hands together, then rubbed his hands on his jeans. I began to suspect that maybe I’d given him more credit than he deserved. Maybe he wasn’t a genius after all. I looked at him more closely. He looked scruffy. At first, I thought this was deliberate, so he wouldn’t draw unnecessary attention to himself, but I began to wonder if maybe, he was just a bit scruffy.

He finished his drink. He got up and, walking past the coin one final time, he left.

A few seconds later, I finished my drink too. I got up, took a few steps and casually bent down.

The coin was mine.

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