October 2007 Archives
Safely stowed within its inhabitants, London contains 73, 680, 537 pints of human blood - that's enough human blood to power the Hoover Dam for 3.5 seconds.
Londoners' blood could - briefly - be used to power the Hoover Dam. Luckily, US energy-usage forecasts predict that such measures will not be necessary until 2045.
Londoners' blood could - briefly - be used to power the Hoover Dam. Luckily, US energy-usage forecasts predict that such measures will not be necessary until 2045.
Chimney snakes (chimchimini chimchimini)
These dangerous rooftop animals are not true snakes, but actually mammals - one theory is that they are weasels that became adapted to living in chimneys and other artificial tube-like structures, losing their legs over evolutionary time as a 'squirming' method of getting about proved more advantageous. In Victorian days, they were the bane of chimney sweeps - some of the bigger specimens could easily eat a sweep whole and still have room for a roof monkey. The creature was immortalised in Edgar Allan Poe's chilling tale, "Cough," Quoth The Chimn'y Snake.
Number of legs: Just four vestigial stumps.
Appearance: A sort of living draught excluder.
Habitat: Chimneys, ventilation ducts, church organs.
Diet: Soot, children.
Social grouping: Chimney snake society is basically like a pan of giant evil noodles.
Reproduction: When in heat, a female chimney snake suspends herself in her 'nest' chimney, takes soot into her lungs and puffs it out of the top of the chimney in a sexy pattern. Male chimney snakes, seeing these saucy smoke signals, race to her chimney. The first one to slither there will dislocate his jaw and engulf the whole chimney pot with his mouth, breathing in the female's smoke puffs which now come at an urgent, pulsing rate. These vigorous puffs of smoke cause the male chimney snake to hack up a sticky parcel of reproductive phlegm from his lungs, which double as gonads. The fertile mucus splatters on the inside walls of the chimney where the female chimney snake gathers it up at her leisure, using a bony appendage shaped like a teaspoon. Precisely what she does next with the gamete solution is unknown, and probably disgusting, but at any rate: six weeks later, a shower of hundreds of shoelace-sized newborn chimney snakes will pop out of her chimney at 180mph, then rain gently down on delicate parachutes made of placenta, falling into chimney pots all over London, ready to start the whole majestic cycle of chimney snake life again.
Relationship with man: Bad. Victorians always resented the fact that hundreds of young chimney sweeps and children playing hide-and-seek were taken by chimney snakes each year. They hunted the creatures down vociferously. Unfortunately, the only effective way of hunting a chimney snake known to Victorians involved lowering a small child down a chimney on a fishing line in an attempt to lure the serpent up to the rooftop, where it could be safely doused in acid. The hazards involved in this technique were many and, on average, five children were killed for every chimney snake dissolved.
Useful byproducts: The long, flexible spine of the chimney snake is much prized by Goths as a sort of scary belt.
Threats: Santa.
Number of legs: Just four vestigial stumps.
Appearance: A sort of living draught excluder.
Habitat: Chimneys, ventilation ducts, church organs.
Diet: Soot, children.
Social grouping: Chimney snake society is basically like a pan of giant evil noodles.
Reproduction: When in heat, a female chimney snake suspends herself in her 'nest' chimney, takes soot into her lungs and puffs it out of the top of the chimney in a sexy pattern. Male chimney snakes, seeing these saucy smoke signals, race to her chimney. The first one to slither there will dislocate his jaw and engulf the whole chimney pot with his mouth, breathing in the female's smoke puffs which now come at an urgent, pulsing rate. These vigorous puffs of smoke cause the male chimney snake to hack up a sticky parcel of reproductive phlegm from his lungs, which double as gonads. The fertile mucus splatters on the inside walls of the chimney where the female chimney snake gathers it up at her leisure, using a bony appendage shaped like a teaspoon. Precisely what she does next with the gamete solution is unknown, and probably disgusting, but at any rate: six weeks later, a shower of hundreds of shoelace-sized newborn chimney snakes will pop out of her chimney at 180mph, then rain gently down on delicate parachutes made of placenta, falling into chimney pots all over London, ready to start the whole majestic cycle of chimney snake life again.
Relationship with man: Bad. Victorians always resented the fact that hundreds of young chimney sweeps and children playing hide-and-seek were taken by chimney snakes each year. They hunted the creatures down vociferously. Unfortunately, the only effective way of hunting a chimney snake known to Victorians involved lowering a small child down a chimney on a fishing line in an attempt to lure the serpent up to the rooftop, where it could be safely doused in acid. The hazards involved in this technique were many and, on average, five children were killed for every chimney snake dissolved.
Useful byproducts: The long, flexible spine of the chimney snake is much prized by Goths as a sort of scary belt.
Threats: Santa.
The Central Line is the only 'wraparound' line on the London Underground. Intrepid commuters who stay on the train passed Epping in the east will suddenly find themselves at Ealing Broadway - some 27 miles to the west - in the blink of an eye. They will also find that two cherries have been added to their Oyster card. They are worth 50 points.
No self-respecting high street in the capital can do without at least a hundred takeaway fried chicken outlets, wafting out their distinctive aroma like magic portals to Chicken Valhalla, that greasy underworld where heroic hens feast on each other for all eternity.*
It's natural to want to sample all of London's fried chicken shops, but if you're just visiting for the day, that's not always practical. So why not complete the famous Chicken Triangle? It's a route designed to take in sixteen of London's world-class chicken shops. This is a true fried-chicken odyssey: you'll want to sample at least a four-piece dinner from every shop on the route. It's a long way, so it's a good idea to drive - and why not really get into the spirit of things by gluing feathers to your car?
1. Good Morning Chicken, Archway
This is the natural place to start your journey, because Good Morning Chicken specialises in fried-chicken based breakfast cereals. As well as Chicken Pops ("They turn the milk chickeny!"), you can choose from Count Chickula, Crunchy Chicken Corn Flakes, Ready Beak, or even Chicken Grahams.
2. Stadium Fried Chicken, Finsbury Park
All the chickens on offer here have been fried in front of at least 80,000 spectators. A marching band plays as the breasts are flipped over halfway through cooking.
3. Hyper Fried Chicken, Islington
Originating in Roswell, Nevada, the tasty secret behind Hyper Fried Chicken's chicken3 is guarded even more closely than the Colonel's.
4. Jelly Fried Chicken, Smithfields
The slogan of this franchise is: "You say, 'Chicken!', we say, 'Blackcurrant of lime?'"
5. Beak House, Bermondsey
Classy, Sunday-serial style costume-fried chicken, cooked by Andrew Davies.
6. Chicken Chicken Everywhere, Deptford
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's favourite chicken shop. Basically, it's a huge revolving iron drum full of warmed-over wings, legs and breasts - you pay a fixed fee to enter (and to hire galoshes) and are entitled to as much chicken as you can keep down.
7. HMS Chicken, New Cross
All the chickens at HMS Chicken are sourced from a unique floating farm in the North Sea. As soon as they hatch, the chicks are taught how to tie knots and use radar. After six months, they are fired out of a tornado tube and into a hot pan.
8. Chicken Igloo, Lewisham
Look under the frozen floor of this restaurant and select your hen - it'll be fished out through a hole in the ice with a traditional whalebone hook and flash fried in seal blubber. There's a husky to pet while you wait.
9. The Chicken Lab, Catford
This is probably the most accurate fried chicken you will ever eat. Every hen (cloned from a Nobel-winning specimen) is whirled around in a centrifuge until all the different components - white meat, grey meat, feathers, beak etc. - are separated out. These chicken 'elements' are accelerated to 98.4% of the speed of light in a cyclotron until they collide and recombine. The resulting 'Platonic' chicken is decanted into a test tube and fried with gamma rays until it's cooked to 128 decimal places.
10. The Prime of Miss Jean Chicken, Forest Hill
Rest assured that this fried chicken, made only from hens who've graduated from an exclusive Edinburgh girls' school, is the most refined you can get. These hens have spent most of their short lives balancing books on their heads, so their necks are especially succulent.
11. Chicken Fried Chicken, Tooting
Bite-sized morsels of chicken, each one fried inside another living hen, via the magic of a tiny frying pan and cooking techniques adapted from keyhole surgery.
12. Fort Chicken, Streatham
One of the best-defended chicken shops in London, you must know the password (it's 'chicken') to get in.
13. Ascent of Hen, Brixton
The only multi-course fried chicken shop, Ascent of Hen marries haute cuisine and time travel to take you through some of the evolutionary stages, past and present, of the noble bird. The set menu begins with a soup of single-celled chicken-like amoebas and finishes with a brûlée made from the icy cooling fluid bled from the mechanical legs of the monstrous cyborg chickens that will - it turns out - rule over the Earth some 300 years hence.
14. Baby Fried Chicken, Vauxhall
Is it safe to let an infant use a chip pan? This franchise proves it's both safe and delicious.
15. All The President's Hens, Mayfair
Every chicken you'll eat at this unique franchise is sourced from the White House's presidential chicken coop - they're flown in daily on Air Force One. Tenderised using Ronald Reagan's patent 'gippering' technique, this is the only fried chicken in London which enjoys diplomatic immunity.
16. Nuclear Waste Storage Silo Fried Chicken, Camden
Something of a delicacy from this takeaway parlour - all Nuclear Waste Storage Silo Fried Chicken's chicken comes from the lead-lined bunkers deep beneath Australia where the meat left over from making fuel for nuclear power stations is kept. The chefs wear haz-mat suits and there'll be a Geiger counter on your table, but don't worry - if it's fried properly, uranium-enriched chicken is perfectly safe.
If you manage to complete the Chicken Triangle three times in a single-day - anti-clockwise, as suggested - make sure you look up into the night sky afterwards. Some fried chicken acolytes who've completed the feat have reported seeing a ghostly hen's face looming above them amongst the stars. For most, the apparition is not frightening - in fact, one woman (a high court judge) claims to have seen it wink. Whether the phenomenon is a genuine mystical entity or simply a neurological side effect of eating almost two hundred fried chicken wings in a 24-hour period is a matter for Arthur C Clarke.
*Chicken Valhalla happens to be the name of a fried chicken shop in Stoke Newington. It uses 'Odin' hens, carefully bred to have only one eye.
It's natural to want to sample all of London's fried chicken shops, but if you're just visiting for the day, that's not always practical. So why not complete the famous Chicken Triangle? It's a route designed to take in sixteen of London's world-class chicken shops. This is a true fried-chicken odyssey: you'll want to sample at least a four-piece dinner from every shop on the route. It's a long way, so it's a good idea to drive - and why not really get into the spirit of things by gluing feathers to your car?
1. Good Morning Chicken, Archway
This is the natural place to start your journey, because Good Morning Chicken specialises in fried-chicken based breakfast cereals. As well as Chicken Pops ("They turn the milk chickeny!"), you can choose from Count Chickula, Crunchy Chicken Corn Flakes, Ready Beak, or even Chicken Grahams.
2. Stadium Fried Chicken, Finsbury Park
All the chickens on offer here have been fried in front of at least 80,000 spectators. A marching band plays as the breasts are flipped over halfway through cooking.
3. Hyper Fried Chicken, Islington
Originating in Roswell, Nevada, the tasty secret behind Hyper Fried Chicken's chicken3 is guarded even more closely than the Colonel's.
4. Jelly Fried Chicken, Smithfields
The slogan of this franchise is: "You say, 'Chicken!', we say, 'Blackcurrant of lime?'"
5. Beak House, Bermondsey
Classy, Sunday-serial style costume-fried chicken, cooked by Andrew Davies.
6. Chicken Chicken Everywhere, Deptford
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's favourite chicken shop. Basically, it's a huge revolving iron drum full of warmed-over wings, legs and breasts - you pay a fixed fee to enter (and to hire galoshes) and are entitled to as much chicken as you can keep down.
7. HMS Chicken, New Cross
All the chickens at HMS Chicken are sourced from a unique floating farm in the North Sea. As soon as they hatch, the chicks are taught how to tie knots and use radar. After six months, they are fired out of a tornado tube and into a hot pan.
8. Chicken Igloo, Lewisham
Look under the frozen floor of this restaurant and select your hen - it'll be fished out through a hole in the ice with a traditional whalebone hook and flash fried in seal blubber. There's a husky to pet while you wait.
9. The Chicken Lab, Catford
This is probably the most accurate fried chicken you will ever eat. Every hen (cloned from a Nobel-winning specimen) is whirled around in a centrifuge until all the different components - white meat, grey meat, feathers, beak etc. - are separated out. These chicken 'elements' are accelerated to 98.4% of the speed of light in a cyclotron until they collide and recombine. The resulting 'Platonic' chicken is decanted into a test tube and fried with gamma rays until it's cooked to 128 decimal places.
10. The Prime of Miss Jean Chicken, Forest Hill
Rest assured that this fried chicken, made only from hens who've graduated from an exclusive Edinburgh girls' school, is the most refined you can get. These hens have spent most of their short lives balancing books on their heads, so their necks are especially succulent.
11. Chicken Fried Chicken, Tooting
Bite-sized morsels of chicken, each one fried inside another living hen, via the magic of a tiny frying pan and cooking techniques adapted from keyhole surgery.
12. Fort Chicken, Streatham
One of the best-defended chicken shops in London, you must know the password (it's 'chicken') to get in.
13. Ascent of Hen, Brixton
The only multi-course fried chicken shop, Ascent of Hen marries haute cuisine and time travel to take you through some of the evolutionary stages, past and present, of the noble bird. The set menu begins with a soup of single-celled chicken-like amoebas and finishes with a brûlée made from the icy cooling fluid bled from the mechanical legs of the monstrous cyborg chickens that will - it turns out - rule over the Earth some 300 years hence.
14. Baby Fried Chicken, Vauxhall
Is it safe to let an infant use a chip pan? This franchise proves it's both safe and delicious.
15. All The President's Hens, Mayfair
Every chicken you'll eat at this unique franchise is sourced from the White House's presidential chicken coop - they're flown in daily on Air Force One. Tenderised using Ronald Reagan's patent 'gippering' technique, this is the only fried chicken in London which enjoys diplomatic immunity.
16. Nuclear Waste Storage Silo Fried Chicken, Camden
Something of a delicacy from this takeaway parlour - all Nuclear Waste Storage Silo Fried Chicken's chicken comes from the lead-lined bunkers deep beneath Australia where the meat left over from making fuel for nuclear power stations is kept. The chefs wear haz-mat suits and there'll be a Geiger counter on your table, but don't worry - if it's fried properly, uranium-enriched chicken is perfectly safe.
If you manage to complete the Chicken Triangle three times in a single-day - anti-clockwise, as suggested - make sure you look up into the night sky afterwards. Some fried chicken acolytes who've completed the feat have reported seeing a ghostly hen's face looming above them amongst the stars. For most, the apparition is not frightening - in fact, one woman (a high court judge) claims to have seen it wink. Whether the phenomenon is a genuine mystical entity or simply a neurological side effect of eating almost two hundred fried chicken wings in a 24-hour period is a matter for Arthur C Clarke.
*Chicken Valhalla happens to be the name of a fried chicken shop in Stoke Newington. It uses 'Odin' hens, carefully bred to have only one eye.
(Source image: Chris Lewis, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0)
Streatham Hill is the ex-pope capital of the world. Five former pontiffs are currently spending their retirement in the south London borough. Every Tuesday they all get together and enter a team in the Horse & Groom's pub quiz. They usually play their joker in the 'Cassocks and Cassockry' round.
Ex-popes Pius IX and John Paul II on their way to Somerfield to get some tins in.
Ex-popes Pius IX and John Paul II on their way to Somerfield to get some tins in.
If you should find yourself in Talbot Court, a gloomy alley off Eastcheap, you'll be rewarded if you crouch down and peer through your microscope. For it's here that you'll find a curious sculpture - a 1:1 brass replica of a germ. It was commissioned to commemorate the estimated 100,000 Londoners who perished in the Great Plague of 1665, and indeed beneath the tiny sculpture lies one of the world's largest plague pits. For a flavour of those harrowing times, an extract of Daniel Defoe's diary is instructive:
A curator prepares fresh germs for the sandwiches at the London Plague Museum.
(Photo: lofaesofa, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0)
11th December 1665
Dinner; one tries to be lively, but all talk was of the raging of the Plague. Lord Sacheverell did boast that he had barely escaped it himself that very morning; having discovered an Animalcule in his bedchamber upon waking, he punched it soundly in its hideous Face until it moved not; but it transpired that he spake too soon, for he dropped dead as he acted out his Adventure, and Tomkin was obliged to remove him.
Ireton declared that it was an ill wind &c. and that he had made his way to my House by hitching a ride on a handy Death-cart, thus saving himself the cab fare and gaining a Pocket-watch and smart silken kerchief from the cart's Grisly Cargo to boot; all were agreed that their prior owner would miss them not, God save his Soul. A most vigorous Sneeze then compelled Ireton to make use of the kerchief, and after doing so he fell straight away face-first into the Soup, and he was quite dead, and Tomkin was obliged to remove him, which he did with exceeding good Humour.
The Party's conversing was subdued for some time, until Dr. Latymer remembered that he had passed some street-urchins that day, and they had been skipping and singing a most charming Rhyme, which he tried to recall, and indeed he did recite as far as "Nine green buboes, oozing in my Groyne" before, alas, he did expire, and Tomkin was obliged to remove him, which duty he performed with the greatest Efficiency.
Whereupon, Tomkin fetched the Mutton, and my remaining guests all died, and Tomkin did begin to remove them; but I stayed him and bade him move them not, and did invite him to share the Mutton with me, and it was the finest Mutton I ever did eat, and the finer for being all the more for us.
A curator prepares fresh germs for the sandwiches at the London Plague Museum.
(Photo: lofaesofa, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0)
If Canary Wharf were laid on its side, it would take a London bus nine-and-a-half-minutes to drive its length. The fare would be £1.00.
A scheme to drag buses up the side of Canary Wharf on a winch was abandoned in 2003.
The blueprint for the ambitious plan to drag London buses up the side of Canary Wharf. Despite its green credentials, the plan was dropped due to the seeds of doubt planted by the pair of crudely-drawn seagulls (pictured top left).
A scheme to drag buses up the side of Canary Wharf on a winch was abandoned in 2003.
The blueprint for the ambitious plan to drag London buses up the side of Canary Wharf. Despite its green credentials, the plan was dropped due to the seeds of doubt planted by the pair of crudely-drawn seagulls (pictured top left).
Rainbows are banned from the skies above Kensington & Chelsea. The local authority believes the presence of leprechauns could adversely affect house prices.
An illegal rainbow above a block of Kensington flats on 3 March 2005. The optical phenomenon was later shot down by police marksmen.
(Source image: Holly Hayes, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0)
An illegal rainbow above a block of Kensington flats on 3 March 2005. The optical phenomenon was later shot down by police marksmen.
(Source image: Holly Hayes, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0)
London is a very ancient city - but just how ancient is it? If you
were to stand on the spot where Trafalgar Square is now, 4.5 billion
years ago, what would you see?
For a start, you had better be wearing asbestos shoes, because London then was simply a semi-solid lake of magma! Getting about would be a problem, because as well as there being no taxis, no Underground, and no buses, London didn't even have any streets. If you did try and build a street, any tarmac you laid would instantly melt - and besides, there would be nowhere for the street to go to or come from.
Even breathing would be difficult. You might think that today's pollution is bad for your asthma, but 4.5 billion years ago, the air in London was a dense fog of sulphur, volcanic ash and poison. It's difficult to say what the main cause of death for Londoners in those days would have been - asphyxiation and horribly burned legs would probably have set in at about the same time.
This never happened.
Jump forwards half a billion years and things are slightly more hospitable in the capital. The ground is now solid rock, although it's stormy and there are still enough volcanoes to give you a nasty cough. But there, in front of you - perhaps on the very spot where Nelson's Column now stands - is a small, warm, soupy pool. Dip your finger in and lick it - there's water, certainly, salt - rather too much - diluted ash, and, crucially, the long-chain molecules we call proteins, such as thiamine, niacin and riboflavin. Suddenly, there's a huge flash and crash of lightning - you're thrown backwards by the blast, knock your head on a rock and pass out! Coming to, you see that the pool is glowing - the lightning must have hit it directly! Peering in, you can just see tiny, translucent little blobs swimming around. Even though they're not wearing bowler hats, could they be the very first Londoners? Created in this pool of electric gravy?
Scientists aren't 100% sure if that is the way London life began, but hop forward to just 200 million years ago and the picture is much clearer. Now, appearing in Trafalgar Square, you might find yourself snug in the cosy warmth of a pterodactyl's nest, or balancing precariously astride a mighty stegosaurus - for this is the age of the dinosaurs! Of course, the capital was very different from nowadays in many important respects, but you couldn't fail to find the sheer bustle of Jurassic London familiar. The huge, long-necked herbivores such as brontosauruses and brachiosauruses were as big as London buses, and indeed fossil footprints show that they moved slowly up and down what is now The Strand with much the same regularity as actual buses do today. Icthyosauruses and plesiasaurs filled the Thames just as boatmen and barges would in later years. And who couldn't help but note the similarities between the ruthless tyrannosaurs and cunning velocoraptors of the Jurrasic and the city bankers and politicians we love to hate today?!?!?
So, London's roots stretch right back into the deep past, to when our Earth was formed in a furnace of fiery goo. But what with global warming and stuff, could we be seeing the return of such inhospitable conditions? And what about the dinosaurs? Will they once again roam up and down The Strand, breathing flames? Let's hope so!
For a start, you had better be wearing asbestos shoes, because London then was simply a semi-solid lake of magma! Getting about would be a problem, because as well as there being no taxis, no Underground, and no buses, London didn't even have any streets. If you did try and build a street, any tarmac you laid would instantly melt - and besides, there would be nowhere for the street to go to or come from.
Even breathing would be difficult. You might think that today's pollution is bad for your asthma, but 4.5 billion years ago, the air in London was a dense fog of sulphur, volcanic ash and poison. It's difficult to say what the main cause of death for Londoners in those days would have been - asphyxiation and horribly burned legs would probably have set in at about the same time.
This never happened.
Jump forwards half a billion years and things are slightly more hospitable in the capital. The ground is now solid rock, although it's stormy and there are still enough volcanoes to give you a nasty cough. But there, in front of you - perhaps on the very spot where Nelson's Column now stands - is a small, warm, soupy pool. Dip your finger in and lick it - there's water, certainly, salt - rather too much - diluted ash, and, crucially, the long-chain molecules we call proteins, such as thiamine, niacin and riboflavin. Suddenly, there's a huge flash and crash of lightning - you're thrown backwards by the blast, knock your head on a rock and pass out! Coming to, you see that the pool is glowing - the lightning must have hit it directly! Peering in, you can just see tiny, translucent little blobs swimming around. Even though they're not wearing bowler hats, could they be the very first Londoners? Created in this pool of electric gravy?
Scientists aren't 100% sure if that is the way London life began, but hop forward to just 200 million years ago and the picture is much clearer. Now, appearing in Trafalgar Square, you might find yourself snug in the cosy warmth of a pterodactyl's nest, or balancing precariously astride a mighty stegosaurus - for this is the age of the dinosaurs! Of course, the capital was very different from nowadays in many important respects, but you couldn't fail to find the sheer bustle of Jurassic London familiar. The huge, long-necked herbivores such as brontosauruses and brachiosauruses were as big as London buses, and indeed fossil footprints show that they moved slowly up and down what is now The Strand with much the same regularity as actual buses do today. Icthyosauruses and plesiasaurs filled the Thames just as boatmen and barges would in later years. And who couldn't help but note the similarities between the ruthless tyrannosaurs and cunning velocoraptors of the Jurrasic and the city bankers and politicians we love to hate today?!?!?
So, London's roots stretch right back into the deep past, to when our Earth was formed in a furnace of fiery goo. But what with global warming and stuff, could we be seeing the return of such inhospitable conditions? And what about the dinosaurs? Will they once again roam up and down The Strand, breathing flames? Let's hope so!
- Seating arrangements in each Tube carriage follow the traditional 'dinner party' pattern, i.e. boy, girl, boy, girl etc. If you enter a carriage and find you would make an odd number of either sex, move on to the next carriage. Children should be stacked in the junior wagon at the end of each train.
- If it's rush hour and you're pressed up tight against someone, it's only natural for people to feel self-conscious. So it's deemed polite to compliment your co-passengers on their shape and smell as they're squashed up against you, thereby putting them at their ease.
- Need to sneeze? Tube trains are now fitted with Dyson mucal nozzles under every seat - please use them.
- If you arrive on the platform just as your train is pulling out, raise your left hand and give three distinct blasts on your London Transport whistle (which you can pick up at any ticket office). The driver will reverse back into the station and allow you to board.
- Met someone's eye on the Tube? Uh-oh! London Transport Regulation 4341t means that you most both perform a forfeit before either of you can leave the train. Popular forfeits include: reciting all stations that begin with 'C'; reading an Oyster card with the power of mind alone; licking a copy of last Monday's Metro. Forfeits must be completed to the satisfaction of the driver or the driver's second.
- When travelling on the sections of the Tube that aren't actually underground, it's considered good manners to close your eyes and pretend.
- Remember: never, ever, say "the Circle line"out loud. If you must speak of it, use the term "Mary's hoop".(Photo: Paul Bence, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0)
1. Cursed by mummies (201)
2. Strangled by mummies (38)
3. Stabbed by mummies (25)
4. Fingers caught in Balawat Gates (21)
5. Driven terminally insane decoding Rosetta Stone by candlelight (19)
6. Fried in rudimentary electric chair by rare Texan mummies* (10)
7. Fatal sarcophagus curiosity (8)
8. Kicked to death by Madame Tussaud's Malevolent Waxwork Away Team (4)
9. Suicide following guilty contemplation of true ownership of Elgin Marbles (3)
10. Choked on Sutton Hoo sandals (1)
*During 1985's 'Mysteries of Dallas' exhibition
(Source image: bluelineswinger, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0)
Busby mites (minisculum militaris)
These endearingly tiny insects make their home in the warm, cosy environs of the Grenadier Guards' distinctive Busby hats. Far from being a pest, these little creatures are much loved by their soldier hosts and there is even a Royal Society dedicated to their protection.
Number of legs: Too many to count!
Appearance: A sort of silvery, microscopic centipede with a face a bit like an elk. An elk with compound eyes.
Habitat: Busby hats of the Grenadier Guards, The Vatican.
Diet: Bits of moth, peanuts (given to them as treats by the Grenadier Guards).
Social grouping: Busby mites live in a highly stratified society. The status of an individual mite increases with its proximity to the base of the Busby, where the heat of the host's head provides warmth. Busby mites defend these higher-status territories ferociously, locking antlers (actually stiffened antennae) to fight. These contests can be so violent that occasionally a Busby mite is thrown clear of the Busby and into a soldier's tea.
Reproduction: The mating ritual of the Busby mite is unusual: it depends on a symbiotic relationship with the Grenadier Guards and their famous marching music. To attract a mate, the male Busby mite hums along to the tune of the marching band. This tiny sound - only five or six nanodecibels loud and produced by a row of mouths along the male's thorax, is nonetheless audible to the female Busby mite's keen ears. She will try and choose a mate whose humming harmonises most closely with, say, 'Parade of the Wooden Soliders'. The height of the Busby mite mating season coincides with the Trooping of the Colour, after which the Grenadier Guards each clean about seven pints of congealing Busby mite gametes from the matted fur of their Busbies.
Relationship with man: Very good. As we've seen, the Busby mites depend on the music of the marching band in their mating rituals, and in turn the Grenadier Guards like to know that the little insects are up there in their hats so they don't get lonely when guarding the Crown Jewels in the dark.
Useful byproducts: Busby mite legs can be used as a substitute for velcro.
Threats: dry cleaning, republicanism.
These endearingly tiny insects make their home in the warm, cosy environs of the Grenadier Guards' distinctive Busby hats. Far from being a pest, these little creatures are much loved by their soldier hosts and there is even a Royal Society dedicated to their protection.Number of legs: Too many to count!
Appearance: A sort of silvery, microscopic centipede with a face a bit like an elk. An elk with compound eyes.
Habitat: Busby hats of the Grenadier Guards, The Vatican.
Diet: Bits of moth, peanuts (given to them as treats by the Grenadier Guards).
Social grouping: Busby mites live in a highly stratified society. The status of an individual mite increases with its proximity to the base of the Busby, where the heat of the host's head provides warmth. Busby mites defend these higher-status territories ferociously, locking antlers (actually stiffened antennae) to fight. These contests can be so violent that occasionally a Busby mite is thrown clear of the Busby and into a soldier's tea.
Reproduction: The mating ritual of the Busby mite is unusual: it depends on a symbiotic relationship with the Grenadier Guards and their famous marching music. To attract a mate, the male Busby mite hums along to the tune of the marching band. This tiny sound - only five or six nanodecibels loud and produced by a row of mouths along the male's thorax, is nonetheless audible to the female Busby mite's keen ears. She will try and choose a mate whose humming harmonises most closely with, say, 'Parade of the Wooden Soliders'. The height of the Busby mite mating season coincides with the Trooping of the Colour, after which the Grenadier Guards each clean about seven pints of congealing Busby mite gametes from the matted fur of their Busbies.
Relationship with man: Very good. As we've seen, the Busby mites depend on the music of the marching band in their mating rituals, and in turn the Grenadier Guards like to know that the little insects are up there in their hats so they don't get lonely when guarding the Crown Jewels in the dark.
Useful byproducts: Busby mite legs can be used as a substitute for velcro.
Threats: dry cleaning, republicanism.
If Nelson's Column were just 7,028,128 times taller, the famous stone admiral would bang his head on the Moon every 27.5 days. That's when our satellite is at its closest, or perigee.
The supply of laboratory-grade sulphuric acid for the nation's school science lessons has to be kept somewhere, and that somewhere is this reservoir in East Finchley. The previous storage facility, a hospital swimming pool, proved unsafe and so in 1998 the Government decided that Finchley's artificial lead-lined lake, unused since the war, was the perfect successor.
Controversial at first, the half-mile wide expanse of H2SO4, surrounded by acres of blighted wasteland, has become a popular destination for a relaxing day out - a place where all the family can don breathing apparatus and watch the ducks dissolve. It's also handy for murderers, or anyone with evidence to destroy.
Controversial at first, the half-mile wide expanse of H2SO4, surrounded by acres of blighted wasteland, has become a popular destination for a relaxing day out - a place where all the family can don breathing apparatus and watch the ducks dissolve. It's also handy for murderers, or anyone with evidence to destroy.
(Source image: Kaptain Kobold/Alan, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0)
The famous rotating sign of New Scotland Yard spins faster the higher the crime rate. The ultimate aim of the Metropolitan Police is to get the sign to stop - or better still, spin backwards, allowing the force to disband and ushering in an age of benign anarchy.
(Photo: Ian Kershaw, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0)
(Photo: Ian Kershaw, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0)
"Stupid London is a towering, scholarly and comprehensive guide to the history, people and geometry of England's biggest capital city. It would be the perfect companion for any visitor to or student of London, if only it weren't made of lies."
The Authoritative Ghost of Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, former Roman Mayor of Londinium
Questions you won't find answered in Stupid London:
Where can I see some portraits of famous kings?
What colour is my local bus?
Who made Dickens' hats?
Questions you might find answered in Stupid London:
Where can I see some portraits of famous cereal mascots?
What is my local bus called, and when is his birthday?
Who ate Dickens' brain?
(Source image: Alex Morrice, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0)
The Authoritative Ghost of Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, former Roman Mayor of Londinium
Questions you won't find answered in Stupid London:
Where can I see some portraits of famous kings?
What colour is my local bus?
Who made Dickens' hats?
Questions you might find answered in Stupid London:
Where can I see some portraits of famous cereal mascots?
What is my local bus called, and when is his birthday?
Who ate Dickens' brain?
(Source image: Alex Morrice, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0)
