The Blurb: February 2009

This is not a circular ... honest.

Friday 27 February 2009  1.03 pm

One day, many letters.  Today my post was very exciting indeed, because I got three fabulous birthday cards!

As well as the colourful birthday cards, however, there were three identical letters, each proclaiming on its envelope, "This is not a circular".

Actually, they really weren't circulars.  They were my bank telling me three times that my card had officially been labelled as dodgy because I had attempted to spend an uncomfortably large sum of money on the wrong side of the pond.  In fact, it was true.  I had attempted to send, under cover of the Internet, the sum of just under £300 to a religiously affiliated firm of obvious ill repute named "Softouch Developments, Inc", purveyors of (excellent) song projection software for churches.  Maybe VISA has a long-standing issue with religious song projection extremists, or possibly it's just a problem with the apparent oxymoron in the title of the software itself.  EasyWorship.
 
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Lost at Mornington Crescent

Friday 20 February 2009  7.52 pm

You know the game Mornington Crescent?  Until today, I knew of it but didn't know what it was.  So after visiting the famed station itself this afternoon, I did some research.  It's brilliant!  What a wonderful game.  I won't bore you with all the rules right now, but suffice to say I'm going to love playing this one on its very own Facebook app.

For me, today's return to Mornington Crescent was not my first brush with this station.  To discover that, we have to travel back to the years of my youth, before the turn of the century.  Our church youth group from Bath were having a lovely little day trip to London, and we had just completed our tour of Camden Town.  Heading into the packed Tube station, I jumped into the first train I saw, believing that the rest of the group would follow.  They didn't.

Unfazed, our sensible youth leader mouthed through the window that I should go one stop and wait there for them to catch up.  So I went one stop and disembarked at Mornington Crescent.  The rest of the youth group went one stop - on the other Northern Line branch - and disembarked at Euston.

Realising my mistake, I boarded the next train and went one stop further to Euston.  Realising their mistake, the youth group boarded the next train back to Mornington Crescent.

Thinking that we must be truly lost, I decided to proceed to our destination, Baker Street.  The youth group split up to look for me.  This was long before the days when we all had mobile phones.  Eventually, like the prodigal I am, I came to my senses, got on another train, and returned to Mornington Crescent, where I ran into the open arms of my youth leader.  I'm not sure who technically won the game - it depends what rules you are applying - but it was certainly an adventure.
 
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White London Day

Monday 2 February 2009  11.59 pm

I never thought I'd see this.  Fourteen centimetres of fresh, light, powder snow covered the ground when I got up early this morning.  Perfect for snowboarding, my housemate told me, and some, like Finn at Greenwich, were doing just that.  (I only met Finn today.  Snow gives you a certain licence to be friendly to strangers.)

Favourite moment from my morning's exploration?  It might be when the Tube train pulled into Balham Underground station with snow on its roof.  Maybe it was walking across London Bridge in the morning rush hour with hardly a car about.  Possibly it was meeting the one guy with a shovel whose mission was single-handedly to clear the Millennium Bridge from six inches of white stuff.  It could have been walking between the snow-covered trees on the South Bank, or ice-skating down Greenwich Park's main hill in walking boots.  Listening to the announcer at Westminster station audibly tire of reeling off the huge list of line closures.  Or building a snowman right outside Ascension with the staff team.  I don't know.

All I do know is that I will remember 2 February 2009 for years, as the first time in my life that snow in any quantity actually came to my home town.  Love it.
 
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