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Lastcard: Mornington Crescent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mornin...rescent_(game)
Reading about the above and seeing the pic of the underground sign etc., reminded me of travelling in the tube - and a story. All true as best I can recollect. So I was with my friends wife and we were buzzing about London, shopping I think along with seeing a few sights, anyway we boarded the underground, built around the same time as the Egyptian Pyramids. The station name escapes me but it was along the Piccadilly Line. And as usual, the recorded mellifluous voice of an English woman floated though the air announcing, “You are on the Piccadilly line to Cock Fosters” - “You are on the Piccadilly line to Cock Fosters”. After you hear these announcements for the hundredth time it finally dawns on you why the Brits lost their Empire.
Anyway to continue, there was a gentleman sitting across from us. My sharp racist mind instantly profiled this subversive foreigner as Indian. It was his darker complexion, the beard and facial features, the turban on his head, his odd looking clothes, and the vast solemn and placid dignity projecting from his form that marked him as someone that needed watching. Then another announcement floated like mist through the tiny compartment, it was mostly incomprehensible. The tube was crowded and chatty Brits were harping about this and that in their mangled English. My companion said, “I didn’t understand that, I hope it wasn’t important.” Here my natural cynicism reached a peak and I announced quite loudly, “It doesn’t matter; most everything people say is not worth listening to anyway so it is just as well we didn’t hear it.” The Indian gentlemen heard my remark. His eyes glinted and glowed warmly, and the slightest hint of a wry smile shown through his whiskers. He stirred ever so slightly, almost as if he wished to comment himself. But he did not. He stared at me for a polite time and then all was as usual amongst strangers travelling together in a tiny tube whizzing under the earth. Perhaps he was not a bad fellow after all. I hope I made his day - Which was probably going to be the same as all his other days.
To cap this story, after debarking from the tube, we took a double-decker bus to some god awful shopping pavilion; sauntered thought Hyde Park and saw the Prince Albert Memorial by serendipity; and walked back to the hotel. We had tea which cost about eight pounds sterling; being robbed in London is as natural as the wind blowing through the trees. Then we took a taxi to Paddington Station for our exit from London Town. So why are all the taxis black and have the look of a compact hearse? Is this by design or some strange, twisted government decree? Is taxi taking suppose to be so serious and solemn an act?
Oh, one last thing. My friend’s wife (Lisa) is Portuguese. When on the double-decker bus we naturally sat up top in front by the window. I noted, right away, that in the seat opposite were two gorgeous ladies dressed very elegantly. I fell in love instantly with both, and was fantasizing of a ménage a trois. The bus stopped, as expected, by Harrods. The two beauties exited, much to my disappointment. Lisa, a too intelligent and dangerous woman, said the two ladies were Brazilian, she had overheard them conversing.
This also brings to mind that Lisa, when we were at Paddington Station, elbowed me and pointed out a couple with a child and hissed, “Look at those Russians., You can always tell them by how they look and dress.” I noted a very well dressed, tall man and a too well dressed and flashy woman. She had spiked heels, black with scrimshaw gold trim about the soles and heels and a dress that screamed; I have more money than Donald Trump. The little cherub of a child rambled by her side. Cool I thought, I got to rub elbows, so to speak, with a Russian Oligarch family.
And that I think is a fitting end to my screed for today. I’ve a mind to include it in my memoirs; that will be titled:
Why Don’t you Shoot Yourself so I Don’t Have To. And that is copyrighted by Zeno Enterprises, Ltd.
Last edited by Zeno; 08-21-2015 at 12:36 PM.