Archive for October, 2009

In my previous post I mentioned my passport which reminded me that just after my birthday in 2001 I had a passport-related nightmare which could have affected the way my fellow Londoners experience Tube travel…

I was due to go on holiday (to the Maldives) a couple of days later and while gathering up stuff for my suitcase I got my passport out of the filing cabinet and did the obligatory check of the photo page.  As I looked at it I thought ‘hell I look young’ and then I noticed with horror that it had expired months beforehand – which is why I looked ten years younger!

It was a Saturday morning (and in the days that I would even have considered having Internet access at home) so I dashed down to the post office in the centre of Bath (where I lived at the time) to find out what to do and get my photo taken in one of those booths.  I paid three times to get a set that I liked.  This in the was pre-digital days when you got the picture of yourself when the flash went (there was no option to ‘try again’) and it used to take five minutes for the photo to spit out (and then you had to be careful not to smudge it). 

I picked up the leaflet on ‘getting you passport really quickly’ and read up on how I was going to get a passport by Tuesday at 6 am when I had to be at the airport.  I discovered that the only way this was going to happen was to visit a passport office.  I worked in London (I was daft and did a three hour commute each way in those days) and therefore at the time the main passport office in London was on a street called Petty France.

So first thing on Monday I went to the passport office, with my preferred photo in hand, and got in the queue.  Annoyingly my preferred photo didn’t end up in my passport as the lady said that it didn’t look sufficiently like me! So I had to have another photo taken in the passport office official booth.  Anyway, two hours later I left with my shiny new maroon official document and while delighted that I was ‘job done’ on the passport front (and was actually going to be going on holiday after all) was feeling a bit stressed as I had lost a big chunk of my ‘day of work before you go on a two week holiday’ day. 

So I dashed to the Tube to get to the office and as I walked into the station I registered that there was an unfamiliar yet not unpleasant smell in the air.  I was then accosted by the very lovely Jane Elliot, BBC Online reporter, who was doing a piece on how London Underground were piloting the fragrancing of platforms (supposedly to sooth commuter stress).  So I answered her questions, let her take a photo of me, went on my hot under the collared way and thought no more of it.

Anyhow I went on my holiday, which was amazing – The Maldives totally rock (I spent nearly all the time scuba diving and snorkeling) and on my return to the office there was an email from Dad in my inbox.  He had forwarded on an email from a friend of his which was along the lines of ‘I think there is a comment from your son in this article’.  Dad had just written: ‘Typical :+)’ with a link to the article.

So here is the link to my ‘debut’ on the BBC (quote and photo towards the end of the piece) with my ‘insightful’ soundbite being: ‘It smells like flowers or pollen, but I think the best idea to get rid of the smells is to deodorize the people instead’.

Oh bless me and yes rather as father had denoted: ’Typical :+)’.

Now I am obsessed with the way things smell – I love the latest innovation in air fragrance technology.  I am the person that buys these heavily advertised advances in smell loveliness (Chad hates them). I am the air freshener marketers dream – I’ve been on the whole journey from gels, to sprays, to three-in-one, through mini fans and infra red, blar, blar, blar – you name it, I’ve bought it.  Currently I am obsessed with the over-priced sticks in the glass jar of perfume ‘home fragrance solution’. So I have to feel a bit guilty.. 

The Tube still smells revolting (the pilot clearly remained just that) and I cannot help but wonder if I had been a bit more positive, rather than facetious, in my soundbite then maybe my own nose, and the millions of other Londoners noses, wouldn’t be so assaulted on our ventures into the underground world.