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What Traffic?
Written by Tati
Lolz ahoy. So apparently all those big scary ‘DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BRAVE THE STREETS OF LONDON DURING THE OLYMPICS’ messages, and those big, insensitive ‘As a compromise, you could try not travelling between 7 – 10 am and 4 – 7 pm in London’ messages (how would anyone get to work hmm?) worked a little too well and London has become a creepy ghost town. Ho ho ho.
As an olympic grumpus, I welcome this news with a merry chuckle (see above), although I have to admit that I feel a slight twinge of sadness. You see, I’m currently out of London, so heavy traffic and people-heaving streets don’t bother ME, and it seems a shame for the big city to miss an opportunity for mega-tourism under such circumstances. I was out and about in London yesterday though and I can confirm that my bus to Baker Street was almost completely empty, the streets had loads of olympics officials and barely any real pedestrians and even Primark looked pretty chill (from the outside, I didn’t dare go in, just in case. I once fainted in that branch and the manager was really mad because a crowd gathered and he didn’t want me to scare them). I walked home through the park, which was also pretty empty. Gorgeous day for it though, and I had a nice chat with a handsome army dude when I became too befuddled by the barriers everywhere and couldn’t figure out how to get out of the park again without any handy swarms of people traffic pointing me in the right direction. Now I think of it, all those roads I walked down the middle of because I thought they were closed, judging from the lack of cars using them, probably weren’t actually closed. Ho ho ho, there’s that chuckle again.
While I love that the Daily Mail are tying themselves in knots as usual, furious over the predicted congestion, then furious at the lack of congestion, then – just for the hell of it – printing a double page spread of ducklings in unlikely and humorous positions, the way our empty city will be affecting business makes me shed an imaginary tear for all the little people out there with grim expressions on their cafe-owning faces. Doesn’t mean this little person will be getting up from her desk and coming back though. I have bigger fish to fry (translate: my mother wants me here and I like to pick my battles).
Now while the Daily Mail have better pictures of empty roads/lonely streets/gambolling lambs, I’m going to link you to the Telegraph, because I have no fundamental problems with the Telegraph, but I’m SUPER MAD at the Mail generally and particularly right now, because yesterday I came across an article of theirs by inexplicable clusterduck of bigotry Melanie Phillips, banging on about the ‘gay agenda’ and how schools shouldn’t be pretending that gayism is normal etc. Man, the Daily Mail just has whole other levels of sucking in their back catalogue, I can’t believe their stuff actually gets printed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9425476/No-traffic-gridlock-for-first-day-of-Olympic-zil-lanes.html
I shall finish on a positive note, recounting the time I watched the olympic diving and it was kind of okay. That was Monday.