signs (general)

in this modern world of daily threats, many people have taken to finding other ways of travelling which don’t require you to be squashed in to a little metal tube in a tunnel way under the city.
of course, it’s still one of the most efficient ways of getting round town so people still use it.
it’s against this climate of fear that i was interested to see a sign which reminded people of the possibility of death on the underground (if they open the door which links carriages)
Death is something we don’t generally talk about but it’s worth considering as there’s a 100% chance it will happen to you (and me). But i’d still rather not have a sign with death written on it whilst travelling !

my monday morning meetings at work now happen on a wednesday morning. so on a wednesday i get the tube right the way across, instead of walking halfway across, london.
i don’t really like the tube as i generally have less eventful journeys that way (usually because i just read a book). But this morning i saw this great sign on my Hammersmith line train.
It’s obviously a spoof one, but very good. It was so realistic i did a double take before i realised it was not a normal sign.

for more tube related strangeness (and signs) check out Going Underground’s Blog, in particular this

two signs of interest today
don’t drop stuff on people’s heads with a forklift truck:

don’t carry squares over semi-circles:

cross ? i’d be livid if it were me.
i asked the poor road what had come over it. “3 cars and a lorry” was the predictable cracker-joke answer.

the sign next to the swan says pedestrians only. who do swans think they are ? i was thinking of doing a citizen’s arrest, but wasn’t sure whether this was applicable to her majesy’s swans. and i didn’t fancy my chances of survival.
there’s nothing worse for young kids than seeing their father mauled by a swan. so this time i let it go. next time i’ll take some kind of electrical device.
i seem to have real issues with swans.

here is a sign of someone getting clonked by a stick. the photo didn’t come out very well, so i will revisit it another day. this will do you for now.

this is a sign outside a dentist near the old bailey. the old bailey is where your worst criminals in the UK get their trials. a convenient location for any dentist

someone has chalked the words Arthur Beresford Pike 1855 – 1965 on the street outside the Middlesex Hospital near my office.

A quick google for such a fellow reveals he was an architect.
very strange someone would just randomly chalk his name on the street, and get the dates of birth/death wrong.
i love mysteries

this is a mysterious sign at Embankment Tube station (for those who want to pay homage to this sign, it’s near the steps which lead down to the Bakerloo Line if you arrive on the Circle/District Line travelling in an eastward direction).

there are two sorts of sign writers – those who can finish their sentences and those who

no ft, no comment (thanks grahame !)
here are some more:

this last one is quite interesting and may reveal the sad truth behind this inadequate sign writing.
perhaps the sign writer wrote “look right” but then realised he’d stuffed up the word “right”. So he over did the word “right” which meant he didn’t have enough paint to do all the letters in the other sentences.
instead he ended up creating a sign which nearly says “look bright” which he obviously doesn’t. he “ooks stupid”.
my apologies yet again to purveyors of the english language. i know i’ve used “”s when i should have used ”s around my words.

allegedly is a weasel word which is used as an excuse to say something which is quite likely true.
probably is a weasel word which is used as an excuse to say something which is quite likely not true.
whenever i see probably on a sign i feel they should add what the probability actually is.
in this case it’s probably (less than 1% chance) that the best music in the world will be played there. unless they are talking about genres then it might be nearer 40%

Pedestrian Casualty Reduction Signal Timings Experiment

here is the sign coming back on the chain ferry. i used flash to get the photo as it was dark and for some reason the camera totally ignores the background !

don’t throw babies

poke this to make that happen

londoners love their little parks – a small amount of greenery amongst the otherwise grey streets.
however, this feeling is obviously not shared by everyone. in particular the plant activists. they are sick and tired of plants being treated like caged animals and want their plants liberated to roam free in the countryside.
of course these liberators don’t want to ruin the environment so have chosen to state their views on a piece of paper cellotaped to a sign at the entrance to the park.

(the views expressed here are not necessarily my own. i am prepared to believe that a plant, properly fed and watered, and sheltered from frost can have a perfectly happy life in an artificial environment)

this urinal had been ripped off the wall in heathrow. ‘welcome to england’ it should have said. but it didn’t. instead it said “do not use”. in case you were thinking of, say, using it.

plane toilets are interesting. the plane on the way back was a 767 (i think) so had toilets all over the place. my intial trip to the loos was a little unsuccessful when i opened a cupboard instead of the toilet door. they all look the same these days.
Anyways, no smoking in the toilets right. if you do they throw you off the plane. if you mess with the smoke alarms they fine you lots of $$$ (probably means American’s are more likely to mess with the smoke alarms than £££ UK people).

however, if you do smoke in the toilets (!) then don’t throw your fag ends in to the paper waste

and just to really confuse you, here is a nice ashtray !

You can also get some larger than life sanitary items:

And another mysterious sign about not taking stuff out of toilets or something:

or how about this (which i assume means don’t throw all your belongings down the toilet:

so many signs in such a small place