UK Trip Photos, Vol. II

Here are some more pics from my recent trip to London.

This first one I call "Bad Parent". Here in Nova Scotia, smoking isn't outlawed (what you do in the privacy of your own home, or in the great outdoors, is your own business), but try lighting up in a public place (like, say, an airport), and you're asking for trouble, and a ticket. Proper thing, in my view. The British, alas, take a more "libertarian" view of smoking, to the point that the smoking section in bars and pubs is indistinguishable from the non-smoking section, and thus pretty much useless (here, our smoking rooms - or pre-cancer wards, as I call them - are well segregated and totally, hermetically, sealed). Anyway, the photo above is a shot from Gatwick International, up by the food court, of the "smoking enclosure", where addicts (sorry, smokers) wander in to light up one for the road (or several - some never seemed to leave). The little girl you see waiting just outside was told to hang there while Dad had three cigarettes inside (by the way, in case you're wondering, she was not with that lady and the baby to her immediate left - she was alone there). Boo, hiss!

I love train stations - always have, always will. For some reason, they seem much more civilized than airports, which might have something to do with the fact that I don't have to take half my clothes off to get on one, and I don't have to wait forever to retrieve my luggage. Further, a trip on a plane just seems to me to be a means of getting from Point A to Point B, but a trip on a train, well, that seems like an adventure. On a train, you're not soaring above the Earth like some sort of god - you're down here, passing by the countryside, stopping in at new places on your way (more places on some trains than others). It's similar to the difference between Interstates and older highways, or, in superhero terms, Batman (trains) and Superman (planes). Don't get me wrong - I like airplanes and Interstates (and Superman), especially for longer trips like those we have here in North America, because they're convenient. But sometimes it's nice to take the long way around, so to speak, and to see more of the real world. Anyway, this is a shot of Liverpool Street station, where we caught a train up to Woodbridge, near Rendlesham. It was the nicest of the big London stations I was in.

Paul Kimball