4269 days ago
And so I am back in Airstrip One. After eight weeks without wearing a seat belt, smoking where I wanted and not being photographed by a camera everywhere I went, Big Brother was on the case pretty quickly. As I wandered onto the station I prepared to climb stairs to the platform. Blue arrows marked the side to go up, red circles marked the other channel. Is there a bye-law on this? What happens if I dashed up the red button side? Was there a man at the top preparing to send me down again? How did we cope before we were told which side of the banister we had to walk?
There was a sign telling me to hold the banister as I climbed the stairs. Another sign telling me not to use my mobile (not that I have one) as I ascended or descended. And a third sign warning me that the stairs might be slippery if it is raining. No shit. Give Network Rail a Nobel Prize for Physics for working that one out. What is the penalty for walking up the wrong side holding a mobile and not the banister?
