Alarm Bells

As I was waiting on the platform at Chalk Farm this morning the alarm went off, a typical old-fashioned fire-alarm/alarm clock type din. This happens about once a week when the lift cocks up, and normally no one bats an eyelid.

There was a definite moment when almost everyone on the fairly crowded platform (yes, those few days of guaranteed free seats on the Northern line seem lost) turned towards the end, where the way out is, a moment of collective dissonance as everyone thought "is that calling Time for me?"

.. and a collective shrug, as we turned back to look at the board, which had been swearing blind there was a Charing X train in a minute for some five minutes. That caused no one any surprise or concern at all, of course.

The bell was still ringing as the train pulled out of the platform.

***

Once again, that pre-holiday realisation of approaching litigation and completion deadlines is making a glorious July my busiest month of the year. What I really want to be doing is sprawling on a bench outside a Primrose Hill pub with a gin and tonic in my hand, or, still better, sitting in a beach bar on Syros drinking a frappé with nothing more onerous to decide than which book to take to the beach today. Instead I have to write three opinions in two days. Heigh ho.

Monkey Dust

Prompted by a reminder on a board I read...

Monkey Dust: "[...] Series three sees the return of old favourites such as Ivan Dobsky, the falsely-imprisoned mass-murderer; Omar, Abdul and Shafiq, the would-be terrorists from West Bromwich; [...]"

If I remember rightly (I don't actually like Monkey Dust that much), the repetitive gag is something along the lines of their being regularly diverted from their assassination and bombing plans by wanting to catch the end of Coronation Street, and similar trivia...

Not this time...

Wow

They gave Ebbers 25 years? Bloody hell. For a 63 year old with a heart condition, that's not that far from the life sentence the prosecution wanted.

Good. Serious fraud is, you know, serious.