2005-05-20 - 5:29 p.m.

The other day, I saw this on the pavement of my street.

Who just drops a map in the street? A tube map or a pocket thing of London, maybe. But an actual map of Britain? Let me give you an idea of scale.

Look at the size of the bastard! I had to stand on a tree-stump to get that photo purely for your scale-appreciating pleasure. But I mean, how can you not notice that that's slipped out of your grasp? The typeface on the map suggested it was printed in the 50's or 60's, so perhaps it was on someone's study wall for years, until its outdated administative boundaries provoked its owner into tearing it down and casting it out of the house in a fit of topographical pique.

Curse you, Westmorland! Why did you betray me and let yourself be subsumed into Cumbria in 1974? I might have expected it of that whore Cumberland - but you?!

Probably not though. Less probably still, the map was brought to the country by a pair of hopelessly ill-prepared travellers who couldn't get hold of a travel book and have been touring Britain with nothing to guide them other than a fifty-year-old giant one-sided map. Which they've not been allowed to take onto trains. Finally, they reached south west London and thought frankly, they'd rather wing it.

Screw you, giant map from the 50's!

That's what they might have said. But in their own language.

I had to catch the train, so I couldn't rescue the map and take it home. When I got back later in the day, it had gone.

Here's a tube station snack machine.

Empty? Look again, friend.

Two Crunchies. There's one behind that one.

Not exactly chocolate nirvana, is it? Imagine rushing up the platform steps in anticipation of an indulgent chocolate treat on your homeward commute. Mm, I might have some Maltesers. Ooh, wait, I haven't had a Dime bar for years. No, I know, a Double Decker. Yeah! I can eat the top fudgey layer first then nibble the biscuit base. Get in.

Ah.

I'll have the Crunchie then.

Do you think an obscure London Transport byelaw dictates that the machine can't be refilled until every last bar has been dispensed? In a "you're not getting any dessert 'til you finish your broccoli" stylee? What other explanation is there? Hardly anyone buys chocolate out of those machines, so it's not like there's been a sudden rush that's taken the catering dept by surprise.

No-one's going to buy those last two Crunchies, are they? Well, certainly not the very last one. They'll assume there's something wrong with it. Just because it's the last one. Even though unlike items on a supermarket shelf, it's not the last one because other people have chosen to leave it, but simply because it's at the back of the twirly rack. If I was the London Transport Catering Officer, detail: Snack Machine, I'd make the last Crunchie a solid gold one, and snigger to myself as people's irrational prejudices stopped denied them a fortune for a 40p outlay. I bet that's what they've done.

Cor...Sorry, I'm just nipping out to the tube station for a Crunchie.

*Bandname still available

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