My husband was surprised by quite a bit when we travelled by Underground in London the other day. Although he has a Nelson Mandela Memorial Freedom Pass, he seldom chooses to join us Morlocks down below. ‘Is this the work of a Chinaman?’ he asked, nodding towards a poster. ‘You mustn’t say “Chinaman”, dear,’ I said firmly.
The poster showed people with vertical slits for eyes and no noses. They stood hunched in an Underground carriage, dressed in T-shirts, as if in a scene from some dystopian film like Idiocracy. Above the image, words were arranged in lines: ‘We really don’t mean to chide / But try to move along inside, / So fellow travellers won’t have to face / An invasion of their personal space.’
The arrangement indicated verse, but the lines didn’t begin to scan. Nor did scraps of verse on other posters in the series — on feeling sick, on moving along the platform and on free newspapers blocking the doors.
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