Terror Threat

Explosion, originally uploaded by Jonny Hanlon.

Eve and I were in Gosport, just across the ater from Portsmouth, The Solent and the Isle of Wight.

Gosport was a funny old town, very white, very middle class and very middle aged. Everyone everywhere was stopping for a chat, which is lovely and friendly, except that it makes for a very very slow ride into town on the bus as the driver must chat at length with each passenger as they get on, and again as they get off the bus.

There were very long lines in the supermarket, because the checkout operators forgot to scan the food because they were busy chatting.

The buskers on the street had empty guitar cases, not even a few pennies, because they were chatting all day and forgot to play their instruments for their supper.

And the taxi driver who took us from the station was chatting so much that he forgot what he was chatting about three times, and had to start again, which was a little painful. We got him to take us to the wedding venue later on, just for fun. He chatted about the same stuff on the second taxi ride, too.

The most interesting feature of Gosport, however, was not the friendly chatty locals, but the informative street signs. In this photo you can see that the local council is so efficient that it manages to erect a street sign informing the public of terrorist activity before the activity has even finished. Yes, that’s me, watching civilians being hurled across the street by car bombs. If it wasn’t for the sign, I probably would not have noticed the huge blast down the road.

As for the locals, they were just sort of lingering on the street, chatting as if nothing had happened…

Jonny

~ by jonnyhanlon on July 16, 2008.