Welcome to Shit London:

These are photographs of the unintentional human comedy that surround us in the city. It's the flotsam and jetsam of city life, the overlooked minutiae, the tragic, the grotesque and the basest of base. It's the adapted posters, the dirty joke on the back of a van, the mispelt (sic?) signs, the glory hole in the public loo, that weird shop down the end of your road and the knob graffiti strategically placed for maximum effect.

Grab your camera. Notice your city and laugh at it.

[Via LinkMachineGo!]

Joe Moran on a modern version of the dawn chorus:

My favourite character in Craig Taylor's Londoners, his oral history of the capital which I've just finished reading, is Craig Clark, a clerk at Transport for London's Lost Property Office near Baker Street underground station. There is a lovely opening to this section which illustrates the unconscious synchronisation of millions of urban lives: 'I arrive at Transport for London's Lost Property Office near Baker Street station when it is loudest, between eight and nine in the morning – when all the lost mobile phones, programmed by absent owners and sealed in their individual brown envelopes, begin to chirp and ring and speak in novelty voices and vibrate and arpeggio on the racks where they are shelved, each with its own designated number. The chorus gets louder every quarter of an hour, until a last burst of sound at nine o'clock, and then most alarms go quiet for the rest of the day.'

Boris Johnson on meeting the Pope:

There we were on the tarmac at Heathrow as the papal jet prepared to land. The cameras were trained on the night sky. The red carpet was rolled out. The charming Foreign Office people tried for the umpteenth time to remind me where to stand – and all the while my mind was whirring with a single question. It is a problem that goes to the heart of the relationship between church and state. It is a question that will be studied by future generations of students of theology and patristics, because the answer we give – and the answer you give, off the top of your head – is an indication of the balance currently existing between the privileges of spiritual leaders and the egalitarian demands of our temporal world.

Never mind abortion or paedophile priests. As Pope Force One taxied towards us, there was one issue still revolving in my mind at the speed of a Rolls-Royce fan jet. Should the Popemobile be liable for the congestion charge and, if not, why not? Should the Holy Father have to pay £8 to drive through Westminster, like everyone else? Or should that fee be waived, in recognition of his status as the vicar of Christ on Earth? It is a tough one, and I am sure there will be clear-sighted readers of this paper who will take opposite views; and it is that very division of instinct that is so revealing about the psychology of this country. [...] ¹

[Via The Browser]

1. The answer, for anyone who doesn't want to follow the link, is that the charge only applies to "normal" road use: if the road is closed off so the Pontiff can wave to a sea of admirers then that's not "normal" road use and would attract no congestion charge. How much time the Pope's driver spent in traffic is another question entirely. Not very much, I'd guess. ↩

The best computer error code I've seen in a while, courtesy of this list of Oyster Card Codes:

82 Illogical use of ticket

[Via Kevan Davis]