I snuck in when they weren't looking.  

The ugly face of Parkin smuggling.

The Call of the Wendigo wrote:

I remember, as a kid, walking across the street and into Derbyshire and being very excited that I'd crossed over into another country.

I only literally have to walk across the road to be another country.

Well, if Derbyshire can be considered another country then Camden can also.

Typical that the Canadian side has a pavement, and the US one doesn't. The only Americans who walk are New Yorkers.

Nightjar wrote:

Well, if Derbyshire can be considered another country then Camden can also.

I was leaving The Danelaw and entering Saxonia.

Or something.

I was leaving an official Royal realm (home to The Beatles and the Londis and the ghost of Our Gracious Queen) to one that is basically a smouldering, toxic, post-apocalyptic hellhole inhabited by scum on Lime scooters and discarded Lime scooters sprawled across the pavement and propped up against pensioners.

The only sort of public b*gs where you walk around bare feet.

Butterfield wrote:

Interesting that if you turn the picture round you see that the showers are partitioned. In my day it was just one free-for-all long line of open showers, where men would drop their tr*nks and one wouldn't know where to look, while I stood there showering beclothed.

Shower cubicles at swimming baths are one modern thing I can get on board with.

Butterfield wrote:

Butterfield wrote:

Interesting that if you turn the picture round you see that the showers are partitioned. In my day it was just one free-for-all long line of open showers, where men would drop their tr*nks and one wouldn't know where to look, while I stood there showering beclothed.

Shower cubicles at swimming baths are one modern thing I can get on board with.

Goodness, that sounds exciting. A department store of dick.

There is nothing attractive about that shower room. Grim. I’d feel dirty if I had to wash in there.

Oh, you can see around the facility. Very dated. Oddly, next to the child’s pool is a small room that looks like the ones in hospitals where people receiving bad news are taken. Four padded chairs lined up. ‘How are they doctor?’, ‘Well, shall we go through to our family room where you’ll be more comfortable and we can talk in private’.

My god, I’ve just seen the disabled toilet. It’s a monument to rust.

cosmictanya wrote:

Goodness, that sounds exciting. A department store of dick.

When you're about 8 and the gentleman in the shower next to you who has removed his undergarments is about 75 it's not quite so enticing.

cosmictanya wrote:

There is nothing attractive about that shower room. Grim. I’d feel dirty if I had to wash in there.

Yes, I had a brief look round too. It reminds me of some of the leisure centres (we had about 4 to choose from within about 5 miles of us; two have since been demolished) we used to go to in the 80s. I can feel the verrucas on my feet just looking at that floor, and see the used plasters floating in little pools of water.

Oh goodness, yes.

Oh, it's that Wetherby. When I get to there on the A1(M) I know that I am about to enter the north beyond the north.

There's a service area at one of the junctions that on hot days is a seething pit of bad temper and beeping horns.

Butterfield wrote:

cosmictanya wrote:

Goodness, that sounds exciting. A department store of dick.

When you're about 8 and the gentleman in the shower next to you who has removed his undergarments is about 75 it's not quite so enticing.

Yes, when you put it like that.

Butterfield wrote:

Oh goodness, yes.

Exactly. For the last couple of weeks, being trapped in the Titan has been the worst thing I could think of. That’s now been replaced by the thought of getting stuck in the disabled toilet at Wetherby Leisure Centre.