You’re an occasional visitor to London and you’ve finally got smart. You have an Oyster card to pay for tube and bus journeys. Actually you probably have multiple Oyster cards accumulated when you have forgotten to take one with you.
So you’re going to be jolly cross when I tell you that you don’t need them any longer. If you don’t need a season ticket, you can pay with a contactless debit card and TfL (Transport for London) now prefer you to do this and you can no longer pay with cash on buses. I have an Oyster card charged-up to lend to visitors which is now redundant. Something else that is redundant are ticket inspectors, at least I have not seen any. TfL have also closed all ticket offices in stations. However, they are spending money on upgrading the infrastructure and on new trains. Have you seen the walk-through, air-conditioned new trains on the Circle, District and Metropolitan lines? There are now 150 of them in service with another 50 or so on order: no news on the introduction of Night Tubes though.
The other smart innovation is for street parking. In the old days you fed a meter now you pay by ‘phone. In my street I give visitors a smart parking card which I activate by ‘phone and they display on the dashboard.
But the real Get Smart is a 1960s American comedy spy series. Maxwell Smart (Agent 86) and the never-named but pictured above, Agent 99, battle against evil KAOS with the help of shoe ‘phones, a bullet-proof invisible wall, a camera hidden in a bowl of soup, etc. All this was dreamt up by the great Mel Brooks. The increasing use of humour in our home-grown The Avengers was, I suspect, influenced by Get Smart.
I realise that I am paranoid but I have an extreme dislike of the thought of TfL being able to track my movements. Too much like big brother for me. I still use an unregistered Oyster card paid for by cash.
I think Oyster card surveillance is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the visibility of your electronic footprint.
On a different subject, Gifford Combs has told me how agents 86 and 99 were allocated those numbers: their exam results.
Dear Christopher,
Call me an old fool but I can’t see anything about you, your yourself, personally, etc, on the site. Couldn’t we be vouchsafed a CV or a short bio?
Just asking, since I like the site and its serendipitous notes and connections. Thanks for it.
Richard D North
Dear Richard,
First thank you for signing up to the blog. Secondly I’m afraid you will have to read some of the back posts to find out more about me – there are four (?) photographs, the most recent from 2015. I expect there will be more posts with biographical content in the future.
Christopher