right, so there's that ticky box

[rm]

Despite my jokes about it, I really didn't expect Canary Wharf to be the Whoniverse-related place in the UK to fuck me up the most, but it just won the prize.

It just looks like a place where the end of the world would happen. But then again, maybe that's just because I once worked in (WTC) Tower 2, and these sorts of business plaza things are really all the same.

Comments

[firefly124.livejournal.com]

*shudder* I can see how it would have that effect, given that extra bit of background.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

I found it a bit creepy even before 9/11, but that was a) when the area was only half-constructed and weirdly half-abandoned and b)when the IRA was blowing things up on a fairly regular basis. Add in the twin towers and I can totally see it being creepy as heck, even with the improvements/signs of life added lately.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Actually, I saw Canary Wharf the day after it was blown up in 1996 and I've never been able to go near the place without a shudder ever since.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Oh jesus, I didn't know it had been. I'm MORE creeped out now.

In addition to the successful 1996 Canary Wharf bomb, the unsuccessful 1994 bomb...

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

It's also built on an area which was bombed flat in WWII: They found an unexploded Doodlebug in 2007

[meirion.livejournal.com]

Man, there is something wrong with my visual processing circuits tonight, as I just misread "Tube travellers to be scanned for bombs" as "Time travellers to be scanned for bombs" in that newspaper headline!

[bugeyedmonster.livejournal.com]

I just had a weird visual of Jack being in charge of that, and enjoying his work a little TOO much.

[bugeyedmonster.livejournal.com]

I mean the "Time Travellers being scanned for bombs" bit.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

I was wondering if you'd go.

And damn. How did I miss that you used to work in Tower 2?

[rm.livejournal.com]

I don't really talk about it, as I didn't work there when 9/11 happened. This was in the mid-90s. The last time I was there was Christmas Eve 2000, and a boy I had a crush on and never so much as kissed and used to wear this steampunk mechanical glove thing took me to Windows on the World for a swing dance party. Life out of order.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Life massively out of order. But damn.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I still have my ID cards from it somewhere. I find them every six months or so, think about scanning them in and then forget.

[malle-babbe.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read Grant Morrison's "The Invisibles"? The first big story arc has a character have a urban-visionquest-breakthrough moment on the roof of Canary Wharf.

Buildings like Canary Wharf and WTC have (or had) no human scale in their design. That, and they have no elements that look like they were made by actual flesh and blood people. I could totally see Cybermen liking it for those reasons...

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

I've always thought the Docklands have an apocalyptic feel, way pre-Who. I wrote about it when I was a teenager. I used to do nightwork for London Transport, fitting their bus trackers, and it was always three o'clock in the morning there and we would get so so lost (a lot of the developments were newer than our map) and wouldn't be able to get out. There's definitely a marked shift in tone there, you do feel like you're stepping out of the rest of London.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I once randomly met a llama in a park in Docklands.

The friends I was walking with seemed baffled at my surprise.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Ah, the urban llama. Such a nuisance, always getting in the bins.