Come on back to the war

[devi]

You know those bits in films where the story skips forward and there's an establishing shot showing something that indicates what time we're in now? Newspaper headlines. A pop song. Colour schemes. Jeans suddenly baggy or skinny, hair suddenly fouffy or 'fro. I had a moment like that this summer on the tube at West Ham. In front of me there was a row of people reading newspapers with the Olympics all over them, and some dubstep went 'wommmmm' on my headphones just as we passed a row of wind turbines. Look, it's 2012!

I am posting to LJ from underground, on my commute, with my tiny pocket computer. This morning feels a bit like that. I am wearing glasses. My jeans are indeed skinny. I am listening to an old ultraruby mix (British Summertime). My hair is the same as it ever was. Hello world! It's been a weird couple of years. How were yours?

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Comments

[shermarama]

Mostly in the last couple of years I have moved to the Netherlands and started working as an actual proper engineer, which is great, but the Netherlands tends to defeat the time-establishing shots. The pop songs on the radio are either from the 80s (so much Phil Collins) or sound like it, while the rows of wind turbines are years old already. Last week the new passenger tunnel opened in Rotterdam station, and the express-type supermarket in it has the first self-service tills I've ever seen here; Dutch people are mostly still eyeing them warily and then queueing for the normal tills, while I just go ahead and use them and try and work out when they started appearing in the UK. 2006, maybe? Before or after I moved to London? A good few years ago, anyway.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I think they've been more common over the last few years actually, or maybe it's just that I'm using big supermarkets more regularly.

[Edited because I had forgotten that things can't be more or less ubiquitous]

[shermarama]

Oh yeah, becoming more common - I remember them going in at the Morrrisons in Holloway Road in what was probably early 2009, but then they were always in the Tesco Express round the corner from the same flat from when I moved in there in 2008, but then again I'm sure there were some in place when I was band-commuting from Brighton to London and that was 2005 / 2006... I just can't remember exactly when I first saw one. But lots of Dutch people are seeing one for the first time, and being confused. And they don't even have the bagging area or anything.