Please Forward

This short story is now available in audiobook form as the first episode of the Unlimited Story Podcast.


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The Weird Case of Weirdcase

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This may well end up being one of the oddest and perhaps most anal-retentive blog posts I've ever written, but it's an anomaly I noticed early in life and have never been able to find a satisfactory answer for.  Perhaps unsurprisingly it involves the London Underground tube map. As I've discussed elsewhere the iconic tube map captured my imagination at an early age and it was at this early age that the anomaly itself was in full swing.  It was all to do with the way the stations were labelled. Up until the end of H C Beck's reign as tube map designer the station names on the map were all written in uppercase. Presumably all the better to read you with – although not if you have dyslexia. Unfortunately at that time accessibility wasn't high on the list of London Transport's priorities, as can be seen from the fact no stations had step free access – despite the fact that so many of them had been originally been built with lifts. Nevertheless, the all uppercase pa...
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Top of the Cheats

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 It's surprising what can catch your attention and become of special interest – especially during childhood – when you've got the kind of brain that thrives on that stuff. In 1981 I narrowed my focus in on the bands appearing on Top of the Pops not least because I wanted to know when and how often Toyah would be appearing. So I became very familiar with the rules surrounding how often an artist could appear. The only way a song would be played two weeks on the trot was if it was number one. In order to get two plays (including the viewers' holy grail of both the video and a mimed studio performance) the song would have to be going up the chart three weeks in a row and ideally by leaps and bounds. To get three plays it would have to have been at least five weeks in the chart and probably be heading into the top 10 at least. I used to write down the lineups in my diary despite parental scorn. This meant I was watching when someone cheated. The Jets' song "Yes Tonigh...
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