Thursday, December 11, 2008
Posted By:
Anne Seymour
Photo:
Anne Seymour
Little Ben
Londoners
love an underdog. Show us something a bit runty, a bit gormless, a bit
birth-defected, and we'll open up our hearts and make it a much loved part of
the city. Hell, we may even elect it as mayor. So when an underdog is given a
wide berth and remains obscure, it's a testament to it being really, really,
really crap. The fact that almost no one realises that Big Ben has a gimpy kid
brother called Little Ben is a case in point. Not only do few know it exists,
but those who do stuck it in the middle of a polluted traffic island near
Victoria Station--the clocktower equivalent of dumping kittens in a box by the
M11. It was taken away for being just too rubbish in the 60s, but somehow
managed to claw its way back in 1981. There it stands today, defiantly ticking
away the wrong time for six months of the year as it's set one hour ahead of
GMT, seemingly just for the fun of making people panic that they've missed
their train from Victoria. Feel free to kick it.
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