Covent Garden used to irritate me. For two reasons.

First, the lift from the tube. I hated the noise in there. Did you hear the noise in that lift? You must have done. It would either be the sound of an irritating over-enthusiastic DJ from “Capital 95 point Great, mate”; a faux-Cockney from BBC local radio; or, peculiarly, a man with a peculiar atlantic accent best known these days for his cooking sauces. (I recommend Primavera. Mmm.)

Second, I hated the fact that one of my favourite places in London, the London Transport Museum, was shut. I used to bound over, get round the corner, and realise that… oh, it was shut. Still. Bah.

Thankfully, I think they’ve replaced the voice in the lift, and the London Transport Museum reopened in November 2007! Yay! Covent Garden no longer irritates me! (Apart from the scary heather ladies. But we’ll not go into that).

Now, for reasons that are moderately unclear to me, apparently I might get these photos on the official London Transport Museum website, which would be nice, if I get some votes. To be clear, I need more votes than the other people. So I need you to vote. For me. Now. Please. Thanks.

To whet your appetite, I need to show you two of my favourite photographs. (I took plenty, but need to choose two). So, you’ll see one above.

This is a reel of destinations that used to show in the front of a bus, and now hangs from the museum roof. I was a particular fan that many places were described in terms of the local pub - The Eagle, the Red Lion, the Goldsmiths Arms: showing that the pub was then really the centre of the community.

And here’s the famous Routemaster, with said black destination reel in the front window, causing quite a buzz with the visitors on the day I visited.

So, good. Go and vote for me, then. Please. Ta.

Vote for me here.

Annie Mole, the writer of the rather splendid Going Underground’s blog was kind enough to invite me and a bunch of other Flickr’rs to the London Transport Museum today. (I didn’t think Annie was her real name, but she wore it on her name badge and everything, so it must be.)

Quite scary, actually. I was concerned that I didn’t have a decent-enough camera, having only got a little point and click Fuji. So I felt a little overawed, particularly seeing Nikki had turned up with a posh camera, and Steve had even bothered to turn up with a set of lenses for his. (”I’m not spending money on cameras any more, just glass”, he told me.) Going round the place therefore, I felt under some pressure to take some decent photos with some careful composition, rather than just snaps.

Well, I needn’t have worried. Plenty of people turned up with nothing better than my little snapper, and some apparently worse. Jag said afterwards that he’d simply turned up with his only camera, a Sony Ericsson phone, but his photos look pretty good for it. (Has to be said, I like fiddling with the settings on mine.)

Anyway, a jolly good day was had by all. Fellow beeboid Martin was there, so that was a good excuse for a beer afterwards with Phill (who, for someone who works for an accounting firm, takes some damn good photos). I didn’t have much time to chat with too many of the rest, but it was good to at least say hello to Mike (who helped organise it and also works for TrustedPlaces), Crash, Kradlum (who I think is getting an iPhone now and it’s all my fault), Meg who knows someone I work with, Lloyd Davis, Anne, who ran away when offered beer, and the other few who weren’t at my table afterwards and failed to swap Moo cards with me.

Well, all my photos are here (I say all my photos - that’s not quite true, since only about a third of my pictures made the cut), so see what you think. Have I captured, as I set out to do, something different about the place?

And an interesting comment by Kradlum afterwards (I know his real name, but if it’s not on Flickr, he mustn’t want people to know, hence my sticking to his Flickr name). He said that he didn’t start using Flickr for the social aspects of the website, but loves it because of that now. He doesn’t see the point of most social networking sites: but sees the point of Flickr.

Thanks to Annie for inviting me, and I’m now the proud owner of, among other things, a Flickr sticker, which I will be possibly ruining the PC at work with.

Interesting point, possibly to me only: in order to upload these photographs, I’ve had to boot up into Windows for the first time this year. The combination of Picasa and the Uploadr is rather too good for my Linux skills quite yet. It’s hateful in here. Looking forward to booting back into a proper operating system.)