Previous | Next :: The Elephant Underpass : Elephant and Castle : London | November 10, 2011, 9:44 pm

It's a few days of thinking back on the Jezblog :-) ........... Elephant and Castle this is not as far back as yesterdays entry .......... And I actually shot this picture today......... not 20 years back like yesterdays picture a B&W from Spaghetti Junction...........

But this is certainly a place that takes me back a bit too ......... I lived here at Elephant and Castle....... early on after i left college and was living in London......... I came to live in the cheapest apartment known to man ......... Seventeen Pounds a week and still in the central zone ........ man those were the days .........

Elephant and Castle was just a little tricky back then ........... Yeah...... just a tiny bit tricky in these underpasses on occasion ......... I remember photographers would often get mugged on the way to the Labour Party HQ which was weirdly down here too .... It's not here any more of course .......

Once a guy tried to mug me down in this scary network of underpasses you see in the picture...... it leads you to the underground train station ........... he hit me full in the face with a rubber coated metal bar........ that left me bleeding and staggering...... almost collapsed against the wall....... as he was going in my pockets i grabbed my massive cellphone of the type that seemed so cutting edge back then.......... and clobbered him with it ........... sure an iPhone is so much cooler, more capable and pocket sized........ but hey you couldn't exactly fend off an attacker with it........... yeah the good old Gordon Gecko Motorola 8000s was a piece of military grade hardware that could make the odd call and double as a baseball bat.

Then I thought ' Oh God no I've over done it ! '........... it was his turn to be collapsed on the floor......... The headline...... 'Yuppie kills Yobbo with Cell Phone' flashes in front of me............ luckily the guy starts moaning and going on about how he is gonna kill me......... so I think : 'Good he is alive....... time to exit ' .......... as I make it to the Tube station I become aware my face is cut and bleeding quite badly on the bridge of my nose and either side of my face next to my eyes and my temples........ man that guy....... he had hit me full across my face right on my now badly bruised eyes...... really he came pretty close to really blinding me........ it was a bit of a shock cos my eyes were finding it hard to see cos of the bleeding........ yeah when I looked in the mirror I did not regret having clubbed him with the trusty Motorola.

Its been a while since I have been back to The Elephant........ it's looking way flashed up ..... I met some great people shooting down there ........ but hey its still the Elephant ....... a little care in those underpasses is always wise......... :-))

Cheers Jez XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

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