This thought occured to me whilst travelling back home on the Westbound Piccadilly. My eyes were closed - only I wasn’t sleeping - I was trying to avoid the staring eyes of what I thought was an Indian tourist couple obviously travelling back to Heathrow (they had two massively big suitcases and looked like they were dressed for the early 1980s). Anyway - just sitting there with my eyes closed got me imagining things …
… imagining as I sat here on the on the tube - what first impressions do foreigners have of London? Or more, importantly, what is the first thing that strikes foreign visitors about London? Is it the tube? Is it the roads? Is it the tube station staff in there silly-looking uniforms and peaked hats? Is it the tunnel you have to drive through to leave Heathrow airport?
And then, after the long, “white-knuckle” stretch between Hammersmith and Acton Town - it clicked: the first most memorable thing that foreigners must notice about London, the thing that almost everybody leaves with a lasting impression of: it’s the “Lucozade replaces lost energy” neon sign on the side of a derelict building on the left-hand-side of the elevated section of the M4 as you drive towards Chiswick from Heathrow. The sign also has a temperature readout in a dot-matrix style- next to the famous neon graphic of Lucozade being poured out of a bottle.
As far as I am concerned - this sign has been there forever - and it announces a most valuable and informative message to visitors to Great Britain:
“Welcome to the place where people are always tired - and always cold!“