If Napoleon had conquered Croydon
Inspired by The Great Bear, other reworked tube maps and my age old pastime of mentally translating tube station names into other languages while travelling (and because I am sad, empty and worthless etc, obviously) I have had a go at rendering the Croydon tram map into French, and await criticism for poor French grammar, use of the wrong font, lawsuits for copyright infringement and so forth.
I have gone for a mixture of translations that are variously semi-serious, gratuitously silly and those based on the idea that we became part of the Napoleonic system. I have assumed that the name George Street stems from the saint rather than the kings, but confirmation or refutation by anyone with knowledge of local history would be welcome.
I generally decided against rendering town names in French, as Vallée Sinueuse or Vallée de Crocus for Croydon seemed a bit over the top.
No mention of Croydon trams is complete without noting that at one point the name signs at stops were stickered letters, so some wag removed leading and trailing letters from Addiscombe, making it sound a great deal more intriguing.
I generally decided against rendering town names in French, as Vallée Sinueuse or Vallée de Crocus for Croydon seemed a bit over the top.
No mention of Croydon trams is complete without noting that at one point the name signs at stops were stickered letters, so some wag removed leading and trailing letters from Addiscombe, making it sound a great deal more intriguing.
Labels: Croydon, facetiousness, maps
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on Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 10:21 am.
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Tres drole!
Pont de Phipps sounds like somewhere one might voluntarily wish to visit!
Merci bien.
Sorting out the names amused me no end.
Excellent, Mr C - a cut-out-and-keep item at Château Drew
Mrs D suggests Wimbledon might have been Jeu de Paume ...
Very good. That goes in the next revision, after Ma Croydonian has given me a grammar lesson I will never forget. Probably.
Now what was it they said about great minds?
http://james.dowden.googlepages.com/londres60.jpg
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