https://lauriepenny.substack.com/p/the-room-of-requirement
"Not far from the British Library, if you turn into King’s Cross station and
walk along the concourse, past the chain coffee stands and the little trinket
shops, you will see something very strange. You will see what looks like half
of a luggage trolley sticking out of the brickwork, looking like a lazy attempt
at modern art, except for the line of tourists waiting for their turn to take a
picture holding the handles, for all the world as if they were about to vanish
through the wall. In J. K. Rowling’s
Harry Potter novels, this is, of course,
how a young magic user gets to Platform 9 3/4 to board the Hogwarts Express to
wizard school. This is where the portal is supposed to open for anyone special
enough to see it, and there’s a bit of you that wants to try it and see,
because while it isn’t real, it might still be true. This is why, legend has
it, the people who run King’s Cross station had to set up the fake trolley in
the first place: to stop children drunk on enchantment, and a good few adults
drunk on alcohol, from braining themselves trying to run through solid brick.
Now, there’s a whole Harry Potter themed gift shop next door, partly because
the queue for the photo op is long enough that fans can be tempted by an
overpriced owl plushie. I walk past it every week. I’ve seen friendships
forming in that queue, the instant shared rhetoric of people who don’t speak
the same language grinning at each other because they’re wearing the same
colour scarf. Unless they’re Ravenclaws, of course, who are above that sort of
thing.
Not long ago, on a train through London, I asked a visiting American if she
wanted to go down to see Platform 9 3/4 and she gave me a look. It’s a look
you’ll see if you ask many people under forty how they feel about the
Harry
Potter books these days. A brief grimace of embarrassment at having, until
quite recently, been a person who would have wanted very much to get their
photo taken in a Hogwarts scarf, and isn’t sure how to feel about that now. For
so many reasons, the waking world has moved on, and the Wizarding World has
not, and there’s a strong feeling among much of the fanbase that that train is
not going anywhere good anymore."
Via
Fix the News:
<
https://fixthenews.com/good-news-human-rights-greece-education-burundi-reforestation-america/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
