User:Pzy/London
From Lostpedia
I met up with Dissonation in Tottenham Court Road before the hunt, so we could pop into Forbidden Planet and grab some Apollo goodness (dark chocolate - blegh). To kill time, we walked down to Embankment, crossed the Thames and headed towards Waterloo station. Jubilee line to Canary Wharf, Docklands Light Railway to Island Gardens, and Bob's-your-uncle, we were there. Well, almost. We walked towards a group of around fifteen people, a couple of which looked suspiciously like potential The Other Girl clones. We arrived either seconds too late to hear what was going on, or TPTB spoke so quietly that only the front row could hear the instructions. But after the main group wandered over to a guy sitting on a bench facing the river, the #1 candidate for TOGness came and told us what we had to do.
So we approached the guy on the bench, who was somewhat overwhelmed by the swarm of Losties restricting his oxygen flow, and he proceeded to hand out GlyphTags. On the front, these said, "The Lost Experience London", and on the back, "Look outside this wooden home constructed in 1869."
After some thought, Diss' figured out that it referred to the boat, Cutty Sark, which just so happened to be on the other side of the Thames. Just as we began to walk away, one of TPTB said "wow, some of them actually have colour in their cheeks". Nice guy. We went through a really claustrophobic tunnel under the river and came out right beside it. By this point, quite a few Losties were looking around the boat for any hint of a clue or suggestion as to what should be done next. But the more we looked, the more obvious it became that there was nothing surrounding the boat that was of any interest. The TOG #1 candidate was by now sitting nearby, enjoying the weather and observing the hunt. Diss' made a passing comment about how this was becoming rather futile, and the girl said, "it's not futile...be inspired, it's a beautiful day". I guess I was inspired. I looked up at the mast and rigging of the boat, examining each of the flags.
After a few seconds, I noticed that one of the flags wasn't just a flag - it had words on. Unfortunately, the wind had seen to it that the words could not be read, as the flag was wrapped around itself.
For some reason unknown to us both, we seemed to completely ignore the 'East meets West' thing at first, and we wandered over towards the Naval Hospital, as we found out that it was designed by Wren. But before we got there, we finally took note of the East/West reference and juxtaposed it with the fact that we were in Greenwich. We brain-stormed a little. East/West, Greenwich Meridian, look around, Greenwich Observatory - designed by Wren, etc. We could see it from where we stood, and we kicked ourselves for not getting it sooner. We headed in the direction of the observatory, and as we got to the field at the bottom of the hill, Diss' noticed something odd about the grass. It had odd dark patches. I believe his words at this point were, "Hey...what's that? They have NOT!" The glyph had been painted onto the grass. I'd say it was around 60ft lengthways. I read the code as Diss' connected to The Lost Experience Clues IRC on his phone, and we handed the code over to Matt-the-Pale. We weren't the first to find the glyph (though we feel we should have been, were it not for our temporary braindeath). After reporting back to t'guys, we walked up to the observatory to take some photos. Unfortunately, the angle was terrible, and you couldn't really make the glyph out.
Diss' and I went back down to the glyph and hung around for a while, and after 15 minutes or so of Losties taking photos of the glyph and leaving, the TOG #1 candidate approached us and started asking us if we enjoyed the hunt and all that jazz. We explained our original plan to sabotage the hunt (which, ironically, I haven't explained here), and she found it rather amusing and asked if she could take our picture with the fake glyphs. She then took down our names and disappeared - as far as the tree line on the adjacent side of the field. I decided now would be a good time to half-inch the small-scale glyph that was taped to the floor by the superglyph, and for comedy's sake I replaced it with a fake glyph. Unfortunately, TPTB saw me doing this and asked for it back, as there were still people playing, apparently. We then sat by the glyph with some of TPTB for a while - it was a nice day and everyone was in a good mood - why not? Between the idle banter about how good the hunt was and how slow this phase has been, I tried squeezing them for info on forthcoming phases. The one guy who seemed to be the only person who know anything was keeping his mouth well shut. He didn't comment on whether WhereIsAlvar.com is phase 4 or not, when I asked if there were one or two phases to go, he said he couldn't share that information, but I did manage to get the following out of him: "There will be an end-game", and no matter how hard we tried, he would not elaborate on this statement, saying that he'd said too much already, and that anything he told us would only spread across the internet like wildfire...
TPTB gave us a bunch of Apollo bars and eventually left after almost an hour.
I didn't steal the glyph.
