More crazy British civil engineering…
Cost – 5 minor or significant charges
Description – Any American who’s been to England has had to encounter at least one roundabout. An oddity in the US, these eddies in the road are quite common in the UK, where the traffic enters a holding pattern of sorts until you arrive at the proper road you want to travel on, at which point you leave the flow of traffic around the roundabout. These seemingly logicless contraptions actually are quite effective at keeping traffic moving at busy intersections. Most drivers, foriegn or not, manage to negotiate them with little or no difficulty, save having to get used to driving on the other side of the road.
Unless we’re talking about The Magic Roundabout on the outskirts of Swindon. In an attempt to solve the problem of six highly used roads coinciding at one point, civil engineers created a double-layered roundabout, with an outer layer of five mini-roundabouts surrounding one central roundabout going in the opposite direction of the other roundabouts (here’s a picture if you can’t wrap your mind around the concept: http://www.swindonweb.com/life/lifemagi1.jpg) As you can imagine, if one is not used to driving The Magic Roundabout, you can quite easily wind up going in a direction quite different from the one you’re trying to go. The whole design is quite effective at curing the traffic problems that used to occur at the intersection, but is equally effective, if not more so, at confusing the hell out of anyone who hasn’t been previously introduced to it.
){kind=link}
Which is where the magick comes into it. Of course, the name of the roundabout is inviting magickal messing-with, but it wasn’t until the punk band XTC released the track English Roundabout, a song based on the infamous roundabout, did the ritual for this little trick appear burned into the back of a street map belonging a local urbanomancer.
Ritual – It functions similarly to the ritual Ticket to Ride, the ritual has a longer range (any roundabout within 33.3 miles), and subsequently a higher cost. The ritual’s a bit easier, though. Simply enter the roundabout, and while in one of the outer roundabouts, repeat the lyrics to the first verse of the song English Roundabout (People rushing round with no time to spare/I’m so dizzy/I’m neither here nor there/In this traffic jam/I just want to shout/Let me off o’ this English roundabout), enter the central roundabout, repeat the lyrics backwards, then re-enter the outer section of the roundabout, then recite the lyrics in the correct order one last time. Then simply drive out of the roundabout.
I tried to write up a New York version of Ticket to Ride using the 42nd Street Times Square station (an unpleasant experience that I will only make the mistake of having once, if you think that the London Underground is bad, at least it was built by one company), but I couldn’t find any maps that made the slightest bit of sense, an ironic event in itself. Any New Yorkers that have any experience with either that damn station or another one they think is worse would be greatly welcomed to put up a New York version of Ticket to Ride.
Actually, the london underground was built by many different companies back during the late half of the 19th century (when they still used steam trains), that’s why there’s a million and one abandoned platforms down there, some of the stations where owned by rival companies but when the whole system was nationalised those stations were no longer needed as alot of them were a very short (unlike bank) walk from the main ones used today.
nice ritual btw(I wanna go to swindon now to see that roundabout in action), but you’ve added a bracket to the end of the link that makes it 404.
just delete the bracket off the end of the 404ing url and it works fine though (for those who want to see the pretty picture)
I think that I would allow this ritual to take you to the very similar roundabout in Hemel Hempstead (Hertfordshire). It’s outside the 33.3 mile limit, but it’s built to a very similar design – except that it has 6 roads going into it. It’s officially called the Plough roundabout, but most people call it the Magic roundabout.
I live in Swindon. Residents love that roundabout, it’s extremely effective. Keeps traffic flowing perfectly.
Unless you’re unlucky like me and have to take your driving test on it >.<
Is this anything like the “Circles” in Maryland? If so, I feel really sorry for you guys.