Mind the Gap

When you are travelling in the underground, it doesn’t matter the country where you are, you have to be careful and don’t put your foot into the hole when you are entering in the train car. In New York we can see "mind your step". In Japan, for example, they say "Densha to homu no aida wa hiroku aite orimasu no de, gochuui kudasai", "Atenção ao intervalo entre o cais e o comboio" in Lisbon or "Attention à la marche en descendant du train" in Paris. 

But the most famous warning is the Londoner “mind the gap” or the variant: "Please mind the gap between the train and the platform." 

The phase was created in 1968. The underground workers were worried because they had to alert the passengers all the time. So the managers decided to record a brief notice. 

Some of these warnings were recorded by British artists like Emma Clarke, on Bakerloo, Central and District lines or Tim Bentinck, on Piccadilly line. The original voice in the Northern, for more than forty years, was the actor Oswald Laurence. Last November, Embankment Station, the only place where this recording was still being used, installed a new system. Oswald, who died in 2007, stopped to warn us. 

His wife Margaret McCollum could hear her dead husband’s voice when she was travelling in Tube. She was destroyed when she realized she could never listen to Oswald’s speech any more. Margaret wrote a letter to the Underground’s Director because she wanted to have the advice’s record, as a memory. 

Widow's determination has been the key. Now Margaret has a CD with a copy of the announcement. Besides, all travellers can listen again Laurence's voice in Embankment Station.