Margaret McCollum, a GP in London, had a ritual no one quite understood: travelling to Embankment station just to hear three words.
“Mind the gap”. That voice, recorded in the 1960s by actor Oswald Laurence, had accompanied millions of passengers for decades. To her, it was something more: it was her husband, who had died in 2007. At almost every station, it had already been replaced, but Embankment was the last to keep it.
Until one day, another voice played. “Suddenly, one day, it was no longer his voice”, she recalled. She felt panic and anxiety. A guard confirmed that they had installed a new public address system with a different voice. Shocked and in tears, she contacted Transport for London to ask them to restore the original announcement.
The staff, touched, promised to help. Two weeks later, they had made a CD with the recording, and Oswald’s voice could be heard again at Embankment. According to My Modern Met, 18 years after his death, Margaret is still making the journey.