The Statue at St Pancras

I paid the new station a passing curiousity visit today. It was all very impressive and generally quite pleasant (ignoring the crowds milling about the champagne bar). The statue, however, is a hideous abomination. Called 'The Meeting Place' and also widely referred to as 'the lovers', allegedly "reflect(ing) the romance that train travel used to have" (sculptor - Paul Day). The heartache of long journeys, desperate departures and ecstatic arrivals? I failed to find any romance whatsoever in its ugly towering form. His posture is overbearingly coercive, his oversize hands groping at her flesh through conspiratorially compliant layers, the pressure of his fingertips leaving dimples in her clothes, pushing and directing her with his knee. Hers is sickeningly sincere. The shape of the 'embrace' is determined by tensions; they touch at the hips and at the forehead, his bearing down on hers and hers rising unnaturally up into his. Her calves and feet are monstrously proportioned, rising up from eye-level through horrible skewed perspectives, her left leg slightly open, inviting you to look up her skirt from beneath. The creases in her skirt around her huge flat jutting bumcheeks demonstrate the force of her pelvic thrust; his is attested to by the way the fabric of his suit seems to bunch up into his ass-crack. His suit and leather backpack combination (leaving both hands free for the grasping?) is inexplicably comical and repulsive, whilst her lack of luggage belies her seeming business attire. If I saw this particular couple indulging in this particular unsightly embrace on the platform edge I would look away in disgust.