Charlotte: Tell me what you found.

Simon: Last night I was walking in Stratford and there's a neglected path which goes from the station to not really anywhere, which I was walking down. It was really cold and I was shivering a bit and I was walking quite aimlessly. I glanced down and I saw this yellow sign that was half-covered in grass and bits of crap. I looked a bit more closely and I saw the Dome symbol shining out from it, reflected off the yellow street light. I picked it up and brushed it off a bit with some tissues from my pocket and it was a hanging sign for the bus stop for the Dome Park and Ride in Stratford.

What was that?

In the early days of the Dome, and just before the Dome, the organisers made great play on the fact that you couldn't drive there. The only way you could get there was via the Underground. This was considered to be a great thing and there was a lot of hoo-hah about whether the Jubilee Line extension was going to be finished in time for it. The idea was that people would go to Stratford, park their cars in this huge car park, catch the free bus to Stratford Station and then get the Jubilee Line to the Dome. They built this huge car park in the middle of an industrial area outside of Stratford, it was very large and had razor wire along the top of its mesh fence, which made it look like a top secret type location.

Every day a bus driver had to ferry people from the car park to the station - except there were never any people! Nevertheless the drivers were employed for the year to drive people backwards and forwards all day. You'd pass by the big car park and the only thing that would be in them were the park and ride buses and nothing else.

You'd occasionally see the buses driving along the streets and they'd always be empty. It was a bit of an in-joke. There was a bit of a minor scandal locally that this huge area was being set aside for the park and ride that was never used, and that these poor drivers were being employed to do no job at all, but it never really became a big national story. I think I saw one person on the bus once and I expect they were just taking advantage of the free ride. I can't imagine they really had parked their car in the park and ride car park.

What happened to it?

It's part of the new international rail terminal now.

But it was derelict for a while wasn't it? You'd see grass growing up through the parking spaces and rusty signs falling off their hinges. The opposite of all the bright shiny promises that the Dome seemed to represent before it all went so badly wrong!

It was like that as the year progressed, it wasn't really maintained and they soon realised that no one was going to use it.

It was weird how it deteriorated so quickly.

There are eight million stories in the naked city and this is one of them, not many people will ever know about it. It could have been a big scandal in the Evening Standard but no one ever picked up on it, it was just a joke for people who lived in Stratford.

It's funny that such a minor object could have such a story behind it.

It was really cold and it was covered in frost. I tried to clear off some of the dirt and stuff but it was frozen on, and I had to carry it back in the cold with no gloves or anything. I held it against my body with minimum contact on my fingers and the cold was transferred to the whole side of my body, as well as nearly chopping my fingers off.

People of the future will thank you one day for the sacrifice that you made.

I hope so.

What do you think I should call this?

Park and Ride.

Why is the Dome still so funny?

There are probably not many people who are still amused by the Dome but it's just a great white elephant of the modern era. Like that TV programme tonight about New Coke, there will be lots of expose documentaries about the Dome debacle in ten years time with archive footage of opening day and the stories of the VIPs delayed at Stratford on New Year's Eve.

I still cherish my Dome t-shirt and fridge magnet.

And how I laughed at you for buying them at the time, and how jealous I am now that I don't have a Dome t-shirt too.