There are hundreds of red phone boxes in London but only one has the pixiedust to glam up your socials big time. It's the red phone box in Parliament Square, north side, and if you stand alongside you can combine the holy trinity of a) red phone box b) the actual Big Ben c) your pouting face. Get in there and grab one for the 'gram.
Make sure you're wearing your best threads - anything less than top global brands will only embarrass. Beiges, browns and blacks are ideal, nothing overtly colourful else you'll clash with the box. Ensure your skincare regime is at the top of its game because when people zoom in they expect to see perfection. Make sure it's a bright sunny day or come at dusk with lamps aglow for optimum illumination. Pick carefully between leaning nonchalantly against one side or holding the door open with a smile because the perfect alignment can bring all the love. If you don't get the Elizabeth Tower erupting from your head you're doing it all wrong.
But there is a catch which is that every other holidaymaking tourist wants the same shot because it's become one of London's must-do experiences. They've seen their contacts carry it off with aplomb and now they want the same prized digital trophy for their own feeds. The queues for the iconic phonebox are thus insane, even on a grey day in December, so be prepared to wait your turn while fifty other people take their time getting it just right.
The amount of patience displayed here is ridiculous, and all because you cannot leave the capital without the right photograph beside the right red box. One shot is never enough, of course, you have to try it with subtly different smirks, a variety of flicks of the hair and your limbs at all sorts of coquettish angles to ensure that when you scan through your album afterwards the perfect viral image is there.
You'll also need someone to take the photo for you because the proportions in a close-up selfie are all wrong. For the best outcomes turn up with friends or family because that's a lot less risky than handing your phone to a random stranger. But the more people you turn up with the more combinations there are to photograph - here's me, here's you, here's both of us, here's the whole grinning crew - and that's what really slows the queue down.
Thankfully there are quicker alternatives because this side of Parliament Square has four red phone boxes, fortuitously perfectly spaced. The second box back always has a shorter queue because the shot's never as good, the third box is shorter still because that's positively suboptimal and the fourth box attracts a mere handful because the sightlines are all wrong. On my visit the first queue was fifty strong, the second twenty-five, the third more like a dozen and the fourth just a slightly bemused family with no aesthetic sense. If your time is short, pick carefully.
But ideally you'll want to queue for the first phone box no matter how long it takes because you are a sheep with no imagination. You saw the iconic phonebox shot blazing across TikTok and it fired within you a primal need to take exactly the same image as everyone else lest your trip to London be judged a dismal failure. Never stop and ask yourself why genuine Londoners aren't doing the same, just wait your turn before stepping up and frustrating the rest of the queue while you pout and preen repeatedly with a great big clock tower behind you. Your besties will be well jel.
Five other iconic Tiktok locations
• the iconic Platform 9¾ scarf tug
• the iconic 'London Eye as halo" video
• the iconic pastel houses in Notting Hill backdrop
• the iconic blocking the pavement on Tower Bridge moment
• the iconic "you won't believe the size of the queue for the iconic phonebox shot" shot
PARK LANE Colour group: dark blue Purchase price: £350 Rent: £35 Length: 1200m Borough:Westminster Postcode: W1
The final street on the Monopoly board is Park Lane, a seething dual carriageway that somehow retains a luxury cachet. One side is a wall of superior hideaways and five star hotels, the western edge of Mayfair, while the other is a Royal Park and entirely undeveloped. These facts are not entirely unrelated. Officially it's the A4202 and part of the Inner London Ring Road, a street you can dodge along if you don't fancy paying the Congestion Charge. It's also brilliant for plane-spotting, planes being the default tree brightening its three-quarter-mile passage from Marble Arch down to Hyde Park Corner. Welcome to the dark blues, the board's full-on upmarket finale.
Park Lane reveals its backhistory in its name - it used to be a lane and it ran down the edge of a park. Hyde Park was established by Henry VIII in 1537 as a hunting ground and was opened to the public a century later, separated from the track alongside by a long brick wall. As the neighbourhood of Mayfair expanded in the early 18th century this lane formed a natural barrier to further development, and still does, with aristocrats favouring houses on the neighbourhood's western flank with an unbroken vista across the park. Huge hotels started to replace private homes between the World Wars, then in the early 1960s the current three-lane dual carriageway swallowed up 20 acres of Hyde Park in an attempt to ease traffic congestion. It is thus still Park Lane, except there are now six lanes and there's less park.
Let's walk the built-up side first, starting at the Marble Arch gyratory. Raise your eyes above the tourbus kiosks and gift shops and you'll see the first of the hotels, the London Marriott Hotel Park Lane, which opened in 1919 as a concierged residential complex. If you fancy a room with a view of an advert-shrouded ceremonial arch and the constant roar of traffic it's ideal. The next half dozen properties are private homes, mostly their back gardens shrouded behind a stucco wall, in front of which is the bottleneck of London's busiest bus stop. Ten routes stop here and the single shelter is entirely insufficient to contain the waiting passengers when it's pissing down, as I can confirm from bitter experience was the case at the weekend.
Next comes the first of Park Lane's car dealers, Bob Forstner, who've been selling zhooshed up Mercedes and classic Lamborghinis since 2014. Their mancave is dwarfed by the shiny showroom under Brook House where Aston Martin display their wares, sleek beasts none of which is accompanied by anything as common as a price tag. Biggest of all, however, is the recently-opened BMWflagship further down the street where one end's all Minis and the other's devoted to BMW bikes and cars. Should any local resident choose to seal a deal on a handy runaround, a panoramic 4K screen kicks into action to congratulate them on their purchase. Those less interested in cars may prefer to peruse the green plaque on the side of the showroom which confirms that Dame Anna Neagle and her husband Herbert Wilcox used to live in a flat upstairs.
At number 100 is Dudley House, one of London's few surviving aristocratic townhouses, the aristocrat in question being the Earl of Dudley who started work on it in the 1820s. This portico-ed monster has been much altered since, in one case by the Luftwaffe, its ballroom at one point subdivided into lowly offices. The latest owner is a member of the Qatari royal family, inevitably, who bought the building in 2006 and blinged up the interior so much that the Queen once told her supper host "This place makes Buckingham Palace look rather dull". What you won't find any more two blocks down is Grosvenor House, once home to one of Britain's richest homegrown dynasties, because it proved too lavish to maintain so they knocked it down in the 1920s and built this...
The Grosvenor House Hotel is mammoth and multi-stacked, and cutting edge in its day because it was the first hotel to grant every room its own separate bathroom and entrance lobby. Queen Elizabeth learnt to ice skate here when she was merely a princess living down the road, although the ice rink was closed two years later and converted into The Great Room, a ballroom on a scale large enough to host premier award ceremonies. Officially it's another Marriott, and unsurprisingly a chain of sales over the last couple of decades saw ownership pass from Scotland to India to the USA to (once again) Qatar. At ground level the hotel presents a sawtooth profile to the street, the indentations filled with pristine topiary, and across the street is an unlikely Esso garage and an even more unlikely branch of Londis. On Park Lane!
The next hotel is The Dorchester, built on the site of Dorchester House, which is one of the world's most prestigious places to stay. Its subtly-concave eight storeys were built in just 18 months thanks to a pioneering use of reinforced concrete and opened to guests in 1931. During WW2 Eisenhower directed Allied forces from a suite on the first floor, while downstairs today you'll find Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester, one of only nine London restaurants with three Michelin stars. Out front is a bijou terrace garden centred around a plane tree, ideal for exhaust-choked alfresco cocktails, along with one of those heritage 'Taxi' lamps that lights up when one of the porters wants to summon a cab. That said it's hard to imagine anyone's ever at a loss for a black cab round here because they flock to the south end of Park Lane like ants to a picnic.
More hotels follow including 45 Park Lane, a Bauhaus conversion which includes a ground floor salesroom for corporate jets. TheHilton is one of the West End's rare skyscrapers, a 28 storey tower with unparalleled views whose rooftop restaurant is currently closed awaiting the arrival of a Pan-Asian Dubai concession. Following a number of unfortunate gravity-related incidents at the Hilton over the years, its balcony doors are now securely locked. The final hotel is the boxy InterContinental London Park Lane, built on the site of Queen Elizabeth's childhood home at 145 Piccadilly but which has plumped for a Park Lane address for purely snooty reasons. Normally in Monopoly the houses outnumber the hotels but here on Park Lane it's very much the reverse.
Park Lane's central reservation, if I can call it that, is a broad ribbon of plane trees generally inaccessible to pedestrians unless they choose to ignore a succession of subways. It includes a lot of intriguing statues including a pair of upturned feet and a severed horse's head previously located amid the swirl of Marble Arch. The one everyone stops to look at, because it's alongside the sole set of pedestrian crossings, is the Animals In War memorial. This curved wall of Portland stone was inspired (and part-paid-for) by Dame Jilly Cooper and features two heavily-laden bronze mules alongside the legend "They had no choice". Much more easily missed is Lord Byron's isolated statue at the southern end, a Victorian tribute which used to be in a dignified corner of Hyde Park before East Carriage Drive was rudely converted to the northbound carriageway.
The western side of Park Lane, alongside that very same northbound carriageway, can be generally summarised as a broad parkside pavement alongside a segregated cycle lane. Access to Hyde Park is intermittent, thus you'll likely find yourself amid tourists trying to find their way in, as is especially the case at present with the revels at Winter Wonderland well underway. At the weekend I had to feel sorry for the daytrippers who'd booked an expensive coach trip from the provinces without anticipating Storm Darragh so were piling into Hyde Park under brollies to join lengthy queues at insufficient gates before spending the day in a sodden amusement park wondering whether or not to risk a windswept circuit on one of the outdoor rides.
A ramp leads to the only genuine point of interest on this side of the street which is the massive 981-space car park hidden beneath Hyde Park in the 1960s, and whose excavated earth was then used to build the embankments on the M4 between Brentford and Slough. Vehicles can drive straight in but pedestrian access requires scanning a panel at the entrance to a long Stygian corridor so I decided to defer exploring this underworld for another day. A car park under a park - only on Park Lane.
Yesterday the BBC website had a story about the amount of tea people aren't drinking any more.
It seems younger people aren't drinking as much tea as older people, or as much as younger people used to. Instead they favour coffee, soft drinks and energy drinks, and when they do drink tea it's often green tea, herbal tea or bubble tea, not traditional black tea. 18 year-old Sharma, for example, said she prefers herbal tea and hasn't even heard of Typhoo because "there are so many drinks now”.
The article came with a nice graph.
When it comes to retail sales coffee is way out in front with £2.2bn spent annually, including £1bn on instant, while tea limps behind with £0.6bn. In the UK market roughly the same is spent on standard black tea as on ready-to-drink coffee, while total tea sales are almost identical to what's spent on coffee pods. There is indeed more money in coffee than in tea.
But sales are not the same as volume - for example a coffee pod is hugely more expensive than a humble tea bag, yet both produce one drink. What we need are better statistics... and thankfully the BBC story linked to some courtesy of the UK FamilyFood Survey, in a proper analysable spreadsheet.
Quantity purchased for UK households (average grams per person per week) Tea: 19g Coffee beans and ground coffee: 13g Instant coffee: 10g Cocoa and chocolate drinks: 5g
19g is approximately equal to 10 tea bags, i.e, the average Briton gets through 10 teabags in a week, or 1½ per day. Meanwhile a combination of 13g of beans and 10g of instant means the average Briton drinks about 7 cups of coffee a week at home, or 1 a day. You are not an average Briton which'll be why these figures don't reflect your consumption.
But that's hot drinks within the home, what about hot drinks purchased elsewhere?
Quantity consumed outside the home (average millilitres per person per week) Coffee: 40ml Tea: 12ml Hot chocolate or cocoa: 5ml
That's not very much tea or coffee, maybe one takeaway coffee a month or four nice cups of tea in a cafe every year. The Family Food Survey admits that some of those completing food diaries may be under-reporting, but if you think those numbers are low remember that for every London commuter mainlining caffeine there's a provincial pensioner who never ventures anywhere near a Costa.
All this data suggests that Britons do still drink more tea than coffee, indeed other statistics concur, but collectively we spend a lot more on the bean than the leaf.
And because these consumer survey spreadsheets contain annual data going back to 1974, I can do you a running summary of purchases over time...
1974
1984
1994
2004
2014
2023
Tea (at home)
68g
55g
41g
31g
25g
19g
Coffee (at home)
20g
21g
18g
17g
20g
23g
Tea (out of home)
n/a
n/a
n/a
44ml
30ml
12ml
Coffee (out of home)
n/a
n/a
n/a
91ml
80ml
40ml
Coffee consumption at home has held up fairly well over the last 50 years, but tea consumption is considerably down over the same period across the board. I confess I was expecting takeaway coffee to have risen but instead it's dropped, although this may have something to do with the pandemic because it was fairly steady until then. Also the final year in the table had runaway inflation so perhaps don't read too much into those takeaway figures.
How about other drinks? This is home consumption per week.
1974
1984
1994
2004
2014
2023
Soft drinks
n/a
n/a
1513ml
1933ml
1546ml
1500ml
Bottled water
n/a
8ml
125ml
236ml
341ml
374ml
Alcohol
n/a
n/a
552ml
792ml
675ml
623ml
Soft drink consumption peaked in 2004, according to the complete set of figures. Bottled water was an irrelevance in 1974 but continues to grow in popularity. Home alcohol consumption has been a little more consistent.
Here's a history of UK health habits through weekly milk consumption.
1974
1984
1994
2004
2014
2023
Full fat milk
2687ml
2064ml
877ml
602ml
263ml
295ml
Semi-skimmed
3ml
114ml
880ml
926ml
1045ml
711ml
Skimmed
2ml
76ml
212ml
154ml
154ml
112ml
Non-dairy
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
37ml
110ml
And the household survey doesn't just do liquids. Here's raw meat.
1974
1984
1994
2004
2014
2023
Beef
189g
161g
118g
119g
101g
85g
Lamb
113g
93g
54g
49g
37g
22g
Pork
91g
93g
77g
56g
57g
37g
Chicken
115g
152g
160g
168g
186g
193g
Liver
36g
31g
11g
5g
3g
2g
Other than chicken, meat's been very much on a downward trend over the last 50 years.
Here are some more foodstuffs in decline...
1974
1984
1994
2004
2014
2023
Butter
147g
75g
36g
35g
40g
34g
Sugar
458g
320g
178g
102g
78g
51g
Potatoes
1437g
1293g
1084g
864g
671g
578g
Bread
1019g
935g
820g
728g
555g
465g
Baked beans
100g
124g
109g
89g
80g
61g
Apples
207g
201g
186g
171g
131g
93g
...and here are some on the rise.
1974
1984
1994
2004
2014
2023
Yoghurt
33ml
81ml
123ml
158ml
175ml
160ml
Pasta
31g
35g
33g
83g
87g
103g
Rice
17g
31g
41g
80g
103g
98g
Pizza
0g
16g
38g
67g
75g
85g
Ice cream
43ml
102ml
123ml
193ml
165ml
178ml
Bananas
84g
86g
169g
211g
221g
180g
Reassuringly some foods haven't changed much.
1974
1984
1994
2004
2014
2023
Fish
123g
140g
148g
156g
144g
126g
Cakes
184g
145g
175g
164g
147g
161g
Fresh veg
1141g
1187g
1161g
1079g
1080g
1061g
Hopefully our kilogram of fresh vegetables each week helps balance out all those cakes, buns and pastries.
Anyway, that was the rabbithole I fell down after reading about how Sharma and her friends aren't drinking much tea any more. If you're similarly intrigued feel free to dig deep into the official spreadsheet to explore long-term trends in food and beverage consumption, perhaps over a nice cup of tea.
I haven't whinged about unsolicited PR emails for a while because I don't get as many as I used to. But they still trickle in, generally from hopeful marketeers with a press release to regurgitate or a plea to amplify some sponsored content. We don't do that here, thanks.
Here then is a roundup of some of the bumf that's arrived in my inbox over the last year, with all the brand names they were desperate for me to mention cruelly blanked out.
Zarya emailed.
We are working with <Japanese food promo company> who’ve set up a new website to showcase the many benefits of Japanese tea, in particular Matcha. They are running a series of free masterclasses in London and would love you to sample it for yourself.
I was particularly unimpressed by her suggestion that "Japanese Matcha tea is the new coffee" because I don't like coffee. I did not attend her four-day tea tasting pop-up in Soho.
Etta tried her luck.
Hi there
My name is Etta and I'm a freelance writer looking to expand my writing portfolio.
Is there any chance that jack of diamonds accepts guest post articles?
If you can't even get the blog's name right, Etta, there is zero chance.
Freddie was peddling romantic-themed experiential crap.
Happy Tuesday!
<Curated culinary bolx> offers a unique perspective on year-round romantic experiences in the heart of London. We believe this content could resonate well with your readers, providing inspiration for couples seeking memorable and intimate experiences.
This is fairly standard stuff, and I mention him only because his name was Freddie Cocker.
Diana misfired in her first sentence.
Good morning, just thought I’d put this on your radar.
Instant no.
Elizabeth thought I had a team of writers.
Hey Diamond Geezer Team!
I'm Elizabeth and I'm on the hunt for exciting new platforms to share my writing. I came across your site and I couldn't help but wonder if it would be the perfect place to showcase my work.
I tried the silent treatment, but this merely encouraged Elizabeth to send three follow-ups.
1) I know things can get buried so I thought I’d reach out and bump this back up in your inbox, in a last-ditch effort to submit an article.
2) Quickly following up on my message. Is this something you would be interested in? Please let me know.
3) Checking in again one last time. Interested or pass?
Thankfully she gave up after that.
Donald had the buzzwordiest email title.
Embracing Collaboration for Impact on diamondgeezer.blogspot.com
He also said he'd been intrigued by my "platform's innovative approach", so I asked for a specific example but he did not reply.
Georgia sent me a lengthy screed For Immediate Release.
Hi, hope you’re well!
I think my colleague Lucy was in touch with you a few weeks ago about <Artistic Thing> which is currently open at <Local Library>. I just wanted to let you know about some upcoming live events in the space in case you’re interested in coming along to do any coverage.
Lucy had not been in touch so I was not coming along to do any coverage, so Georgia was on a loser there.
Amelia wanted to offer me a 'collab'.
Hi Diamond Geezer,
Congrats to you for running such a creative and inspiring blog at "Diamond Geezer"! Your delightful content really stands out, and it’s clear your audience connects with your insightful posts. :)
We’re thrilled to be launching a groundbreaking new social platform called <Four Letter Word> and we’d love to have you be a key part of it!
I bet you would, Amelia, but you can jolly well write your own content rather than exploiting mine for nothing.
Clare made the mistake of alerting me to something I already knew about.
Hi there! Hope you're keeping well.
I wanted to let you know that we are running an <Ambulatory Event> in September and wondered if you might consider including anything about it in your blog around the time of the festival?
This approach never works, Clare, even when it's for a good cause. She also mentioned a specific walk ("it's a very lovely walk if you haven't done it"), and I had to point out I had already walked it and indeed written about it, which suggested that my writing didn't really have much impact.
Vanessa emailed at 8.45 on a Monday morning and thought she had a good opening line.
Hope you are well and have had a lovely weekend.
I am getting in touch with news from attraction tickets provider, <Attraction Tickets Provider> and <Contrived Awards Ceremony> nominees. Please let me know if you need any further information.
I did not need any additional information.
And finally Lorna emailed about a new audio trail in her London borough.
Dear Diamond Geezer
Nature lovers of all ages are invited to explore <Borough>'s parks like never before with Nature Trails, an immersive audio experience offering guided walks through some of <Borough>'s most beloved greenspaces.
Unfortunately Lorna's mailmerge went very very very wrong and she accidentally sent me 380 copies of her press release, one after the other within the same email.
They were all identical apart from the addressee, so there was a "Dear Natasha", a "Dear Secret London", a "Dear BBCFour", a "Dear Outlet Name", a "Dear GB News", a "Dear Brummell", a "Dear Pembrokeshire Herald", a "Dear Wandsworth Times", a "Dear Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes", a "Dear Start The Week", a "Dear British Journal for the History of Mathematics", "Dear The Rest is History Podcast", a "Dear TechBullion", a "Dear Sheffield Tribune", a "Dear Julia Bradbury", another "Dear Secret London", a "Dear The Sun", a "Dear Newsdesk", a "Dear Lorna" and 360 other names.
I replied to Lorna saying I hoped she'd never send me 380 copies of the same email again, and to be fair she never has.
Whether you email me once, twice, thrice or even 380 times my response is going to be the same. No I will not promote the thing you'd like me to, my blog doesn't work like that, so please lay off with the repeated comebacks.
And if anyone else with a promotional background is thinking of emailing me to beg a mention, I won't so please don't. Fun though it is to mock and laugh at, I much prefer an inbox uncontaminated by the plaintive sound of desperation.
Watling Street runs for over ten miles from the heart of the West End to the very edge of the capital, nigh straight and essentially roundaboutless. Not only is today's Edgware Road a Roman survivor but it's also probably London's most influential road democracywise. That's because for a full eight miles the roadway marks the precise dividing line between five London boroughs, and indeed seven London constituencies, and all because an army of soldiers once chose to march this way. Let's see how the divide stacks up.
We can ignore Watling Street from Marble Arch to Kilburn because that's all in a single borough. It wasn't before 1965 but then Paddington and Marylebone merged with Westminster and the old boundary disappeared. These days the dividing line starts here.
This is the junction of Maida Vale (the A5) and the somewhat minor Greville Place. Westminster is on the left and Camden on the right. But the Westminster boundary lasts barely 300m before crossing into Brent at Oxford Road, and a heck of a lot of Brent follows. We get all of Kilburn and then all of Cricklewood, which is where the borough of Barnet interrupts on the right-hand side. Three miles of solid boundary continue fractionally past the mega-junction at Staples Corner before finally dissipating here.
This is the bridge where the A5 crosses the river Brent. Here the boundary between Brent and Barnet meanders off, quite literally, following the former course of the river across what's now the Welsh Harp Reservoir. For the next mile both sides of the A5 are in Barnet, just as they were always previously in the borough of Hendon, and Watling Street's peripherality takes a break. It restarts again here.
This is the junction of Edgware Road and Kingsbury Road, just the other side of West Hendon. The borough to the right is still Barnet, and will be for the next five miles, but on the left-hand side Brent has just crept back in. The Brent/Barnet combo carves through Colindale as far as Burnt Oak where the London borough of Harrow takes over, then the Harrow/Barnet divide continues through Edgware and the outer edge of Stanmore. Then it's on up Brockley Hill - Roman settlement on the right, Royal Orthopaedic Hospital on the left - before London comes to an end here.
This is the bridge over the M1 at the Brockley Hill roundabout, just south of Elstree. To the left of the bridge it's still Harrow, to the right it's still Barnet and the roundabout straight ahead is all Hertfordshire. And that's where this amazing boundary run finally comes to an end after three miles through Kilburn/Cricklewood and five miles through Colindale/Edgware. No other London street divides more.
Other very long ancient boundaries Counters Creek: Hammersmith & Fulham v. Kensington & Chelsea (4½ miles) Watling Street: Westminster/Brent/Harrow v. Camden/Barnet (3+5 miles) River Lea: Enfield/Haringey/Hackney/Tower Hamlets v. Waltham Forest/Newham (16 miles) River Thames: Hounslow/Hammersmith & Fulham/Kensington & Chelsea/Westminster/City of London/Tower Hamlets/Newham/Barking & Dagenham/Havering v. Richmond/Wandsworth/Lambeth/Southwark/Lewisham/Greenwich/Bexley (35 miles)
Major road works at the Bow Roundabout continue. They might even be halfway through, depending on when you think the start and finish dates are.
The biggest change since last month is that the new sliproad underneath the flyover is nearing completion. This'll carry westbound traffic from the contraflow lane on Stratford High Street, and it now exists and is fully kerbed. It also ends at a completely new set of traffic lights, already with tactile paving, where a new junction is being added just before the roundabout. That's because two existing lanes of westbound traffic need to merge with one lane of contraflow so will take turns to enter a new holding zone, three lanes wide. That third lane is coming along nicely too and is now fully tarmacked.
What I still don't understand is how all this is continuing to cause four months of traffic chaos. Almost all the roadworks are on just one arm of the roundabout, on the Stratford side, where most of the worksite has been contained within an untrafficked area beneath the flyover. It makes sense that one lane has been coned off on all sides. But the only other worksite is a small strip on the Bow side of the roundabout, which quite frankly could have been finished weeks ago whereas instead I hardly ever see anyone there.
All this has somehow validated narrowing all four access roads from two lanes to one, causing massive tailbacks, even though no work whatsoever is taking place on the A12 sliproads. Occasionally at weekends they remove the cones from the Bow Road slip road and traffic flows freely but then they put the cones back and the queues begin again. I guess they can't overwhelm the roundabout if a fraction of it has been narrowed but it does feel like overkill, much of which could have been avoided with a more proactive traffic management plan.
I also get the impression every time I go past that not enough workers are on site, thus prolonging the works and condemning local drivers and bus passengers to four months of unnecessary misery. Combine slow work with excessive coning-off and it does seem like all this has been planned to suit the contractors rather than the rest of us, and still we queue.
RIBA often puts on some great little exhibitions of an architectural bent and this is no exception, a study of buildings old and new which had to be built in a very special way to fit an awkward site. The oldest is an Arts and Crafts cottage melded into a rocky Leicestershire landscape in 1898, complete with an original feature article from Country Life, and the newest is a boxy house conjured out of a water tower in Norfolk in 2021. Other live-in-spaces include a studio tucked into a Walworth railway viaduct, a holiday home inside a derelict Warwickshire castle and a flatpack house whose components had to be delivered to a remote Highland lochside. Grand Designs wannabes should perhaps take note. Rather larger projects also appear, including Coventry Cathedral (religious sensibilities), 55 Broadway (working railway underneath) and the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery (royal hatred). There are models to scrutinise, original plans to peruse and potted summaries to make sense of it all, plus a lightweight squidgy sofa to rest on in case they ever get the video content working. You won't spend more than 30 minutes here but you can always top up your visit with a trip to RIBA's cafe opposite (and thanks Martin for the tip-off).
Hard Graft at: Wellcome Collection, Euston Road from: 10am to 6pm (not Monday) until: 27 April
What aspect of social health have the Wellcome curators chosen to highlight this time? Ostensibly hard work but with a subtitled undertone of "work, health and rights", and when you step inside not even quite that. Instead they've picked three workplaces to focus on and no the office doesn't get a look in, instead it's Plantation, Street and Home. Plantations originally meant enslavement but even after emancipation they left a toxic legacy of petrochemical cemeteries and the American penal system, as you'll learn. The 'Street' section skips over hawkers and sweepers before focusing unashamedly on prostitution and the importance of standing together, then 'Home' deals with domestic drudgery, particularly that of migrant servants. I found the whole thing unsatisfyingly diffuse, almost boxticking for the sake of it, despite a couple of standout displays.
There's often an interesting exhibition on the mezzanine at the rear of the Entrance Hall. Alas this is more worthy than interesting, a very long board highlighting global conservation projects, so well done but don't expect anyone to be interested in the detail.
Hello Brain! at: Francis Crick Institute, Midland Road from: 10am to 6pm (not Sun, Mon, Tue) until: 20 June (closed 15 December - 7 January)
This giant research hothouse beside St Pancras is mostly packed with biochemists but the public is welcome to access a slice of the ground floor with a cafe and a toddler-friendly playzone. Its small exhibition space is currently devoted to all things cerebral, including a set of knitted neurons courtesy of Australian art project Neural Knitworks. The exhibits are spread across a dozen cases, labelled at child height, many of which recount what smiling figures are doing upstairs. I learnt about railway worker Phineas Gage whose personality changed after an explosion impaled an irod rod in his brain, I discovered how scientists have mapped the neural connections of fruit fly maggots, and I compared the brain size of various animals from a goldfish to a capybara. The entire exhibition text is available on the Crick's website if you'd rather just learn stuff and skip the knitting.
Soil, Toil and Table at: Lethaby Gallery, Granary Square from: 11am to 6pm (not Mondays) until: 25 January (closed 16 December - 13 January)
If you want to see what St Martin's most creative students have been up to, here's a roomful of projects responding to the challenges of agriculture and food production, which opened yesterday. Each tackles themes of cultivation, culture, dining or renewal, and may be a practical proposal or an utter flight of fancy. I'm putting Justina Alexandroff's Gutt Plugs in the latter category, colourful acrylic stool-testing devices 'designed to give pleasure to the user'. Elsewhere Pati made symbolic clay tiles by repurposing soil from HS2, Ruiyi reconstructed crockery by forcing forks through plates and Vaishnavi plonked two coloured squares on the ground and claims they 'explore the foundational pillars of civilisation'. She'll go far.
Lost Victorian City at: The London Archives, Clerkenwell from: 10am to 4.30pm (not Fri, Sat, Sun) until: 5 February (also open Sat 14 Dec)
The first floor lobby at the former London Metropolitan Archives is often used to display a themed historical throwback, and the current exhibition looks at Victorian sights and buildings that no longer exist. The Crystal Palace is a fairly obvious inclusion, the Royal Aquarium and the backstreets of Limehouse's Chinatown somewhat less so. A particular treat is the work of very early photographers who captured images of buildings about to be demolished, for example the Oxford Arms coaching inn near the Old Bailey which survived the Great Fire but which was lost to developers in 1877. 122 contemporary photos by SPROL (the Society for Photographing Relics of Old London) are available for your perusal here. It's a bit odd walking round an exhibition while researchers from the adjacent library keep popping through to use the toilet, but I did learn from an adjacent display that the phrase 'to spend a penny' comes from the Great Exhibition because that was the cost to use the first public flushing toilets in the refreshment rooms.
Would you like to see another tube map typo?
If you're TfL, probably not.
It's not a spelling mistake it's a missing word, if that helps you spot it. Nobody at TfL spotted it, nor anybody at the printers, or if they did they just thought never mind let's use these duff maps anyway.
The typo is on the tube map aboard Elizabeth line trains.
I've checked other new tube maps like the posters at stations and the tube map aboard Overground trains and they're all OK, it's only purple trains with the error. Tube maps in tube trains aren't affected because they haven't been replaced because there wasn't enough money in the budget. But the tube maps in Elizabeth line trains are printed on card inserts, not sticky plastic, so they were prioritised for a colourful upgrade... and someone got them wrong.
We've already had one tube map typo associated with the introduction of the new Overground line names, you may remember, which was a missing word in the key on the pocket tube map.
You might not think missing 'line' off the end of Mildmay was the end of the world, but TfL deemed the typo serious enough to order that all pocket tube maps be removed from display. You can still pick one up at a tiny handful of stations, for example Barbican and Paddington (Crossrail), but generally speaking London's racks are entirely empty awaiting a reprint. Look out for that next week.
The new tube map error, if you haven't noticed yet, is that one station name is entirely missing.
That station name is Kennington, which for some mysterious reason is not there. Its interchange blobs were rejigged in 2021 to accommodate the Battersea extension so maybe that's something to do with the underlying glitch, but whatever the cause its name has vanished from the map. That's not ideal an at important interchange like Kennington, particularly given that Crossrail passengers might well go on to change trains there.
Another oddity is that the Liberty line is in the key although it's not on the map - the eastern edge chops off before it gets to Romford - although that's not an error, that's an editorial decision.
The line diagrams aboard Elizabeth line trains have also been updated to show Overground line connections. There are no issues here although there is a new symbol, with SP being used for the first time to denote a Short Platform. Whatever next?
But the real awkwardness is the unplanned absence of Kennington on every Crossrail tube map. By my calculations that's four omissions in every carriage, or 36 in every train, or 2520 missing Kenningtons across the entire Elizabeth line fleet. Will they all be replaced or will these duff maps continue to shuttle between Berkshire and Essex for the foreseeable future? Next time you're on a purple train do take a look at the tube map and see if Kennington's unfortunate absence is still there.
What I had for dinner on December 4th for the last 45 years
1980 roast 1981 turkey & ham pie 1982 mince 1983 roast beef 1984 chicken 1985 Christmas dinner 1986 fish and chips 1987 cottage pie 1988 turkey 1989 steak & kidney pie 1990 pie 1991 fish and chips 1992 fish and chips 1993 mince 1994 mince
2010 mince 2011 pie 2012 pie 2013 burger 2014 cottage pie 2015 rustica pizza 2016 ragu 2017 chicken 2018 ravioli 2019 pizza 2020 fish and chips 2021 pizza 2022 pie 2023 pie 2024 fish
I went to the V&A with BestMate. We went to the Design galleries and saw some designs. Then we went to the Furniture galleries and saw some furniture. Then we went to the Ceramics galleries and saw some ceramics. Then we went to the Glass galleries and saw some glass. Then we went to the Sculpture galleries and saw some sculpture. Then we went to the Photography galleries and saw some photographs. Then we went to the Theatre galleries and saw some theatricals. Then we went to the Jewellery gallery and saw some jewellery. Then we went to the Paintings galleries and saw some paintings. Then we went to the Silver galleries and saw some silver. Then we hunted in the cafe to find the toilets. Then we walked through the gift shop and left the building.
Characters who've appeared in The Archers just once in a calendar year
A description of the item that arrived in the post 40 years ago today
I sent off for this item. It was made in Japan. It has a Jack in the Box on it. It's heavily branded. It's just over 30cm long. It's two shades of blue on the front and white on the back. It has a monkey on it. It would float. The surface has many longitudinal grooves. It was manufactured by Wonder Co Ltd. It's very thin. It has Father Christmas on it. It's food-related. If you'd asked my fellow students they wouldn't have been at all surprised I sent off for it. It rhymes. The paint pots topple. I have used it many times. I've found a page devoted to it on the internet. I think they ran out of ideas when they got to the robots. I sent off for another one. I still have both of them.
The first word in every book of the Bible (King James Version)
In Now And And These Now Now Now Now Now Now Then Adam And Now The Now There Blessed The The The The The How Now In The The The Now The The The The In The The | The The Forasmuch In The Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul God James Peter Simon That The The Jude The
Some of my walks to school
i) leave the house, turn right, first left, continue to the end of the road ii) leave the house, turn right, first left, continue to the end of the road, cross with the lollipop lady, first right, take the path on the left iii) leave the house, cross the churchyard, turn right, first left, continue to the end of the road, turn right, first left, first left, turn right, turn right, cross with the lollipop lady, turn right, first left, up the drive on the right iv) leave the house, turn left, continue to the end of the road, take the first turning off the roundabout, take the first turning off the roundabout, sixth left, up the slope v) leave the house, turn left, turn right, turn right, first left, continue to the end of the road, turn right, follow the path on the right, through the gate on the left
Trains from Helsinki to St Petersburg/Moscow in April 2000
'Tolstoi'
'Repin'
'Sibelius'
Helsinki Pasila Riihimäki Lahti Kouvola Vainikkala Vyborg St Petersburg Tver Moscow
0630 0635 0717 0750 0824 0914 1112 1317
1534 1540 1625 1704 1745 1842 2040 2242
1734 1740 1825 1904 1946 2042 2245 | 0636 0838
The ten smallest allotments in Sutton
0.03 hectares: Pylbrook Triangle 0.1 hectares: Priory Crescent 0.2 hectares: Beddington Park, Clensham Lane, Wandle Side, The Warren, Wrights Row 0.3 hectares: Cheam Court, Cheam Park Paddock, Fryston Avenue
Join me on a journey of data-driven disappointment as I attempt to answer a question nobody else is asking.
What are the five smallest parks in Barking & Dagenham?
There are all sorts of fundamental questions here, not least "what is a park anyway?", but thankfully Barking & Dagenham council have provided a precise number and a helpful map.
"We're so proud Barking and Dagenham has 28 brilliant parks and open spaces which are much loved by so many people. Our ambition has always been to provide a range of accessible, good quality facilities for residents of all ages and abilities to enjoy." [Councillor Saima Ashraf, Deputy Leader of the Council]
But which of these 28 are the smallest? What we need is official data, and thankfully the council have provided this in their Parks and Open Spaces Tree Planting Strategy. This 51 page document lists the area (in hectares) of 28 parks and open spaces to two decimal places, in a table which appeared to answer all my questions. So I went out and visited the five smallest in the hope of bringing you cutting-edge reportage everyone would enjoy. Let's see how I did.
This one's close to the old Dagenham car works, not far from Asda, and lurks behind a ring of 1930s council housing off the main road. It has heraldic gates because it's one of 471 King George V Fields opened across Britain to commemorate the monarch by providing recreational opportunity. This one's been much altered and effectively segregated by age, with the addition of a fenced-off playground on one side of the main path and a separate area for adolescents on the other. Youngsters get an incredibly sparse selection of equipment including two swings and a rockable pig, while the older lot get a skateramp, a basketball court, a climbable thing and a cluster of unvandalisable benches. The only space for ball games is a separate rectangle of lawn where I disturbed a stereotypical youth in grey joggers wafting weed, who promptly wandered away. A bit bleak, even when it isn't December.
Before Dagenham was a massive estate with a car plant it was a quiet rural village, and here we are at the medieval church by the medieval Cross Keys inn. As B&D goes it's extremely incongruous. The churchyard was once known as God's Little Acre and is still signed as such, although following a Victorian extension it's now two acres in extent. Feel free to wander amid the graves reading epitaphs to beloved Mary, devoted Reginald, sleeping Lily and dear Patricia Doris. The only 21st century burials seem to be from family members sharing someone else's plot. The most evocative memorial is the pillar dedicated to 20 year-old PC George Clark, "barbarously murdered in a field" overnight in June 1840, whose pillar tells us His Uniform Good Conduct Gained Him The Respect Of All Who Knew Him And His Melancholy End Was Universally Deplored.
But by the back gate I found an information board naming this churchyard as a Local Nature Reserve, not a Park, so I started to query its presence in this list. Indeed when I got home I studied B&D's graphic more closely and it turns out this burial ground doesn't appear, the map includes only 26 parks not 28. As a result it seems I'd wasted my time coming here and researching the churchyard in person.
It also means King George's Field jumps up a place in my list which means we need a new fifth park to take its place. Thankfully I'd had the presence of mind to visit what I thought were the six smallest parks in Barking & Dagenham, just in case, which means I do have reportage for the actual number five.
This is somewhat underwhelming, a long rectangle of mostly grass laid out between contrasting flanks of lowly postwar flats. At one end is a single-storey community hall, offered at a peppercorn rent, beside a small playground that's mostly slides and swings. The council once used funds to provide some outdoor gym equipment and a rope slide collecting two landscaped humps, but that's about as good as Heath Park Open Space gets. All praise to B&D's Parks and Environment Maintenance Team for keeping the litter down, and seemingly dealing with the turd count too. At the adjacent shops I encountered several pensioners at the poorer end of the spectrum, shabbily anoraked, and the launderette was unsurprisingly doing good business. On the plus side I was amazed to see that the local takeaway offers cod and chips for just £6, about half of what's normally charged up west, but don't rush.
Before there was Barking Riverside there was the Thames View Estate, an isolated slice of housing added in the late 1950s between an industrial park and the railway. Newlands Park was its sole token greenspace, entirely insufficient in size by modern standards but since jazzed up to try to appeal to modern tastes. The playground has climbing frames and spiral slides Heath Park can only dream of and a choice of zoo animals to rock on. A skateramp, an all weather football pitch and an Adidas basketball court also have been provided. On the downside anyone attempting a perimeter jog gets to follow a red path with a chronically cracked surface, a sign by the back entrance laughably describes the place as a 'Pleasure Grounds', and the view to the west is all building site at present as the council replaces the original lowrise flats with denser brick-faced stock.
A short walk east of Barking town centre the railway tracks divide, and tucked inbetween (accessed via footbridge) is the tip of Essex Road. And where another terraced street bears off is a tiny triangular garden, one side along Suffolk Road, the other along Essex, provided for the benefit of a few hundred local residents. Initially I thought it was locked but the third gate turned out to be open, allowing access to a tarmac circle, a sinuous path and five trees. It felt a bit like someone had been to the playground store and fetched objects to sit and climb on, including a big log, a long curved bench, six stone spheres and some boulders. These apparently arrived in 2010 courtesy of Play England, along with one of those double-ended metal tubes you shout down, but not much else so I guess the local adolescents have their fun elsewhere.
Located almost at the very northern tip of the borough, I very nearly didn't find this one because it's not where the council website claims it is. When I did eventually spot it, through unbroken railings round the back of the cemetery, it then wasn't at all obvious how to get in. I deduced I needed to use an unlabelled gate further up Kingston Hill Avenue but this turned out to be locked, not by a council padlock but by a shiny chain of the kind a large dog might wear. Inside the rec I could see a man with a bull breed dog running up and down as if engrossed in training, and with no other way in I deduced the chain must be his. A sign on the gate advertised a website called Bully By Nature, whose limited range of goods includes a "combat collar" designed to "unleash your pet's inner warrior", and what I've concluded is that I'm bloody glad I never managed to get inside Kingston Hill Avenue Recreation Ground because it appears to be regularly frequented by my worst nightmare.
I was also now highly suspicious of my original data because Kingston Hill Recreation Ground was a lot bigger than Essex Road Gardens, maybe by a factor of 10, so couldn't possibly be Barking & Dagenham's smallest park. I've since measured both parks' area on a map and discovered that the measurement for Essex Road Gardens ought to have been 0.074 hectares, not 0.74, because whoever compiled the table muddled their decimal places.
Essex Road Gardens is thus is the smallest park in Barking & Dagenham by a considerable margin, and for completeness sake the list of five smallest parks in the borough ought to be as follows...
1st: Essex Road Gardens, Barking (0.07 hectares) 2nd: Kingston Hill Avenue Recreation Ground, Marks Gate (0.56 hectares) 3rd: Newlands Park, Thames View (0.79 hectares) 4th: King George's Field, Marsh Green (0.9 hectares) 5th: Heath Park Open Space, Becontree (1.23 hectares)
So ended my journey of data-driven disappointment.
Fri 1: I bought some Edding 55 pens online yesterday because I can't find them in the shops any more, and they were due to arrive today. Before they arrived I got three emails saying "Please note, your driver is unable to leave this item safe" which nearly made me stay in all day, but in the end the package was so teensy the driver merely posted it. I then got three emails urging me to review the delivery, and I gave the delivery emails one star.
Sat 2: The hoardings in Dunton Green said Beautiful Retirement Apartments To Buy For Over 60s and I instantly discounted it, then realised with a shock that by the time the shell was complete I'd be in the target age bracket. But it's still very much a no, I couldn't live in Kent. Sun 3: Bob Harris has taken over Sounds of the 70s and it's not what it was, more a story-telling nostalgia burst with a focus on music rather than listeners. That music also appears to be more American and/or guitar-based, much as Sounds of the 90s has always been pop-obsessed and Sounds of the 60s keeps nudging towards soul. Hurrah for Sounds of the 80s. Mon 4: I'd like to remind everyone that the day before the Presidential election we still had no idea who would win, only hopes and hunches, even though it now feels like the end result was always inevitable. Tue 5: It feels like there are a lot fewer fireworks on Fireworks Night these days, not just because it's midweek this year but because people can't afford to set off hundredsofpoundsworth in their back gardens or a local public space.
Wed 6: I bought myself a drink in a City pub, a gassy bottled beer that wasn't Becks, and was appalled that it cost £7. But when they gave me the contactless gizmo my card kept failing to register, then the barman wandered off, then I thought it had worked, and only when I checked my statement a few days later did I discover payment hadn't gone through and the beer had actually cost me £0. This never used to happen with cash. Thu 7: That is not the email you want to wake up to in the morning. Sudden, slow and so sad. Fri 8: Supermarket update: I fancied some cut-price Mr Kipling Cherry Bakewells but they were mis-priced because staff had stacked the 'full sugar' and 'less sugar' versions round the wrong way. The healthier ones should of course be cheaper. I pointed this out to a nearby member of staff and he chatted merrily as he switched them back, avoiding some future customer spending £1.30 more on the wrong ones. Sat 9: May's Confectionery, the long-mothballednewsagents that's somehow lingered for a decade in the heart of Greenford, has finally been emptied and converted to three flats and a small pristine retail unit. I hope someone makes good use of it, but I shall miss the sunbleached boxes of Maltesers, Cadbury's Snack bars and Freddo Caramels.
Sun 10: My favourite sentence I deleted from today's blogpost was "Instead old industrial barges unfloat beside ex-boathouses and decrepit rowing boats fail to bob." Sorry Isleworth. Mon 11: In my alphabetical library book quest I wasn't fussed by Tóibín, enjoyed the grit of Updike, wallowed in Vidal and am about to dive into Waugh. I can't believe I've never read Scoop before. I fear picking an X may be a lot harder. Tue 12: That's the first time I've ever read in advance the book that went on to win the Booker Prize. It's Orbital by Samantha Harvey, a slight but lyrical tome about a day aboard an orbiting space station which focuses on six astronauts/cosmonauts and the swirling planet laid out below. If you'd like to hear an abridged version, Radio 4's just repeated all five episodes.
Wed 13: The area round the new flats in the centre of Lewisham has fully opened up, so on the bright side it's a tad quicker to walk to the pedestrian crossing and on the downside the path funnels between glitzy highrises with all the allure of an Elizabeth Duke jewellery box. Thu 14: It's a damned shame that Doctors is finishing after 24 years, not because I always watched it but because when I did it was always well written, and because that's a lot of actors, scriptwriters and production staff who'll no longer have a regular training ground. They ended it well with a pregnant hostage, a vanquished villain and an ear irrigation. Fri 15: I've added another 300 followers on Bluesky in the last month and will add 300 more before the end of November, which is ridiculous given that what I post there is of no relevance whatsoever. Sat 16: It's really tough when you pick a new name for a social media account and the best names have already gone. I tried all sorts of possible endings including -er, -ing, -ling, -ly, -erer, -ble, -bock, -smith and -monger, but eventually settled for -erd.
Sun 17: While I was walking from Oxhey to Croxley I checked to see what the Metropolitan line extension looks like eight years after they cancelled it, and the trees growing on the tracks are now above bridge level. Mon 18: If you're going to observe the farmers' inheritance tax protest, make sure you don't turn up a day early by mistake and wonder where all the tractors are. Tue 19: Scott Mills is probably the right person to take over the Radio 2 Breakfast Show, not that I listened to Zoe anyway. Once she leaves Jeremy Vine and Sarah Cox will be the only daytime DJs still in the same slots as three years ago, and Jeremy the only pre-2018 survivor. Wed 20: While I was riding the tram bus today I was approached by a BBC London reporter asking if I'd do a voxpop but I turned him down, sorry. In reassuring news, no voxpops appeared in his final news report.
Thu 21: Today I warned you "If anyone posts any Overground line name comments on any future post, I will shift them back to this post instead" and so far 13 comments have been shifted back (in case you're wondering where your diatribe went). Fri 22: I keep picking up the new weekly Standard newspaper even though it remains targeted at readers in Putney rather than Plaistow. Editor Dylan Jones is nudging it further and further towards a paper version of their previous lifestyle magazine ("The finest watches of 2024", "My life in bespoke suits") with a selection of opinion pieces slanted centre-right, so I'm pleased he's quitting but I'm not sure it's rescuable. Sat 23: My electricity bill took 11 days to arrive and demanded payment within 14 days. I duly did so, but they still sent a letter saying I hadn't paid yet which arrived 7 days after I definitely had. What I take from all this is that the postal service is broken.
Sun 24: I've finally got round to watching series 1 of Slow Horses, the Apple TV drama that was filmed during lockdown when I stumbled upon a nigh perfect facsimile of a bus stop and shelter outside the Barbican. It turns out the bus stop appears only once during the six episodes, and only for a few seconds and seen only from a window across the street and is irrelevant to the plot, so I don't understand why they put all that effort into making something so fabulously detailed that nobody would ever see. Mon 25: I'd like to apologise to my Dad for sitting through BBC2's Quizzy Monday and offering a commentary and/or attempted answers throughout. Neither of us normally have company on the sofa so we don't usually get the chance. Tue 26: The last time we met, before her optician's appointment, one of the things we discussed was her husband's ashes and when they might be scattered. This morning it's her face on the front of the order of service, smiling as always, as the stained glass shines rainbows onto the brickwork. The flowers are gorgeous, the eulogy is rightly eight pages long and the delivery wrings all the emotions from the assembled congregation. At the wake we reminisce over scones and cream, it being too early for cold meats, and everyone gets a candle to take away, forever in our hearts.
Wed 27: When it rains a lot, as has been the case a couple of times recently, the Cycle Superhighway behind Bus Stop M becomes a splashpool because the water no longer drains away. Bikes thus avoid it by riding up onto the pavement, repeatedly, and if someone could come and clear the drain we local pedestrians would very much appreciate it. Thu 28: Where shall we go for a walk, asked BestMate, and as we scrunched across Sandy Heath beneath sun-dappled trees on a carpet of leaves aiming for Parliament Hill, I was glad we didn't go to Sutton instead as originally planned.
Fri 29: Gah, not again? But two years is longer than I'd hoped for. Sat 30: In my quest to spot all the numberplate letter pairs I've now been at it for a full calendar year, but I haven't seen any new ones since August so my total remains 515 out of 519. FYI the pairs I've yet to see are UE, UT, UV and VH. They must be out there somewhere but I fear I may never see them.
