Other London stuff I've not mentioned while I've been wittering on about the Fleet: • The London Transport Museum in Covent Garden closes at the end of this week for an 18-month-long upgrade. I thought I'd better take a look round, having somehow never visited the place (not since it was based in an old bus garage in Clapham, anyway), so I popped in last Friday. The collection is extensive and impressive, although now a little out of date (apparently the Jubilee Line is due to open in 1999). I enjoyed the selection of historic buses, the informative displays, the chance to stand in an old Metropolitan tube carriage and all the carefully-collected ephemera. There was even a 3D cross-section of Stockwell underground station, back in the days when gents could wear a top-hat and dress coat on the platform without being shot. One elderly visitor hobbling round the tram exhibit told me that as a boy he had been on the very last tram to descend into the Kingswaysubway, and you could see the nostalgia in his eyes. There are just seven days left to visit (and maybe raid the shop's relocation sale), before something more modern emerges in 2007. • Two anonymous faces can be seen staring out from advertising posters on many of London's buses and tubes this month. The "Casual Passer-by" is an eccentric project by Russian artist Braco Dimitrijevic in which he takes very occasional black and white photographs of random people and then exhibits them as art. Braco's 2005 London portrait is of an almost-elegant Chelsea woman, whereas his 1972 image features an ever-so-seventies gent with Brylcreemed hair and arched glasses. See them both now at Sadlers Wells Theatre or at the Tate Modern (or all over London). • Have you ever dined out at the S&M cafe? I hadn't until last week but I can now thoroughly recommend meat-munching at any of their three London outlets (it stands for sausage and mash, by the way). • The Tube Relief charity challenge took place last Thursday, raising cash for the victims of last month's tube bombings by attempting to visit as many of London's underground stations as possible in one day. Some of the participants even managed all 274. More here, here, here, here and (much more) here.
