What's your favourite BBC Radio station? Is it 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5? Or one of the digital-only stations like 6 or 7? Or one of the many BBC local radio stations? Or some other BBC radio station, like the World Service? Vote away...
You only get the one vote, so choose carefully before you click "Vote". And please note that this is a BBC-radio-only poll. Please ignore that commercial station you like, or that internet channel you listen to all the time, or WKQX Chicago, or whatever. If you don't have a favourite BBC radio station, please don't vote. Ta. [poll now closed, thanks]
I've always been a Radio 1 devotee myself. At least since the age of 14, that is, when I finally caught up with The Nation's Favourite after a dalliance with speech radio. I tuned in to the big One to listen to a mix of new singles and golden oldies, delivered by a succession of big name DJs with egos the size of the hits they were playing. There was DLT on breakfast, then Simon Bates with the Golden Hour, then Paul Burnett and Andy Peebles in the afternoon before Kid Jensen at drivetime, and Mike Read and John Peel in the evening. They may all have moved on, but I'm still there several decades later.
I never advanced to Radio 2 because I prefer a bit of challenge, not cosy comfort. I never elevated to Radio 3 because my taste is definitely popular rather than classical. I never matured to Radio 4 because I need music and entertainment in the background, not intellectual stimulation. I never jumped ship to Radio 5 Live because I can't think of anything more tedious than opinionated callers and racing results. And I never switched to local commercial stations because they're shallow ad-infested drivel. So every radio in my house is still tuned to 247275 98.5FM, and I can't imagine it any other way.
Obviously I don't listen to Radio 1's entire output, because some of the latest bunch of DJs are obnoxious vacant tossers, although wasn't it always that way? But there's still originality, humour and intelligent delivery if you know when to listen, coupled with a playlist that successfully drives music forward. I recognise that I'm now well outside the station's target age range, but I have no intention of growing old gracefully. You're welcome to your 2, 3, 4 or 5, but it's Radio 1 that still makes me smile.
Forty years ago today, Britain had only three legal radio stations. There was the Light Programme, full of jolly tunes for housewives. There was the Home Service, full of plummy announcers and erudite discussion. And there was the Third Programme, full of gramophone concertos and stuffy operas.
Forty years ago tomorrow, all that changed. Suddenly there were four radio stations, numbered One, Two, Three and Four, and groovy teens suddenly had something worth listening to. Broadcasting would never be the same again. So let's remember the threshold of modern radio, established 1967.
Radio 2 » The first record played on Radio 2 was The Sound of Music by Julie Andrews • If you fear Radio 2's getting more Ross than Wogan, try joining the The Radio 2 Preservation Society (R20K) » Radio 2's 40th birthday schedule, tomorrow, features a Kenny Everett Show from the archives, Pick of the Pops with Smashie and Nicey, and Sing Something Simple
So London has spoken, and Boris Johnson is to be the Conservative candidate for next year's London Mayoral election. Well there's a surprise. There was me thinking that Victoria would wing it, or maybe Warwick or Andrew would sneak ahead and pip everyone at the post. But no. Boris romped home with more than 75% of the vote, at least among the 19000 Tories and 1000 non-Tories who bothered to vote in the primary phase. He'll need a lot more support than that to win in May.
Boris's Mayoral campaign benefits from a not inconsiderable web presence. There's Boris the politcal thinker, battling against the Uzbek billionairemenace. There's Boris the MP, trolling around the village halls of rural Oxfordshire. And there's Boris the multimedia campaigner, inviting you to sign up for email updates and to add a Back Boris banner to your blog. There's not a lot of policy on Boris's Mayoral site at the moment, he's still at the "mission statement" stage. There's not even mention of his beloved bus policy - death to the bendies and Routemaster resurrection. The former policy is clearly a winner, but the latter is more of a smokescreen. There'll be no rear-platformed omnibuses reinstated on the streets of London if Boris is victorious, just a call to TfL's designers to build something a bit Routemaster-like (but with wheelchair access) for delivery on some unspecified date in the future. It's better than nothing, but it's not instant transport nirvana.
The stage is now set for a Ken v Boris election. OK, it'll actually be a Ken v Boris v Brian election (or even a Ken v Boris v Brian v Siân v Lindsey v Garry v Richard v several other nutters election), but all money will be on either red or blue. And hey, there's not long to go now until polling day itself. Only... 222 days. Sigh. It looks like Londoners will have to put up with an extended period of ranting, posturing and mud-slinging before they're allowed anywhere near a ballot box. There's a lot to be said for instant snap elections and not drawn out predictable contests. Assuming you've made your mind up already, as I have, it could be a desperately tedious 8 months.
Boris's Bendy Bus Bingo Create a magic square by eradicating all the bendy bus routes. Every row, every column and every diagonal must add to 111. Pick carefully, and don't pick bendy.
[Please don't stick the answer in the comments box, but do tell us how you get on]
Nearly 20 years ago, government transport planners came up with with the idea of a super-duper railway line straight through the middle of London. Crossrail would speed passengers across town in minutes flat. It would link places like Slough and Heathrow in the west to Romford and Canary Wharf in the east. It would be a futuristic railway with extra-long high capacity trains. It would help hundreds of thousands of people to go to work in the City or shopping in the West End. And it would cost a heck of a lot of money. So it was never built.
It's not easy to find fifteen billion quid for a railway. Governments aren't generally happy at stumping up that sort of money for a transport link which most of the electorate will never use. The total cost is even higher than the entire Olympic budget, and we all know how popular that's been. But you can't dig tunnels under central London without spending money, and without pledged cash this project is doomed to fail.
Things were a lot easier 100 years ago. The Central, Bakerloo, Northern and Piccadilly lines were all constructed within a single decade, using private finance, back in an era when there was far less infrastructure buried under the capital. Only two more tube lines have been built across London since, and Crossrail is doomed not to be the third. Which is why the government is going back to private finance, to the major corporations based in the City, and grovelling for cash. Pay up, or we won't build the railway you so desperately need in order to stay profitable. So far, no response.
Problems at Woolwich demonstrate the mess this project is in. The original plans for Crossrail included a proper big station at Woolwich, on the southeast Canary Wharf branch. Trouble was, this new subterranean station was going to be terribly expensive, so the planners dropped it. Sorry to the local population, all tens of thousands of them, but the new railway was destined to burrow straight underneath them without stopping. A wholly wasted opportunity, and all because the investment wasn't "affordable". But at the last moment a building company stepped in and offered to pay for the station so long as they were allowed to build lots and lots of new homes on top. Result. They'll get a stonking profit later on, and the good citizens of Woolwich are no longer sidelined.
But Crossrail as a whole is still stalled until somebody finds the remainder of the money to pay for it. Ken Livingstone reckons the project just needs "the last few hundred million pounds", but nobody seems to have them. Big business isn't interested, because they have their eyes on short term profit rather than long term gain. And the Treasury isn't interested, because spending money doesn't win votes. Some people have a very blinkered view of the future.
So it looks like we, the people, are going to have to find the last few hundred million pounds ourselves. If everybody in the UK contributed five pounds to the Crossrail project, we'd have the money in no time. A fiver's not much. It's one meal out, or half a round in the pub on a Friday night, all to be paid back (with interest) next time you want to get to Heathrow in a hurry. Or if everybody in London donated fifty quid, that'd reach the total too. It might mean forgoing a few DVDs, or a nice pair of shoes, but it's all for the common good. And we might just have ourselves a transport lifeline by 2015.
As we established earlier this month, one of the best things about blogging is getting comments. They're the icing on the cake, they're added depth, they're two-way conversation. But how do you get comments? I thought I'd carry out a scientific study to try to find out. I've looked back through five years of diamond geezer to see which of my posts got the most reaction. I've only counted single posts with a single comments box, and I've not counted any of my own comments within each total. And that leaves just ten posts which have gathered more than fifty comments. Here's my top ten most commented.
1) How deep is your screen? [115 comments] (9th November 2005) I wondered how big my readers' computer screens were, so I posted a huge long list of London's old telephone codes and asked you to tell me how far down the list you could read. Well over 100 of you responded, and we discovered that the most popular screen resolution was 1024x768. (It still is, by the way, but 1280x1024 is catching up fast) How to get comments, Rule 1: Run a survey, and make sure that the survey is extremely quick and easy to enter.
2) The Highway Code for Cyclists [73 comments] (31st October 2006) I wrote a tongue-in-cheek list of instructions for the capital's cyclists, jumped-up bunch of selfish red-light jumpers that they are. The capital's cyclists leapt to the attack, while scores of pedestrians sprang to my defence. I wouldn't say much has changed since either. How to get comments, Rule 2: Pick a subset of society, preferably a self-righteous subset, and insult them. And then sit back and watch.
3) My 40th birthday [70 comments] (9th March 2005) Not only was it my 40th birthday but it was also my Mum's 70th. You lot couldn't resist chipping in and wishing us both a happy double celebration, which was very nice of you, thanks. But I suspect it helped that "Happy birthday" is a dead easy comment to write, with no thinking time required. How to get comments, Rule 3: Tell everybody that it's your birthday. Special "round number" birthdays get the most comments.
4) Doughnuts - the aftermath [59 comments] (20th July 2005) Ah, the legendary "doughnuts" experiment. You wrote lots of comments on a miserably short post about doughnuts, but then wrote even more the following day as we dissected the results. If nothing else, we discovered that the number of comments on a post often bears no relation to how interesting a post is. And that you like jam-filled stodge. How to get comments, Rule 4: Writing about comments is an extremely good way to get comments.
5=) Starbucks comes to Whitechapel [57 comments] (26th March 2007) I noticed a new Starbucks opening in Whitechapel (in Whitechapel!) and wrote about it. And then in my last paragraph I insulted people who feel the need to drink multinational corporate coffee. And that seemed to upset a lot of caffeine addicts. But not as much as the eradication of local enterprise upsets me. How to get comments, Rule 2: Pick a subset of society, preferably a self-righteous subset, and insult them. And then sit back and watch.
5=) Ranking supermarkets [57 comments] (10th August 2005) I gave you a list of 12 UK supermarkets and asked you to shuffle them into rank order with the most respectable first. You stuck Waitrose at the top of the list and Lidl at the bottom. It was a nice simple idea and easy to respond to, but people also chipped in with a lot of fascinating (and class-ridden) insights along the way. How to get comments, Rule 1: Run a survey, and make sure that the survey is extremely quick and easy to enter.
7) London's burning [55 comments] (30th January 2007) I ran an entirely fictional week, timeshifted into the future, in which I pretended I was blogging from a new mobile phone whilst escaping from a tube train beneath Armageddon-hit London. You wrote lots of comments, but you saved most of them for the moment when you believed I was dead. Well thanks for that. How to get comments, Rule 5: People are really good at responding sympathetically to tragedy. Or imagined tragedy. (Or blog hiatus)
8) Thanksgiving [52 comments] (23rd November 2006) We don't celebrate America's turkeyfest over here. I dared to query other alien American concepts and phrases, such as "Junior High" and "The Prom", and you lot suggested more. Various American readers then thought we were taking the piss and promptly demonstrated their legendary sense of humor. Too easy. How to get comments, Rule 2: Pick a subset of society, preferably a self-righteous subset, and insult them. And then sit back and watch.
9=) Four letter words [51 comments] (13th December 2004) You know those really rubbish stocking filler books that appear every Christmas, with a few words scattered across a handful of tiny pages? I asked you to help me write one by contributing four four-letter words each. If only I'd got my act together and sent the result to a publishing company, I could be a rich author by now. How to get comments, Rule 1: Run a survey, and make sure that the survey is extremely quick and easy to enter.
9=) Saturday blogging [51 comments] (22nd September 2007) It's true - the number of blog visitors really does take a tumble on a Saturday. So I was very surprised when a Saturday post ended up getting more than fifty comments. Serves me right for questioning the social capability of my weekend readership, I guess. How to get comments, Rule 2: Pick a subset of society, preferably a self-righteous subset, and insult them. And then sit back and watch.
Conclusion: If you want a lot of comments, either ask your readership a very simple question which requires very little thought, or insult the bastards.
There are two different types of job: — jobs where you time your work — jobs where you work your time
Some people time their work. They're given a task to do and told to get on with it, and they get paid as and when it's done. Their income relies solely on them getting the work complete, so they have an impetus to knuckle down and get on with it. They might work fifteen hours a day on some days, or just five hours a day on others, whichever is more appropriate to the job in hand. And when the work's done that's it, they head home, that's their choice. Living job-by-job like this makes long-term planning difficult, but some people appreciate the independence of timing their work.
Some people work their time. I'm one of them. I'm paid a salary for what I do, and my contract says I work a set number of hours a week. Sometimes I end up working longer than that because there are "things to be done", but on the whole my working day is a similar length each day. I have plenty to do to keep me occupied, and any manic periods are generally balanced out by lulls and pauses at other times. I can plan my life, even six months from now, because I have a pretty good idea how my work is arranged. I like a bit of stability, and working my time gives me that.
Most of us work our time. We have a start time and a finish time, at least roughly, and it's our job to be available and productive between those times. Or at least available. Sometimes being productive is more difficult. We've probably all had those days where we have to be in the office, or on call, or whatever, but there's absolutely nothing to do. That usually means staring out of the window, or trolling the internet, or tackling the sudoku, or making another cup of tea, or planning your next holiday, or rearranging your email folders, or anything else that makes you look busy when you're not. Thankfully these days are few in number, for most of us at least.
But for some who work their time, there's a lot more time than work. It's their job to be ready to work, should the situation require it, but most of the time there's nothing to do. Absolutely nothing, except to wait. These people come to work at a set time, and they go home at a set time, and they get paid even if nothing happens inbetween. They're the clock-watchers left to their own devices to keep themselves awake and alert. You know the sort of people I mean... ... Firemen (who, unlike their other 999 counterparts, play a lot of volleyball) ... Shopkeepers (notably those in specialist boutiques which nobody ever seems to visit) ... Security guards (who spend almost every shift waiting for absolutely nothing to happen) ... Office temps (has anyone got any photocopying for the office temp to do? no? sorry) ... Village postmistresses (I wonder if anyone will come in and buy a stamp today) ... Art gallery staff (who do nothing but look at people looking at art, in case one tries to nick it) ... Waiters in not-very-popular restaurants (yes sir, we have several free tables) ... Understudies (oh damn, is the leading actress still fit and well? ah never mind) ... IT shift workers (because someone might ring with a technical query at 3am, you never know) ... (you must be able to think of some more)
It sounds great, getting paid to do absolutely nothing most of the time, but I bet it isn't. I couldn't do it, not week in, week out. Even for easy money. I'd be bored out of my skull if my job didn't engage my brain, leaving me to twiddle my thumbs for most of the "working" day. I'd hate having to sit around for hours, waiting for a real task to come along, until hometime finally came around. I suspect you may be the same. Because an unengaging job is an unsatisfying job, and sometimes avoiding tedium is more important than gaining salary.
As we shift further and further into a service economy, increasing numbers of people are going to find themselves forever poised to offer support that nobody requires, waiting around all day, in case they're ever needed. Because some people do time, rather than doing work. I salute you - sooner you than me.
It's been two months since the Olympic Park was sealed off and its occupants ejected. Two months since an impenetrable big blue wall was erected all around the perimeter, and a bored-stupid security guard posted at every entrance gate. Two months may not sound long, but it represents more than 3% of all the available construction time. So what's been going on here since July? Is the site still a ghost town of crumbling warehouses, or have the Olympic Delivery Authority and their big yellow bulldozers been busy? It's a bit of both, actually.
It's still possible to gain public access to the heart of the Olympic Site by following the Greenway. This sewer-top footpath has recently been resurfacedand upgraded in an attempt to make it more attractive to the local community, and newly installed lighting now makes this a slightly more enticing place to walk and cycle after dusk. Somebody's been a bit over-enthusiastic with the signage, though. Several pristine white signposts have been erected along this stretch of the Greenway, informing travellers that Hackney Wick and Bow are one way and Stratford and West Ham are the other. And then the same thing again 100 metres later. And then again, and then again, at similar 100 metres intervals, just in case you have the memory span of a goldfish. The southernmost signpost even manages to point the wrong way, directing cyclists straight ahead into a fence alongside the Great Eastern railway, rather than down the gentle slope underneath the nearby bridge and up the other side. Full marks for design, zero marks for practicality.
The security fence alongside this particular slope has been specially selected as home to 2012's first "branded hoardings". Alice, the ODA's Marketing Manager, is extremely excited by all this. Rather than leave passers-by staring at blue-painted plywood, her department have covered 100 metres of wall with shiny photographic panels and important brand messages. There are some appropriately uplifting images of athletes, and that technicolour 2012 logo we all love so much. There are big yellow warnings signs urging children not to play on site, plus some artists' impressions of what the finished development will look like. There's a list of the fourgroupsfundingconstruction of the Olympic Park, although no sign of the names of the 40 million taxpayers and lottery players whose money is really making things happen. And finally, as a sign of things to come, there's a gleaming list of official Olympic worldwide partner organisations and their corporate logos, just for added visibility. Coca Cola, McDonalds and Samsung have never taken a blind bit of interest in this industrial wasteland before, but the TV cameras are coming in five years' time and it pays to get here early.
Up on the bridge above Marshgate Lane, I had my camera at the ready. I've decided to try taking a photograph from exactly the same spot on the parapet every two months or so until 2012, in an attempt to document all the changes taking place down below. At this stage, with just twophotographs, the resulting slideshow plays like an Olympic Spot The Difference puzzle. There are huge changes already, but only on the left-hand side of the road. The large brick warehouse with the wedged-vent roof (built by the University of London Faculty of Engineering, and until recently a waste disposal depot) has been completely demolished. All the beautiful willow trees overshadowing the Pudding Mill River have been uprooted and chopped down. Vegetation on the banks of the river has been stripped away. Workmen with a big orange digger were busy dumping rocks and gravel to block off the concrete channel. A further army of diggers could be seen crawling all over the surrounding scrubland, where teenage motor-scooter petrolheads used to go scrambling, levelling the land ready for the Park's perimeter service road to be built on top. Meanwhile, on the right-hand side of the road, almost all of the factories, offices and big metal sheds still stand... but for how much longer? Be in no doubt, the Olympic Stadium will be ready bang on schedule, and nigh nothing visible in my latest photograph will remain.
Half a mile further north, yesterday was also closing-down day for the Manor Garden allotments. With the final harvest now safely gathered in, the last few allotment holders were forced to pack away their tools and have been escorted from the Park for the very last time. Their futile attempt to withstand the invasion of the Olympic planning process has come to nought, and an enforced five-year-plus relocation to Leyton is now underway. A big march and rally were held yesterday afternoon, as a last hurrah, with participants tying bouquets to the iron security gatesat the top of Waterden Road in protest. It won't do any good - the 2012 meteorite obliterates everything that lies beneath its destructive path, and no human force can stop it. The demolition of the Lower Lea Valley is already underway. Rebirth suddenly seems a very long way off.
Well known autumnal fact 1: There are four seasons in a year Officially, astronomically, the seasons all start and finish at either a solstice or an equinox. And today is the autumnalequinox, which makes today the start of autumn. It's all because the earth is tilted on its axis, which means that different parts of the planet get more direct sunlight at different times of the year. Yes, obviously. Now tell us something we don't know...
Little-known autumnal fact 1: Autumn is shorter than summer It's true. There may be four seasons in a year, but they're not all of equal length. It's 94 days from the summer solstice to the autumn equinox, making summer the longest of all the seasons. But it's only 90 days from the autumn equinox to the winter solstice, making autumn four days shorter. Winter's even shorter still, just 89 days, the shortest season of all. We may be entering the cooler, darker half of the year (between now and next March), but it's also the shorter half of the year. Here are the precise figures.
Season
Spring
Summer
Autumn
Winter
Start
00:08 21 Mar 07
19:11 21 Jun 07
10:51 23 Sep 07
06:09 22 Dec 07
Finish
19:11 21 Jun 07
10:51 23 Sep 07
06:09 22 Dec 07
05:57 20 Mar 08
Duration
93 days
94 days
90 days
89 days
So why aren't the four seasons equal? It's because the earth's orbit around the sun isn't circular, it's an ellipse, and so some bits of the earth's orbit are nearer to the sun than others. Kepler's Second Law says that planets travel a bit faster when they're closest to the sun, and a bit slower when they're further away. The earth happens to be closest to the sun in early January, which is when it travels fastest, so autumn and winter are relatively short. And the earth is furthest from the sun in early July, which is when it travels slowest, so spring and summer are relatively long. It's not by much, but it's enough to make a difference. Autumn isn't a quarter of a year long, it's really 1½ days shorter than that. Make the most of it.
Well known autumnal fact 2: Today the sun is directly overhead at the equator Sorry to those of you with Seasonal Affective Disorder, but nine minutes to eleven this morning is the official moment when the overhead sun switches from the northern to the southern hemisphere. It's about to be spring in the latter, but it's about to be autumn in the former. Damn. Or, if you're Antipodean, hurrah.
Little-known autumnal fact 2: Today is not the day that day and night are of equal length It's true. Sunrisein London this morning was at 6:47am, while sunset tonight is at 6:58pm. So that makes the day 22 minutes longer than the night. Equality comes in three days time, around September 26th. Just look how rapidly the gap between daylight and darkness is changing this week. It's always fast-changing like this around the equinoxes.
Date
Sep 21
Sep 22
Sep 23
Sep 24
Sep 25
Sep 26
Sep 27
Sunrise
06:44
06:46
06:47
06:49
06:51
06:52
06:54
Sunset
19:02
19:00
18:58
18:55
18:53
18:51
18:48
What's longer?
day by 36min
day by 28min
day by 22min
day by 12min
day by 4min
night by 2min
night by 12min
So why aren't day and night equal today? It's because the sun isn't a point of light as seen from the earth, it's a disc. At sunrise the top of the sun peeps above the horizon about a minute before the centre. And at sunset the top of the sun dips below the horizon about a minute after the centre. Atmospheric refraction means that we can still see the sun even when it's really below the horizon, adding a few more minutes to both of those times. And it's that pair of extra minutes that make all the difference. Daylight today is therefore still 22 minutes longer than darkness. But the illusion won't last long. In just ten days time darkness will already be as much as a whole hour longer than daylight, and then it's downhill all the way to Christmas. Let joy be unconfined.
I don't know why I'm bothering to write this. Nobody reads blogs on Saturdays. Nobody except you, obviously, dear reader. But then you don't have a life, obviously. If you had a life you'd be off doing something else, wouldn't you, and not wasting your weekend reading this.
Saturday's the one day of the week that most people are really busy, with stuff they actually want to do. They're not stuck at work bored out of their skulls, like on a weekday, desperately surfing the internet for something to read. They're not lounging around the house, like on a Sunday, catching up on online stuff because there's nothing else to do. No, today is the odd day out. There's no time for blogging, and no time for reading blogs, not on a Saturday.
If you had a life you'd still be in bed, asleep, recovering from the excesses of last night. Or you'd be up and getting dressed and heading out of the house, ready to fill your day with social and retail extravagance. It's Saturday and the shops are beckoning, so shouldn't you be off out spending your money and sipping cappucinos? Or climbing into the car to go and visit friends, maybe for a whole weekend away somewhere. Or going to watch a football match, or pumping iron down the gym, or taking a picnic to some stately home, or buying up all the tiles in B&Q and then stripping the bathroom for a weekend of grouting action. Do you not have a wedding to go to, you sad friendless individual? You shouldn't have the time to even sit down, let alone turn on your home computer and read this. Not on a Saturday. Loser.
Nobody blogs on a Saturday, either. Well, not many people anyway. Less than half of the blogs in my sidebar bothered to post anything last Saturday, they were all far too busy experiencing life instead. Blogs that churn out posts every other day of the week go silent on Saturdays because there are better things to be doing. And because nobody's reading. Visitor numbers to blogs tumble on Saturdays, as readers vote with their mouse and stay away. Blogs don't get anywhere near as many readers on a Saturday, and they don't get as many comments on a Saturday either. So there's really no point in blogging on a Saturday, no point at all. Because nobody's listening.
Apart from you, obviously. You're here, even if nobody else is. Thanks for bothering to find time in your busy Saturday schedule to come and see what I've written. Maybe you're only fitting in a quick five minutes online before you go out and do something interesting and offline for the day. Maybe you're stuck at work, or maybe the weather's really crap where you are, or maybe the boyfriend dumped you last night and all your plans for a carefully crafted sociable weekend just died. Whatever.
So maybe it is still worth blogging on a Saturday, but only for an exclusive audience of sad, friendless geeks with no life. Hello. And everyone else will be no doubt be back tomorrow evening, and they'll never realise what they missed.
To my mind, the finest dining establishments in London aren't in the Michelin Guide. They don't serve up organic medaillions in mango jus, neither do you need to book a table three weeks in advance. No, the finest dining establishments in London are listed in a book called Classic Cafes. They serve up fried stuff with chips, and anyone can slouch down in a formica booth without an appointment. These very special eateries are survivors of a pre-Starbucks age, back when muffins were toasted rather than shrink-wrapped, and when a great cup of coffee came with sugarcubes, not cinnamon sprinklings. But later this month one of the capital's most famous Fifties cafes is closing down, snuffed out by rising rents and creeping redevelopment. It's a damned shame (even if most Londoners never even realised it existed). So, last Friday, BestMate and I sneaked along for one last supper.
The New Piccadilly cafe/restaurant can be found at number 8 Denman Street, just round the back of Piccadilly Circus. It has a bright and colourful frontage, especially if the red neon sign is switched on and the word EATS is illuminated in large friendly letters for all to see. In the right-hand window those "eats" are fully catalogued on a faded orange menu, for your delectation and delight. Apart from the effects of decimalisation and inflation the list of trademark Anglo-Italian dishes has barely changed since the 50s (bar a few replacement platters such as CHICKEN CURRY AND RICE handwritten on white stickers). There are certain meals listed here that you'll not find anywhere else - for example ESCALOPE PICCADILLY GARNI - as well as strange but marvellous concoctions such as STEAK, CHIPS AND SPAGHETTI. Step inside and you can sample the lot.
BestMate and I arrived at half past five expecting queues, but there were none. We headed for a booth halfway down the restaurant, opposite the "ching ching" cash register, beneath a deep red lampshade and a "happy retirement" greetings card. Our vintage beverages arrived promptly, his a sparkling Coke in a dimpled tumbler, mine a cup of perfect orange-brown tea. For my main course I selected one of the house specialities, DAN'S COW PIE AND TWO VEGETABLES, although this divine gravy-soaked pastry concoction has had to be restickered STEAK PIE to fit in with the Trade Descriptions Act. As for the two veg, there's none of your poncey courgettes and broccoli florets here, oh no, we're talking yellowy boiled potatoes and a pile of proper green peas. BestMate's plate was half CHIPS, which is never a hardship, along with a dollop of fried EGG and a thin slice of STEAK. Nothing even approximating haute cuisine, but perfect comfort food all the same.
Lorenzo, the cafe's owner, was holding court behind the counter. Every now and then he broke off from his conversation to pull another coffee from the vintage pink espresso machine, then returned to the till to survey his fast fading empire. Two white-jacketed waiters dashed around between the tables, increasingly busy as the evening wore on and further diners arrived. It was easy to tell who were genuine regular customers and who were one-off new-media opportunists. The latter all had cameras with them and were busily snapping souvenir photographs of the cafe's finer interior features. I was one of the latter group, alas, but I tried to keep my image retention to an unobtrusive minimum. "OK, I've taken a photo of the wall of postcards and the pile of plastic lemons and the security notice about gentlemen's hats. Hang on, let me just try one more shot of the big horseshoe menu at the rear of the restaurant, this one might not come out blurred."
After clearing our plates, the dessert selection proved irresistable. But which of the six sponge puddings pictured on the back of the menu to choose? Chocolate maybe, or ginger and lemon? In the end BestMate plumped for the TREACLE SPONGE and I chose a very traditional SPOTTED DICK, both liberally flooded in a two-inch deep ocean of skin-topped custard. It's hard to imagine a less healthy pudding, but man cannot live by probiotic yoghurt alone.
Before we left I took the opportunity to visit the prehistoric toilet out the back (which won't be missed when the place closes), and then returned to pay Lorenzo the bill, plus discretionary tip, plus compliments. I'll not be coming back. The cafe closes for good tomorrow evening (or, if the conversation BestMate overheard while I was in the loo is true, on the following Sunday, September 30th). And then in October the place will be gutted (as will its clientele) and Lorenzo will head off for a well-deserved retirement. I hate to think what nasty irrelevant development will replace the New Piccadilly, but if they don't serve cow pie and spotted dick I'm not interested.
Exactly 250 years ago today, on 20th September 1757, the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel opened its doors to the public. This doesn't make it the oldest hospital in the country, but a quarter of a millennium is still a very long time to have been serving the medical needs of some of the poorest communities in the country, and well worth celebrating. If you live in East London this'll be a hospital you'll know well. It's huge, for a start, and the hospital's benefactors also had the sense to build right next to a busy main road. None of this modern greenfield miles-from-anywhere rubbish, where every hospital visit means hopping in your car or catching two buses. The Royal London is where the capital's Air Ambulance service is based, so you've probably seen their big red helicopters either in real life or on a TV documentary. And later this year the BBC will be bringing you Casualty 1907, a historical drama series based on genuine Royal London medical records of the era. Alas infamous hospital resident JosephMerrick (the "Elephant Man") won't be appearing in any of the stories because he died two decades earlier.
As part of my continued commitment to report back to readers on important London events, I paid a special 250th anniversary visit to the Royal London back in May. It's ever so easy to gain free admittance - just dial 999 from any home in the neighbourhood and a kindly chauffeur will arrive at your front door within minutes to whisk you off to the main entrance. I arrived at half past six in the morning, when admission queues were at their quietest, and was given exclusive access to the A&E department's resuscitation room. This is a long off-white gallery with three separate trauma bays, each with various screens, scanners and gadgets hanging from the walls and ceiling. Most visitors only ever get to see the ceiling. As I waited on my trolley for the day shift to arrive it was sobering to reflect that more people have probably died here, four feet off the ground in this windowless room, than in any other location in the whole of Tower Hamlets. Mine, thankfully, was always going to be a two-way visit.
My grand tour next took me to one of the nearby wards, in a desirable location overlooking the snooker club and McDonalds in Whitechapel High Street. I was one of eight special guests taking advantage of the 24 hour full board experience, although not everyone was enjoying the experience (or even conscious of it). Here the courteous staff attended to my every need with a smile, perhaps because I wasn't the moaning one-legged bitch in the corner repeatedly demanding that the nurses remove his catheter, lift him out of the bed and wheel him to the toilet. There was a genuine tropical atmosphere in the ward, due in no small part to the air conditioning having irrevocably broken down some weeks earlier, and those of us tethered to our beds were forced to endure permanent sweaty steam-room conditions.
Brief respite came when I was offered a wheeled excursion of the hospital's lower levels. Naturally I leapt at the opportunity to explore more of this fascinating building. My tour guide pushed me straight through the main entrance hall, past the little shop that sells flowers, chocolates and souvenir model helicopters. On along the main ground floor corridor, its dour architecture somewhat reminiscent of a crumbling Victorian asylum. Then down a level in the spacious silver lift, avoiding the spiralling institutional staircase with its shiny stone steps and curly iron banister. And finally along a grim basement corridor, deftly avoiding oncoming electric vehicles transporting their cargoes of pristine bedlinen, stained gowns and discarded swabs. As I rose from my chair to wait for my two o'clock appointment, I stared out of the back entrance towards the vast building site at the rear of the hospital. 250 years on, the Royal London is being almost completely reborn. A twin-towered 17-storey glass block is being erected immediately behind the existing main building, and within a few years it'll completely dominate this part of East London. My local hospital will be the biggest, most cutting edge, gleaming-est hospital in the whole wide NHS, so they promise. Let's hope they fix the air conditioning as well.
I enjoyed my anniversary visit so much that I've booked to go back again at regular three monthly intervals. It's lucky I'm not sick or anything.
1907 The door to Morlock's bakery is wedged open and welcoming, wafting the smell of fresh-baked bread out into the high street. A flat-capped East End husband waits patiently outside while his wife buys buns and scones for afternoon tea. The flower seller beneath the gaslit lamppost is pinning a buttonhole to the lapel of a gentleman's jacket. Yes, she has change for a sixpence, thank you kind sir. Across the street it's opening time at the Rose and Crown. Above the doorway hangs a shiny glass lantern bearing the name and logo of the local brewery. Jack and his mates from the docks will be propping up the bar and downing the landlady's finest ales until she throws them out at the end of the evening. Jack hopes he'll make enough money down by the wharf tomorrow to be able to get the wife's engagement ring back from the pawnbroker. Business is quiet at the undertakers, and Selby's fine-trimmed horses pass the time by depositing steaming manure onto the cobblestones. Two petticoated servant girls arrive at Mrs Edwards' steam laundry to collect the household's fresh-pressed bedlinen. One of them catches sight of her sweetheart leaning against the drinking fountain on the village green, and giggles and blushes. Business is brisk at a dozen market stalls along the roadside. Candles are four a penny, firewood is plentiful and cheap, and the greengrocer even has oranges in stock. Grubby children in Board School uniform run rings around the horse trough, shrieking and laughing before their parents summon them home for bed. Miss Mary Anne Read rushes from the schoolroom to the butchers to buy herself a brown paper bagful of braised liver as a special suppertime treat. At number 12 Mr Samuels the fishmonger scrubs his green and white tiles clean of scales and slime, before raising the awning and closing up shop for another day. A queue of orphans, invalids and chancers has built up outside the Good Shepherd Mission Hall, hoping for overnight shelter and charity. Perhaps they'll be fortunate tonight. Poverty has aways been visible here on the streets of Bromley. Nothing changes.
2007 The shutters at the newsagent have come down early. A pot-bellied East End bloke pops into the chemists nextdoor for three months supply of tubular bandages. He banters semi-incoherently with the headscarfed lady behind the counter as she drops his boxes into a plastic bag. With a grin he exits, turns left and pauses for breath outside the boarded-up pub. Three centuries of drinking came to an end last year, the last remaining slice of history in this Blitz-ravaged high street. All the windows at the Rose and Crown have been nailed shut, and the paint across the lintel has started to peel. Above the doorway hangs a grimy glass lantern bearing the name and logo of a former local brewery. Several of the pub's regulars have shifted allegiance to the neighbouring betting shop and are stood, or slumped, outside the open doorway clutching cans of value lager. Their faces are glum and grizzled, and only a winning raceslip can brighten their narrow-focused world. The local barber shop has moved away to a brighter location on the main road. Three hooded youths are intently inspecting the graffiti on its whitewashed wall. "Kombat E3" woz ere. "We set the levels". They appear to approve of what they see. A single midweek market stall has been erected on the concrete piazza, just outside the Bangladeshi greengrocers. A white-bearded man sits patiently while two fully-cloaked women haggle over the price of south Asian vegetables, then shuffle off home with this evening's meal in a blue and white striped plastic bag. In the chippie the smiling Polish fish fryer waits while a family of five select unbranded fizzy drinks from the chiller cabinet. A plump old lady in a pink fleece sits alone at the front formica table dining on Pukka pie and chips - best meal of the day. She watches through the window as two young kids cycle round and round in vicious circles before zooming off towards the dry cleaners at great speed. Regeneration has passed this corner of East London by. Nothing changes.
10pm, Central line: The carriage is a complete mess. A carpet of at least 20 free newspapers lies scattered all across the floor - two left over from the from the morning and the rest a fairly even split between Lites and Papers. There are a couple more on the ledge beneath the window, wedged inbetween empty lager cans and rotting apple cores. And I'm forced to pick up yet another off the seat as I sit down. Damn, it's a London Lite, but I guess it'll pass the time between here and Mile End. Two girls enter the carriage at the next station. "Oh hell, what a mess!" says one to the other, before reaching down to the floor and picking up a copy to read herself. Most of the other seated passengers are doing the same. It's late - well after the last freesheet distributor has left their post and gone home - so everybody's reading a recycled paper. Don't even think about where your copy's been since it was thrust into an eager hand several hours ago. Later, as passengers get off, they dump their paper back where they found it ready for somebody else to flick through. And yes, I'm leaving mine back on the seat too, because there's nowhere nearby to dispose of it properly. Somebody'll thank me for it, but probably not the litter collector with their big plastic bag at the far end of the line. Assuming they haven't gone home too.
Multiply this scene by a few hundred and you start to get some idea of the environmental drama playing out every weekday night in every train carriage in London. Things were bad enough when we just had a free morning paper, but the evening freesheet battle raises the stakes to ridiculous new heights.
And whose fault is litteredLondon? Is it the evil press barons merrily flogging advertising space in content-lite gossip rags? Well partly. Is it the in-yer-face distributors standing outside stations yelling "Lite! Lite!" like demented automatons whilst thrusting newsprint into the face of every passer-by? Well sort of. But I lay most of the blame at the feet of those whose job it is to run our stations and our streets. Because there are never any bloody litter bins around when you want to use one!
You're getting off your train in the evening, free paper in hand. Where do you chuck it? Not on the platform, because there are no bins on the platform. They'd only get in the way and slow down passenger movement, apparently. Not in the ticket hall, because there are no bins in the ticket hall. Typical, stations can find always room for a rack of fresh Metros in the morning, but there's never any space for a bin in which to discard your London Paper later in the day. Not on the street outside the station either. You might find one of those special newspaper recycling bins on the pavement in Zone 1 when you're going to work in the morning, if you're lucky, but in the evening there aren't anywhere near as many of them in the suburbs as there ought to be (and if there are they've usually already been filled to overflowing with other non-paper-based litter anyway). So what do you do? You leave your paper on the train instead, that's what. If there's only a very small chance of having somewhere to chuck your freesheet after you've got off, the obvious alternative is to dump it in the carriage.
If clearing up after discarded freesheets costs so much, why doesn't somebody invest in a series of recycling bins outside every London rail and underground station? No matter what our homeward journey, we'd know there'd always be a receptacle at our destination station in which to dispose of our tabloid leftovers. OK, so not everyone would use them, but surely if you gave the public a guaranteed opportunity to dispose of their rubbish properly outside every station, a significant proportion of the litter problem could be cleared up. Hell, why not go the whole hog and introduce litter bins inside stations too. Sorry, I don't buy the "but they might be used by terrorists to hide bombs inside" excuse. It doesn't happen, does it? Just ensure that these new bins have a newspaper-sized slot in the front to make them rucksack- and gelignite-proof, and there'd be no problem anyway. And then we could all use these bins to recycle our disposable reading material, and not just end up dumping them all over our trains, stations and streets. Come on TfL, come on Ken, come on London boroughs. If you'd like us to act responsibly, at least give us the opportunity.
In the middle of a vast featureless wilderness north of Stratford town centre there's a long glass box and a deep hole. The deep hole houses several parallel railway tracks, and is linked by tunnel to StPancras at one end and Europe at the other. And the glass box is Stratford International station, from which it'll one day be possible to take a train to Paris or Brussels, One day. But not yet. For the time being this continental gateway stands structurally complete but entirely empty, awaiting fitting out and its first passengers. It's going to be a long wait.
As part of London Open House, a few select interested parties and transport geeks were afforded access to Stratford International station for a rare look around the site. We were probably the only scheduled visitors this site will have for the next couple of years, and we didn't even get anywhere near the platforms. When Eurostar services commence on the High Speed Rail Link on 14 November, they'll speed straight through Stratford at umpteen miles per hour without stopping. Nobody wants to slow down for a miserable East End commuter halt just seven minutes out of St Pancras, not when they could be halfway to the Thames crossing instead.
The station's other main drawback is that there's currently no sensible way of accessing it by road. We got there in a rickety minibus via a lengthy detour round Clays Lane and along several dusty meandering tracks. The main dual carriageway passing the front of the station ends slap bang in the middle of the fenced-off Olympic Zone, so there's no admittance for taxis, cars or buses via this route. You can't walk to the station from anywhere either, not until they build a new footbridge over the platforms at the other Stratford station. There's absolutely nothing on the surrounding site for half a mile in any direction, apart from barren bulldozed scrubland, and it'll stay that way until the Stratford City development starts to cover the area with shops, offices and unaffordable housing. Even the DLR doesn't get this far until 2010. Come back then and Eurostar might have bothered to add Stratford International to their timetables. But don't hold your breath.
Our tour group was ushered inside the empty entrance hall to view the grand spaces in which international travel will eventually commence. It's very long, with one complete wall of glass, and you'll be glad to know that the clocks and toilets are already fully functional. We swept easily through the non-existent ticket barriers and passport control before emerging into another long gallery, this time for arrivals and departures. One day this space will be full of Starbucks and Tie Racks, but for now it's just as vacant as the rest of the building. Messages flash up on the departure board ("Welcome to Stratford International") ("No further services planned") for nobody to read. In one corner is the entrance to the "CIP Lounge" (there'll be no VIPs here, just Commercially Important Persons). And, at either end of the concourse, several long blocked-off staircases and escalators lead down to the platforms below.
There are an awfullot of different railway tracks passing through Stratford - seven in total. The outermost tracks are for stopping Eurostar trains (and there won't be many of them). Next come the fast lines for non-stop international travel, followed by a pair of domestic platforms. Suburban services from London to Kent will (eventually) pass through this way, splitting at the new Ebbsfleet station to head for either Ashford or Canterbury. And finally, running down the centre of Stratford Box, there's a single track for trains bound for the new Eurostar depot at Temple Mills. Trains will be stopping in the local area, oh yes, but only so that the drivers and staff can get on and off. You won't be coming here any time soon, that's for sure.
London Open House(day 2): I've been on fewer visits today, but they've been rather more varied and spread out than yesterday. I'll save one of them for tomorrow, but here's everything you need to know about the rest.
Also visited: • St Mary's Church, Bow: It's not the church whose Bow Bells define the limit of Cockneydom, but it is a 14th century relic sandwiched between the carriageways of a major trunk road. The vicar was delighted to see a very local resident, and I was fascinated to discover even more local history than ever I knew before. I won't bore you with it, not yet anyway... .
posted 18:00
the Home Office: There used to be three hideous hulking office blocks in Marsham Street, inhabited by the Department of the Environment and wrecking views of Westminster Abbey and Parliament. No longer. These 60s eyesores have been demolished and replaced by three less intrusive buildings, just six storeys high, now home to the newly reorganised Home Office. For Open House they threw open their security doors (to a mere handful of punters who happened to spot the late-entrant tour hidden away on the website) and let us see inside Jack Straw's Empire of Justice. Hello to both of my readers who work there (or thereabouts), nice offices you've got. But the main focus of the tour was to view the public art around the outside of the three buildings - a series initiated when the new occupiers realised they ought to engage more with the surrounding environment. The rooftop is edged with coloured glass panels which cast mid-afternoon down light into the street . A mysterious 4-part stencilled motif hangs above the main entrance (three segments are identical, but rotated, while one is different). The motif is repeated in miniature on various other walls, allegedly hiding a secret message known only to a handful of civil servants. Two lockable walkways cut through the Home Office site, each with another special artwork. A chain of fluorescent tubes lights the way beneath one connecting bridge, while tiled "carpets" pave the northern passage . Alas the tiles here have proved rather slippery in wet weather and so the walkway currently has to be sealed off when it rains, for health and safety reasons. It would, presumably, be rather awkward for the department to have to sue itself.
posted 14:22
Shri Swaminarayan Mandir: The largest Hindu temple outside India can, of course, be found in Neasden. It's a mile long walk from the tube station, along the smelly North Circular and past IKEA. And then suddenly, at the end of a very normal suburban street (just behind a mini roundabout), the mandir's marble pinnacles rise abruptly skyward . This is no urban Disney castle, this is an important place of daily worship and devoted pilgrimage. Entrance through the ceremonial front gate and up the grand staircase is for special occasions only . Daily visitors enter via a slightly less impressive route - via the bag/camera deposit kiosk in the car park, then on through a metal detector and security check into the main building. Shoes off (men to the left, ladies to the right) and spiritual inspiration awaits. Directly ahead is a huge pillar-less prayer hall, not especially ornate but capable of accommodating thousands of contemplative worshippers. The main temple is to be found along a trophy-lined corridor, which could very easily be in a golf club or sports centre, and up a slippery marble flight of stairs (choose your socks with care). Several signs politely request absolute silence. The level of intricate detail in the carved walls, roof and pillars is astonishing. Every surface has been loving sculpted to create miniature deities and floral relief. It's hard to believe that the 26000 constituent parts were shipped across from India to be assembled here like a vast divine jigsaw, but it's easy to see why the temple inspires both awe and peace. And yet somehow it's not as big on the inside as it appeared on the outside - a sort of reverse Tardis, I thought. As locals circuited the perimeter muttering prayers and offering up donations to the gods, we Open House visitors felt honoured to be invited into the heart of a thriving spiritual community.
posted 12:37
The Roof Gardens: Unseen above Kensington High Street, on top of what used to be the Derry & Toms department store, is a sixth floor green oasis. Its existence explains the appearance this morning in a sidestreet, next to Gap and M&S, of an ever-lengthening queue full of grey-flecked horticulturalist thrill-seekers. If you weren't in line by twenty to nine you faced a very long wait for the lifts. There are three gardens altogether, each as unexpected as the next, as you wander round the rooftop plateau. First a herbaceous Spanish Garden, very Moor-ish, with blooming flowerbeds, watery trench and grape-twined balcony . The illusion is nigh perfect, bar the church spire nextdoor, and it's easy to forget that this is central Kensington . Built in 1938, trees and shrubs have had plenty of time to establish themselves, and the soil is deeper than it looks. The Roof Gardens are now part of the Richard Branson empire, and a Virgin flag flutters above the mini-bar and hospitality tent. Don't worry, he's not ruined it. Next to visit, down a long walkway, is the Tudor Courtyard. With white tables and chairs littered everywhere it looks more like a cobbled pub backyard, to be honest, but with much nicer ivy-clad walls. And finally a long thin Woodland Garden, complete with artificial stream, ducks and flamingos. Yes, honest, they've got those up here too - this is proper geographically incorrect decadence. From one corner there's a fine view out across West London (I've seen better, but still glorious on a bright blue morning such as this). The vista is rather better from the restaurant terrace above, now with trees and shrubs in the foreground, and the London Eye and Gherkin lined up behind the dome of the Royal Albert Hall. Don't tell the even-longer-now queue down below, but the Roof Gardens are always open to the public (so long as no private event has nabbed them first), so there's hope for everyone who still wants to view this elevated horticultural secret.
London Open House(day 1): What a glorious sunny day for a trek around central London. I managed to tick off 11 of this year's Open House venues along the way, and without either my camera or mobile phone's batteries quite running out. Around every corner, so it seemed, there was another green banner, another willing grinning volunteer and another lost-looking middle aged couple with an A-Z. There's no other weekend quite like it. Same again tomorrow?
Also visited: • Shoreditch Town Hall: Vast labyrinthine civic warren, abandoned to local government reorganisation in 1965 but currently being restored. Elton John held his 60th birthday party in the main assembly hall. • Hoxton Hall: Another old music hall, this time a thriving local performance space, complete with wooden upper balcony and saucy crimson drapes. • The JohnsonBuilding: Bright new office development in Hatton Garden built around a central six-storey atrium (which is apparently lovely in the sunshine, but the roof doesn't half make a racket when it rains). • Haberdashers' Hall: Modern Smithfield HQ of City livery company (who made their fortune out of hats), set around a peaceful cloistered courtyard . • Wax Chandlers Hall: Rather more compact home of a smaller City livery company (who made their fortune out of beeswax and candles), where I squeezed into the back of a tour when several pre-booked people failed to turn up. A most entertaining half hour tour & talk. • St Mary-le-Bow Church: High church in Cheapside, within the range of whose bells all true Londoners are (allegedly) born. The interior looked rather more modern than I was expecting, especially the stained glass, but the crypt apparently dates back to 1080.
posted 18:00
To the City, for free entry to two very different corporate entrance lobbies. 20 FleetStreet is the former home of Express Newspapers , and the foyer is an Art Deco masterpiece . The floor is an elegant ripple of black and blue marble. A central clock (very 30s) hides a tight elliptical spiral staircase. To either side are two large metal murals etched in silver and gold . And the ceiling looks like an upturned silver lemon squeezer, with several ridges radiating from a central drum. The foyer is abuzz with photographers, snapping with creative fury at every surface and every angle. You can't go wrong with a shot of this building in your portfolio.
It's a different story at 100 Victoria Embankment, the newly renovated HQ of Unilever plc. The curved facade may be the Edwardian original, but builders have scooped out the centre of the old building and replaced it with seven floors of modern offices arranged round a gleaming airy atrium . There's too long to wait for one of the guided tours, but the company are doling out free tea and ice cream in the lower mezzanine cafe. Free Magnum and cuppa, a perfect mid afternoon treat (also available tomorrow).
posted 15:04
VillageUnderground: A rather less middle aged queue here than at many other Open House venues. That's because this is Shoreditch, and the attraction is four tube carriages hoisted up onto the old Broad Street viaduct to be used as artists' studios. Entrance is up a narrow iron spiral staircase, with the first two Jubilee stock vehicles resting at the top. Up again, on top of two glass containers , to the higher pair of studios . Inside we find not straphanging commuters but graphic artists' workspaces. A laptop here, a banana tree there, and laminate worktops everywhere. There are fine views down over the rooftops and building sites of Shoreditch and, best of all, no unexpected delays due to broken down trains or engineering works.
posted 13:37
Wilton's Music Hall: The world's oldest surviving Music Hall lurks up a side alley behind a terrace of houses off Cable Street, E1. It's somehow survived wartime bombing, slum clearance and woodworm, and owes a debt of thanks to Sir John Betjeman for keeping the bulldozers at bay. As you step into the dimly lit auditorium you can easily imagine East End Victorian singing stars stepping out onto the stage to rouse the audience with a chorus of Daisy Daisy or Down At The Old Bull And Bush. Arched alcoves around the crumbling walls have been lit with delicate fairy lights, and there are three recently uncovered golden murals on the rear wall of the upper balcony. Ornate floral relief arches span the ceiling, and the spotlight shining on the central rose quivers every time someone steps on a supporting floorboard below . It's an astonishingly atmospheric relic of a bygone age and, cor blimey guvnor, it's still open for the occasional performance (Mozart's next). Restoration continues, and another £3½million is needed if the building is to be saved for future generations. I've just spotted the office geek wandering outside - I hope he didn't spot me and think the same thing...
posted 12:50
Kings Place: A brand new mixed-use development just north of King's Cross, beside a backwater basin on the Regent's Canal. It's a building site at the moment (due to open 2008), so I've just had to get togged up in hardhat and fluorescent jacket for the tour. Also joining us were the world's smelliest man and half a party of German tourists. The first floor and above will be the Guardian's new offices, while down below a new public cultural zone is taking shape. We got to stand on a temporary platform 18m above the new chamber music concert hall, and in the canalside rotunda that's planned to become a cafe/bistro. The outer facade is already complete - a unique design of wavy curved glass. Elsewhere there were blokes working, carrying pipes and drinking tea, even on a Saturday. They'll have to get cracking to get the rest of the building ready, and perfect, on time.
It's a busy weekend to be out and about in London. The Mayor's got his Thames Festival up and running on the South Bank (noon-10pm, Sat & Sun). It's London Walking Weekend, with free guided walks in all 33 London boroughs (yes, even Barking and Dagenham). Down in the southeast it's the launch of the Green Chain Walking Festival, with more than 70 free events to partake in (15-23 September). It's also the start of the London Design Festival, a post-modern celebration of 200 creative projects across the centre of town (15-25 September). And then there's the big event - London Open House. More than 600 buildings, old and new, will be opening their doors to the public for free in a two-day celebration of design, history and fine architecture. Who scheduled all these events for the same weekend? I bet they all appeal to a similar demographic, and that there's some evil scheming London Leisure Tsar responsible for this outdoor fixture pile-up.
But London Open House wins my vote, and I'll be out there with my lime green programme on both Saturday and Sunday seeing how many fascinating buildings I can get inside. Here are a few of my recommendations. Where are you lot going?
10 Open House venues where you might spot me this weekend Home Office HQ: major new Government building in Victoria (you had to sign up online for this one, but it wasn't listed in the Open House booklet so none of the tours filled up) (alas, bookings have just closed) Shri Swaminarayan Mandir: giant Hindu temple made from 2,000 tonnes of Italian marble (in Neasden, of all places) [photo] Village Underground: two recycled tube carriages atop a Shoreditch viaduct, used as artists' studios (Saturday only) King's Place: major new mixed-use development on the rail-lands north of King's Cross (not yet open, so this is a building site visit) Hoover Building: Art Deco façade along the A40 which now conceals a Tesco supermarket behind (queues likely) [photo] Wilton's Music Hall: the oldest surviving Music Hall in London, off Cable Street (part of the BBC's Restoration series) St Augustine's Tower: climb to the top of this lone 13th century tower beside Hackney's Narroway (ooh, I never realised you could go up that) (photo) The Roof Gardens (formerly Derry & Toms): one and a half acres of horticultural splendour, 100 feet above Kensington High Street (queues likely) (Sunday morning only) 120 Fleet Street: impressive Art Deco foyer to what was once Daily Express HQ (queues likely) [photo] St Mary's Church: medieval church in Bow, now sat on an island in the middle of the A11 (I've lived right next to it for six years, but I've never once been inside) [photo]
10 Open House venues I can heartily recommend from previous years Crossness Engines House: gobsmacking Victorian water-pumping works on the Bexley riverside (queues likely) [photos] Foreign Office & India Office: opulent government building in Whitehall, paid for by the fruits of empire (queues likely) (gorgeous) Freemasons' Hall: ornamental inner temple in Holborn, and HQ of the rolled-up trouser brigade (trowel not essential) Royal Courts of Justice: see behind the scenes of this vast Gothic building, including courtrooms and police cells (my favourite visit from last year) (tons to see) (Saturday only) Severndroog Castle: triangular folly atop Shooter's Hill, with panoramic views from the roof (long queues likely) Lloyd's of London: iconic City insurance behemoth, with the inside on the outside (long queues likely) (Saturday only) [photo] More London: shiny glass offices beside City Hall where accountants make lots of money (Saturday afternoon only) (you may need a head for heights crossing the atrium 9 floors up) House Mill: The UK's oldest and largest tidal mill, on the River Lea in Bromley-by-Bow (next to the Hell's Kitchen studios) 19 Princelet Street: Huguenot silk merchant's East End home, with a synagogue built into the rear of the house (now the Museum of Immigration and Diversity) [photo] Balfron Tower: Trellick Tower's older, shorter, and lesser known sister (it's in Poplar) (see inside a top floor flat) (get there early)
There was a bit of a spectacle down at the Thames Barrier on Sunday afternoon. Bet you missed it. Once a year they raise all the gates, just to check that they still work, and attempt to hold back the tide for ten hours. There are shorter monthly barrier closures too, but Sunday's was the full annual showpiece. It's rather impressive too. The closure started at low tide, around six in the morning, and by the time I arrived at noon there was already a considerable differential between the height of the water on both sides of the barrier. Downstream it was most definitely high tide. A crowd of locals had gathered on the terraces by the visitors' centre, looking out over the glassy water towards the upturned gates. This was London's flood defence in full effect, with millions of gallons of water being held back by an impenetrable wall of steel. Upstream the river looked very different. Here it was still low tide, and the pebbly beach beside the barrier remained fully exposed. Nine silver piers glinted in the sunlight, and a swarm of seagulls bobbed and swooped above the choppy white water inbetween. At one o'clock precisely a siren blared out from Barrier Control and a single gate rolled imperceptibly upwards. It raised into "underspill", just far enough to allow water to gush underneath and to begin filling the channel beyond. A surge tide rushed out across Woolwich Reach, forming a swirling tempest in the middle of the river. This was no scary wall of water, nothing dangerous, but it was a rare sight all the same. Every few minutes another gate was semi-lifted, rolling a few degrees upwards to allow yet more heaving water to tumble through. The assembled crowds stared, and smiled, and snapped photographs on whatever electronic gizmo they happened to have brought with them. It would be another three hours before the water levels had equalised sufficiently to allow the gates to descend back into the riverbed, and for maritime traffic to resume plying its trade up and down the Thames. And it'll be another year before the Environment Agency plans anything similar, should you fancy coming down next September (unless it rains a lot, obviously, in which case those gates might be rolling back up rather sooner).
I've got another article in Time Out this week. It's a guide to getting to the centre of HamptonCourtMaze, and it's written in the style of one of those adventure game books where you have to make a decision at the end of each paragraph. It's been nice to write something a bit different for a change. But my original piece turned out to be far too long, so Time Out's sub-editors have been forced to hack it down to ensure that it fits on page 16 above the strip cartoon. London's readers are only getting the half of it (but at least they'll get to the centre more quickly as a result). Here's the beginning of my original article, just as a taster, with all of the magazine's deleted chunks greyed out...
Hampton Court Maze has been baffling visitors for more than three centuries. It was laid out in the palace gardens in 1690, one of four mazes planted for the enjoyment of King William III and his court. The original hornbeam hedges have long since been replanted in yew, but the same half mile of paths survive to this day. The key to the maze's longevity is its forward-looking design. This is no simple one-track medieval labyrinth. This is a proper puzzle with seductive junctions, frustrating loops and deceptive dead ends. Fancy testing yourself? [1]
1) "The aim of the Hampton Court Maze", we're told on the information board outside the entrance, "is to get to the centre." Just in case you though otherwise. Cough up £3.50 (or wave your Palace entrance ticket) and venture inside. It's not a difficult start. The dead end immediately to your right has been blocked off to form a storage area and an exit passage, so veer left and trek around the western perimeter. It's easy to be over-confident at this point, striding ahead as yet unchallenged. But the first junction - a narrow gap carved through the hedge - introduces initial indecision. Take your pick. Through the gap and left? [2] Through the gap and right? [3] Or continue along the original path? [3]
[to be continued - either in today's Time Out or (in full) on this blog in December]
Somewhere random: 23 Cranley Gardens, Muswell Hill I don't get very long to research these random boroughs. The random Haringey location I was really seeking was the house of the late Mr Trebus - the notorious garbage hoarder. But I couldn't locate his Crouch End address on the internet in time, so instead I headed north to the home of another man who had trouble disposing of his rubbish. To 23 Cranley Gardens, the last home of serial killer Dennis Nilsen.
Today this is just a very ordinary semi-detached house in a well-to-do residential neighbourhood. Cranley Gardens is a wide tree-lined avenue blessed with panoramic views down the hill to the east. Residents keep their front lawns trimmed and their crazy paving hosed clean. Many of the houses have been divided up into flats, and number 23 is no exception. The garden is full of well tended shrubs, the path has been laid with red terracotta tiles and the front door is a too-bright shade of lilac. Most importantly, the drains no longer smell. That was the telltale giveaway back in 1983, the first hint that the new resident in the attic flat might not be quite as normal as he seemed.
Dennis Nilsen had already murdered 12 men before he moved into Cranley Gardens. In his new upstairs abode he was to strangle three more. John Howlett came round for a night of rampant sex in 1981, but ended up face down in the bath until he never came round again. Dennis attempted to cover his tracks by hacking John into manageable chunks and flushing bits of him down the toilet. He then boiled John's head on the hob, and hid his larger bones either in the garden or at the back of the flat in a tea chest. There's hospitality for you. Homeless Graham Allen suffered a similar fate, as did heroin addict Steven Sinclair several months later. But Steven was one body too many for the sewage system to cope with, and the other residents of number 23 soon summoned a plumber from Dyno-rod to try to clear the blockage. When the police came round and confirmed the discovery of human remains in the pipes, Nilsen promptly confessed all. He's currently serving life at a prison in East Yorkshire, and he's up for parole next year. The local Neighbourhood Watch are no doubt already planning to ensure that he won't be returning to Cranley Gardens when, or if, he ever comes out. by bus: 43, 134
Somewhere pretty (part 2): more Parkland Walk The northern stretch of the Parkland Walk begins just a skull's throw from Dennis's old house. The old railway tracks are now a meandering footpath through the trees, emerging from a wooden fence on the site of the old Cranley Gardens station. It's much quieter here than on the southern part of the Walk. The only people I passed along the way were a group of local kids swinging from a rope, and a small girl on her way to piano practice pedalling determinedly behind her "mama".
This is only a short walk, but it holds the most marvellous surprise. The path suddenly juts out across the slopes of Muswell Hill on an unexpectedly tall viaduct, with magnificent views across northeast London and beyond. Walk a few steps further and Docklands and then the City come into view, with the Gherkin, Tower 42 and new Broadgate Tower poking up above the rooftops. This must have been a quite spectacular train journey 100 years ago, even without the skyscrapers. Today's path soon grinds to a halt, however (because the council have since built a school across the tracks), so the final destination can only be reached via a gentle parkland climb. But it's one hell of a destination...
Somewhere famous: Alexandra Palace If there's a major attraction in London less fortunate than the Millennium Dome, it must be AlexandraPalace. This hilltop entertainment hub opened to the public in 1873, attracting more than a hundred thousand visitors in its first fortnight. On its sixteenth day the palace burnt to the ground, killing three members of staff. Oops. So the Victorians tried again and rebuilt the place, and it's only burnt to the ground once since. History was made here in 1936 when Alexandra Palace was home to the world's first TV studios (which I've visited before), and a few years later during the war thousands of German civilians were interned here "for their own safety". And now, apparently, council trustees plan to sell the whole building off to a commercial developer intent on converting broadcasting heritage into a fitness centre and restaurant. Oh it's had quite a history has Ally Pally, not all of it good.
I was pleasantly surprised on Saturday to discover that the entrance at the western end of the old palace was open, and the interior deserted. The Palm Court is one of the few parts of the building to have survived the 1980 fire, and its high glass roof is still an impressive sight. I wandered unchallenged beneath the arched ceiling, admiring the fountains and carved pillars and leafy green fronds. Nextdoor the Phoenix Bar was serving up beer and fresh-grilled burgers to a none-too-huge lunchtime crowd, while an ice cream van stood unbothered by the roadside. The front of the palace is in a sorry state in places, but the central rose window rises up majestically above the promenade. Oh the view from up here, the view is fantastic! The whole of London was spread out in front of me, almost completely unobscured by intermediate contours. I watched as a small wedding party gathered at the top of the parkland slopes and pledged their troths, with the photographer making the most of the spectacular vista beyond.
The old BBC studios are in the eastern corner, beneath the giant antenna mast that still pulses TV signals out across North London. And at the far end, by the car park, is the entrance to the ice rink. You won't get very far inside without paying, and you probably won't want to go inside unless you're a screaming pink-jacketed teenage harridan. I don't think I've ever visited another London attraction quite so overrun with gangs of raucous boisterous girls in fat jeans, and I kept my distance as they tottered down through the car park to catch the bus home. Far better I thought to walk peacefully back along the promenade, past the now-snogging bride and groom, to watch the sun breaking through the clouds over Haringey and beyond. Alexandra Palace is a great survivor, and may the councilnever ruin it. by bus: W3 by train: Alexandra Palace by tube: Wood Green
WALK HARINGEY Somewhere pretty: Parkland Walk Finsbury Park to Highgate (2 miles)
This is a photograph of Crouch End tube station. It's no good searching for Crouch End on an underground map because it isn't there. You might find it on a post-war tube map, but this particular station never opened and now all that's left are these two desertedplatforms with a dual carriageway of nettles inbetween. The good people of Crouch End therefore have to rely on the number 91 bus to get them up to town, and the rest of us can enjoy standing in a leafy cutting in the middle of nowhere, imagining what might have been.
There was once a railway here, opened in 1867, but it was owned by the Great Northern. The line ran from Kings Cross out to Barnet, with an additional spur linking Highgate to Alexandra Palace. London Transport intended to take over the Crouch End stretch of the line in the 1930s, but the war intervened, passenger traffic declined, and services ceased in 1954. For a full history of the Northern Heights project, try clicking on oneofthese links.
And then, hallelujah, in 1984 Haringey Council reopened the railway line as a linear nature reserve called the Parkland Walk. The path snakes its way along embankments and through cuttings from Finsbury Park to Alexandra Palace, and it's really rather delightful. The track can resemble a quagmire after wet weather, so it's advisable to wear stout shoes, and it can be a bit deserted in places, so you might want to take some pepper spray just in case. But I took neither, and I thoroughly enjoyed the walk.
To find the starting point I wandered halfway up the western flank of Finsbury Park to where a footbridge crosses the main London to Edinburgh railway. And there, bearing off diagonally on a raised bank between two rows of houses, that's the Parkland Walk. Before long I came to the site of the first disused station - Stroud Green - although no trace of the platforms remains. There was a fine view down over residential streets and the Gospel Oak to Barking line below, made slightly more disconcerting when I realised I was standing on a bridge built on top of a another bridge across another railway. The walk was really popular on Saturday morning and I kept passing other walkers, several dogs, mums with chunky prams, families of berry pickers and the odd cyclist. There can be a bit of tension between these various groups because the footpath gets quite narrow, soggy and/or rocky in places, and there's not always room for everyone to squeeze by. The Parkland Walk's definitely not 100% wheelchair friendly but, until the council forcibly upgrades it, that's part of its charm.
Continuing westward the embankment gradually descends into a dark cutting, with tall brick arches holding back the banked-up earth. The tracks pass beneath the busy roads of N8, past a mini skate park and adventure playground built into the steep slopes. And then, wholly unexpectedly, the platforms of Crouch End station loom into sight. The view must be a lot clearer in the winter, leaf-free, especially when seen from the tinyfootbridge that crosses the cutting. I clambered up a flight of seven concrete steps to walk along the eastbound platform, and was mighty relieved when a passing dogwalker led her muzzled hellhound along the opposite side. Meanwhile a lone runner emerged from the distance and panted her way along the vanished tracks inbetween. At two miles long, this stretch of the Parkland Walk makes for a perfect Parkland Jog.
After Crouch End the walk became a little less busy (which meant I got to see a few more squirrels and, ooh look, even the odd fox). The residents whose Victorian villas back onto this strip of green are very fortunate, but then they've probably paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for the privilege of living here. I paused to look down on suburbia from the narrow bridge across Northwood Road, which crumbled in the 1970s and has had to be replaced. And then onward to the heights of Highgate.
It's impossible to walk all the way to Highgate station because there are two tunnels in the way, and these have been blocked off because they're considered unsafe. Shame. But you can walk right up to the twin tunnel mouths for a closer look, and you'll probably have the entire cutting to yourself (so watch out for the empty condom wrappers lurking in the undergrowth). A curtain of ivy tumbles down from above and hangs low over the northern portal. See how the tunnels are rather taller than you might expect - that's so that belching steam from the original locomotives could circulate properly. And stare through the iron railings and you might just spot the faint glow of Highgate station beyond. Sorry, the gate's locked, so you're going to have to walk round the long way.
Today's Highgate station is 100% subterranean, but there used to be "high level" platforms here too, above ground, and that's where the trains to Crouch End used to depart. Those platforms are still there, locked away and inaccessible, but still pretty much preserved (and fully visible on variousanorakywebsites). That's the southern half of the Parkland Walk complete, ending in the bountiful heart of bourgeois Highgate. Knitting shops, pet parlours and princess party coordinators - you don't get shops like these at the other end of the line! I didn't hang around to explore because I didn't feel the need for a wholemeal baguette or an organic smoothie, and I was quite keen to move on. The Walk continued three quarters of a mile to the north, up Muswell Hill way. And more of that tomorrow...
And so, in true Blockbusters style, I've completed a north-south trail of random London boroughs. Thank you Haringey. You'll find this slim parallelogram of a borough at the very heart of North London. It's scythed in two by the mainline railway running straight up the middle - richer to the west, more culturally diverse to the east. This is no tourist paradise either, as the council's official website reveals. But I managed to find several places to visit, and I was almost pleasantly surprised. Eastern half first...
Somewhere retail: Green Lanes, Harringay Let's start by clearing up the name. The residential neighbourhood just north of Finsbury Park is called Harringay (two rs and an ay). Meanwhile the borough, created in 1965, is called Haringey (one r and an ey). Nobody seems to be quite sure why. But no wonder a quarter of the borough's 11 year olds can't spell.
For my Haringey retail experience I headed to Harringay and its central spine road - Green Lanes. The most famous stretch of this old cattle-driving road runs 1½ miles from Turnpike Lane down towards Manor House, with the Piccadilly line rumbling inaccessibly underneath. This is a cosmopolitan shopping street full of hundreds of independent one-off shops, with a Tesco Express the only modern cloned intruder along the Grand Parade. Don't go expecting boutiques or anything bohemian, this is much more down to earth. These shops sell unbranded stuff that never appears in TV adverts, stuff you actually need rather than stuff you don't. Kebabs are a bit of a speciality, along with several other ethnic dishes which may one day enter the English mainstream. There's a definite Turkish presence here, as well as a smattering of Cyprus and Greece. Fancy some lahmacun, pide or tava? Or perhaps sweet delights from a Turkish patisserie? Or just six Polish beers for a fiver. You know where to come. Green Lanes also boasts the usual swathe of laundrettes, hairdressers and clothing importers, plus essential local services like the Cyprus Potato Marketing Board. Halfway down the street is the majestic Salisbury Hotel, now a bar, but with its ornate Victorian interior still very much intact. And there's "North London's oldest furniture store", called Disney's, who've managed not to be sued by American corporate lawyers because they pre-date Mickey Mouse by 15 years. But where are all the crowds? A mile up the road in Wood Green, that's where. They're all milling around the depressingly bland mall at ShoppingCity, busily acquiring products in mainstream chain stores before treating themselves to a Nando's or some Donut Magic. Some people, it seems, don't recognise choice and diversity on their own doorstep. by tube: Turnpike Lane, Manor House by train: Harringay Green Lanes by bus: 29, 141
Somewhere sporty: White Hart Lane I should have been a Tottenham supporter, it's in my genes. Most of my relatives are hardened Spurs devotees, and they still gasp with horror whenever I mention my devotion to "the other" North London Club. But today it was my turn to grit my teeth, as I forced myself to visit their blue and white field of dreams on the Tottenham High Road. White Hart Lane is not, from the outside at least, a particularly glamorous stadium. From the front it looks like an 80s office development with brown tinted windows, from the rear it looks like a brick Victorian factory and from either side it looks like a particularly enormous carpet warehouse. Only the tubular roof adds any character.
Yesterday the pitch was silent (because the goalie was off playing for England) and the ring of sidestreets surrounding the stadium given over to more mundane residential activities. In Park Lane the café was serving up Caribbean treats to the good and faithful from the Cherubim & Seraphim Church. In Worcester Avenue several local lads were having a noisy kickabout on the sports centre's artificial pitches. And in Paxton Street a lone Spurs supporter was promenading his long-suffering girlfriend past the locked-up entrances to the North Stand, just because he could. Up front, however, a steady stream of white-shirted supporters could be seen entering, and exiting, the glass-fronted doors of the Spurs Shop. Tottenham FC is 125 years old this year and they're celebrating with, what else, a commemorative kit. The shirt's a rather odd half-and-half design, launched yesterday, and is already being snapped up in large numbers by the faithful, all keen to fork out £55 for the privilege of wearing a casino advert across their chest. Me, I found it all too easy to resist. by train: White Hart Lane by bus: 149, 259, 279, 349
Somewhere historic: Bruce Castle Hmmm, this sounds like it ought to be the home of millionaire Bruce Wayne, with a secret Batcave in the basement, but alas no. It's not even a proper castle, just a Tudor mini-mansion with a castellated round tower in the garden. Haringey Council have opened up Bruce Castle as a small museum telling the borough's story, and you can get inside for free (any afternoon except Mondays and Tuesdays). And, what do you know, the museum's actually worth a look. This is an endearing stuck-in-the-past attraction, with a broad range of local exhibits from Roman remains to tram tickets all lovingly piled high inside glass cases alongside typewritten labels stuck down with glue. This is the place to come if you want to see the Lord Mayor of Hornsey's official chair, or a Victorian school desk, or photographs of what the Broadwater Farm Estate used to look like when it was still a farm. There's currently a whole room devoted to Tottenham's vast Lebus Furniture factory (opened 1904, made thousands of utility wardrobes, closed 1970), and a splendid interactive "inventory" where Haringey's more creative types, such as Heath Robinson, are celebrated.
Even better, Bruce Castle is the site of real, actual history. When the building was used as a school in the 19th century, the first headmaster was a certain RowlandHill. In 1837 he crystalised his philatelic thoughts in a seminal pamphlet - Post Office Reform, Its Importance and Practicability - which led to the introduction of the national Penny Post three years later. His marble statue now dominates one of the downstairs rooms, and there are four old pillarboxes in a courtyard out the back just in case you'd like to go and reminisce properly. Oh, and one last local hero is commemorated just down the road at number 7 Bruce Grove. A plaque on the wall of the Tottenham Trades Hall reveals this to be the last home of Luke Howard, "Namer of Clouds". In 1802 clouds didn't have names, so Luke categorised them into three groups - cumulus, stratus and cirrus. His simple classification revolutionised meteorology, and we still use his Latin names today. Altostratus yesterday, sadly. by train: Bruce Grove by bus: 123, 243, 318
Random borough (14): What better way to celebrate this blog's fifth birthday than for me to take another random trip to one of London's 33boroughs. Sorry I'm a bit late with this one, but my summer's been rather busy and so I've been prioritising real life over online geographical haphazardry. As I write I have no idea which one of the 20 remaining borough names will be revealed when I unfold the slip of paper I'm about to pick from my "special jamjar". I could pick any of London's other boroughs - inner or outer, urban or suburban, small or large, fascinating or dull. I just know it won't be Merton, Islington, Enfield, Sutton, Lewisham, Southwark, Kensington & Chelsea, Hackney, Hillingdon, the City, Bromley, Lambeth or Tower Hamlets because they're the thirteen (dark grey) boroughs I've picked out already. So far my random jamjar has shown a very distinct preference for south and east London. Look, I've covered the whole of the eastern half of inner London already - what are the chances of that? Is today the day I finally head even further east, or maybe start filling in that gaping void to the west? Or will I just end up making the big grey blob even bigger?
Once I've researched my randomly-chosen borough online then I'll head off and visit some of its most interesting places (assuming it has any). As usual I hope to visit somewhere famous, somewhere historic, somewhere pretty, somewhere retail, somewhere sporty and somewhere random. I might even takelotsofphotographs while I'm at it, if the borough's photogenic enough. Then after I've made my grand tour I'll come back tomorrow and tell you all about it. Let's see where I'm going this time...
When I started blogging 5 years ago, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. It was a dull Sunday afternoon, somewhere inbetween ironing shirts for work and watching I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. I thought I'd have a go at starting one of those new-fangled blog things, signed up to Blogger and tried to think of a succinct and relevant blog name. Good choice, as it turned out. I picked an off-the-shelf template design (which is still pretty much what you see today, except it used to be green instead of grey). And I kicked off with a themed week of day-related posts, which may just have been a foretaste of what was to come. Not that I realised what was to come at the time.
I sometimes wonder how different the last five years might have been if I hadn't started a blog that day. I'd have had a heck of a lot more spare time for a start, probably adding up to thousands and thousands of hours by now. I might even have gone out in the evenings more often, and kept in contact with various friends, and involved myself at the heart of London's social whirl. But probably not. I suspect I'd just have just sat at home and watched more telly, and surfed the internet and wondered why there was so much crap on there. But I didn't. I joined in, I got involved.
Blogging, done properly, enhances your life. If there's something you desperately want to tell the world you can get it out of your system, even if nobody's listening. It's a particularly useful tool for us single people. We have nobody to turn to during the news and say "who does that Gordon Brown think he is?" or "wahey, two up for the Arsenal!" or "blimey that Amy Winehouse is looking rough". Blogging gives us an outlet, with the ever-present possibility of feedback. It's also somewhere to show off one's literary talents, such as they are, under-practised since your English teacher used to set you essays for homework many moons ago. And a blog is a useful foothold in cyberspace, an online headquarters from which to reach out to others. If they ever want to communicate with you, now they know where to come.
If there's one thing that blogging has brought me that I really wasn't expecting, it's friends. Some of these are just virtual acquaintances, although it's amazing how well you can come to know these people just by reading what they have to say, snooping on their online witterings and joining in with their discussions. Others I've actually met in real life. Only a select few, you understand, because I'm not overkeen on mass random blogmeets. But these are charming, delightful, witty people, who I'd never have had the pleasure of knowing otherwise. Hell, I've even snogged one of them. Who'd have thought that staying in could actually help me to go out more often?
And there have been a few other unique experiences I'd never have had without blogging. I've had some articles published in Time Out. I've been on local radio for seven minutes. I've written one whole page of a book that's currently ranked 5932nd on Amazon. I've been interviewed for proper academic research. I've successfully campaigned to get the official Olympic Countdown Clock outside Stratford station to display the right date. And I've inspired a double page article in the Evening Standard about Metronet's uselessness at my local tube station (which was discussed in the London Assembly, no less, but then summarily dismissed by the Chairman of Metronet as follows: "Articles which refer to an unnamed passenger's account having travelled through a station quite frankly are not worthy of any detailed examination." Well, who's in administration now then, you smug bastard?). It's amazing where blogging can take you.
I'm glad I started diamond geezer 5 years ago, because my life would have been far less rich if I hadn't. I've been to places I'd never have thought of visiting otherwise. I've met people I'd not otherwise have met. I've constructively filled time that I'd otherwise have frittered away. And I've found a way of being creative online that other people actually appear to appreciate. Blogging's not just publishing words on the internet, oh no. It's so much more than that.
fivelinks - five other diamond geezers • Diamond Geezer[online jeweller - we take it in turns to be numbers 1 and 2 in the "diamond geezer" Google search] • Diamond Geezer[the terribly derivative ITV drama starring Mr D Jason as a grinning old lag] • Diamond Geezers[a bunch of recently relegated Harlequins rugby supporters, resplendent in their diamond trousers] • Diamond Geezer Pimp Suit[be "the man on the street" with this el cheapo fancy dress costume - it's imitation velvet, 100% polyester] • Diamond Geezer's Diamond Mine[a low-tech gem-shuffling online game - can anyone get further than Level 22?]
When I started blogging 5 years ago, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. I thought I was just publishing words on the internet. And it turns out I was right.
One thing that most bloggers crave is recognition. This can be on a very small scale (maybe just a couple of readers and the odd comment every month) or it can be a lot grander. Start a blog today and your name could be on the lips of the world's media by the middle of next week, maybe even with a best selling book to your name by Christmas. It's all just a matter of your raw talent being noticed, your opinions heeded and your creative skill recognised. Because bloggers are the new creative powerhouse, aren't they, and their arguments can bring down governments. Blogging is the beating heart at the epicentre of the 2.0 revolution. Except, as we all know, it doesn't really work like that.
If you want your blog to be recognised, you need to provide original content. It's no good just regurgitating funny stories from the newspapers, or linking to all the same new gadgets as everyone else, or endlessly mouthing off about your journey to work. You need something fresh, something new, something different. This is quite difficult to achieve. Virtually every blogpost that could be written already has been, especially on key topics like climate change, Iraq and kittens. But there's always a new angle if you look hard enough, and originality always shines through. I try hard to keep as much of my blog as original as possible. I like to get out there and explore London for myself. I don't sit around waiting for speculative press releases to arrive in my inbox and then copy them. My voice cannot be bought. Plus I'm not afraid to go wildly off-topic sometimes, or to devote an entire week to a topic of minority interest. I enjoy being experimental, and I love playing around with the conventions of presentation and formatting. I don't think there's another blog on the internet quite like mine (and if there is I'd love to read it, so do tell me where it is).
If you want your blog to be recognised, you need to write regularly. This doesn't necessarily mean several times a day, or even several times a week, but you do need to post new content regularly enough to ensure that potential readers don't walk away. If they're going to make the effort to come and see you, you need the dedication to talk back to them. They'll forgive you a fortnight's holiday incommunicado. They won't desert in droves if you fail to post a 1000 word essay tomorrow morning. They'll even come back after a month of nothing much while you concentrate on having a life. But start apologising for your long breaks, or announcing that you're off on a "hiatus" until the muse returns, and there'll soon be nigh nobody left reading. I try exceptionally hard to blog regularly. I like to post something of substance every day, without fail, and I almost always succeed. It's a ridiculous self-imposed target I know, but I like a challenge. My daily deadline forces me to be both creative and current, and if I've not got something up online by 7am-ish on a weekday morning I feel as though I've somehow failed. Daily blogging isn't for everyone I know, but for me it's the perfect motivational tool.
If you want your blog to be recognised, you need your own niche. It really helps if people can sum up your raison d'être in a single short phrase. That blog about Arsenal, the one by the ambulance driver, the girl who writes about rampant sex, the outpourings of a single-minded political pedant. If you have your own niche, like-minded souls will gravitate towards you. Be distinctive, and you're more likely to get yourself noticed. It's much harder to make a name for yourself if your blog is more of a scattergun affair - a bit of family life one day, a news review the next and then a week of holiday photos. If being popular matters to you, prepare to make a tough decision about which of your diverse interests you should focus on and which can be safely sidelined. My blog isn't easily pigeonholed. Sure I write a lot about London, but actually I write about London for well under half of the time. I love unpredictability, and you lot never quite know what I'll be blogging about here next week (or even, most of the time, tomorrow morning). I'm not afraid to publish a simple list of links one day, followed by a sudden outburst of unlabelled irony the next, and then a whole week of posts on some completely off-the-wall theme. Mine is "the blog that writes quite a bit about London but also about other places and telly and society and music and quizzes and life and stuff". It makes for a fascinating mix, I hope, but it's not a catchy one-line theme. I shall never be a marketable success while I remain unclassifiable. And hurrah for that.
But if you want your blog to have influence, then I'm afraid you are sadly deluded. There were (at the last count) approximately 100 million different blogs out there, each clamouring for recognition in an increasingly crowded electronic arena. Your blog is nothing but an insignificant pebble on the online beach, casting an unnoticed ripple across the face of the internet. No blog ever single-handedly improved teenage behaviour on public transport, or spawned a successful TV series, or brought a government to its knees. Even blogs with ten thousand visitors a day or their own book deal go unnoticed and unregarded by the overwhelming majority of society. My Mum has never read your blog, and my next door neighbour doesn't even know you exist. No matter how original your content, no matter how regular your posting and no matter how well-defined your niche, divide by 100 million and the number of people who give a damn about your blog is as near to zero as makes no odds. Get used to it.
fivelinks - five tube map links (because statistics show that tube map links are your favourite most clicked-on links) • London Tube Journey Planner[simple to use geographic-based map interface] • Travel Time Tube Map[Java-based interactive marvel - click on any tube station and see how far away all the others are] • Tubez & Trainz[sit back and watch the coloured blobs zip around Zone 1, again and again] • The London Tube Map Archive[because you can't beat the originals, from 1908 to 1999] • Geoff's Silly Tube Maps[alas, banished from the internet by TfL's blinkered lawyers] [ditto the Sponsored Tube Map] (ahem)
When I started blogging 5 years ago, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. I thought I was just publishing words on the internet. But it turned out to be much more than that.
It took me a month to add a hits counter to my blog. By nightfall I'd recorded 3 visitors to the site, two of whom were me. But who was the other visitor, and why had they come? I was hooked already. And, you'll not be surprised to hear, I've been keeping a careful eye on my daily number of blog visitors ever since. It's yet another method of gauging feedback on what I write (never mind the comments, count the footfall), and I smile so long as the general trend remains slightly upward.
Tracking statistics are also an extremely useful way of discovering where one's visitors are coming from. Maybe a direct hit from another blog that's linked to your latest post. Maybe the occasional arrival from another blog where you've just been added to the sidebar. But most likely a random appearance via a Google search. Ah yes, how we love to see what strange combinations of words have been leading Googlers to our door (always a useful topic for a backup post when all other inspiration fails). But it's not so useful for the Googler. They'd been trying to track down "brit oval to paddington by cab" (or whatever) and they ended up on your blog instead, disgruntled and unsatisfied. Search engines may bring visitors, but they rarely deliver long-term readers.
Stats trackers therefore vastly overestimate the number of readers your blog is getting. And this can be quite depressing. There you are celebrating getting 50 hits on your blog, but it turns out that 40 of them never meant to be there in the first place and didn't hang around when they arrived. Proper readers, ones that keep coming back for more, are like gold dust.
3b) VISITORS < VIEWERS
But there's been a change recently, and I'm left wondering whether stats tracking sites might instead be seriously underestimating the number of viewers that blogs are getting. It's RSS that's to blame - the cunning technology whereby people can read your posts without reading your blog. My viewer numbers almost double if I add in the number of people subscribed to my blogfeed , a total which positively amazes me.
Once subscribed, viewers don't have to keep checking the blog to see if anything new has been written, they can find out remotely. It's very convenient, but it can be a bit annoying for the blogger. Just spent ages tweaking your blog's layout and design? RSS readers won't notice, because they're only reading your individual posts. Just updated your blogroll? They won't spot that either, nor all of the comments that others are making on your posts. Hell, there could even be a photo of a naked vicar in your sidebar and they'd never notice. Which is a shame. RSS brings enormous opportunities, and I've become a keen user of this new functionality. But reliance on blogfeeds also cuts social ties and has started to diminish hard-won feelings of online community.
Blogging is becoming a conveyor belt churning out content, which is then reassembled and reproduced elsewhere. You may have control over what you write, but you no longer have control over how it's read. Your latest post might well reappear inside Facebook or on LiveJournal, or within some other 2.0 portal. It might be shamelessly stolen by a spam blog and reproduced without credit. And it's almost certainly popping up somewhere in an RSS aggregator like Bloglines or Google Reader, out of context and stripped of formatting, where it has to fight for attention amid a raging torrent of other very similar looking posts. Much too much to read, far too little time.
3) READERS < VISITORS < VIEWERS
Your blog is almost certainly being viewed, but is it actually being read?
When I started blogging 5 years ago, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. I thought I was just publishing words on the internet. But it turned out to be much more than that.
The first post I ever wrote was 100 words long. I didn't think about it much and I knocked it off in a few minutes. Last Monday's post (about a walk across south Croydon) was 1000 words long. It took an hour and a half to research, and a similar amount of time to travel to the start. The walk itself took four hours, and when I got home I took considerably longer to fiddle around with my photos and to write up my journey. Then I added several pertinent links, as appropriate, and drew a Google map so that you could follow the route of my journey. Oh how times change.
Most people have a blogging style somewhere along the spectrum from shallow to deep. Shallow bloggers have it quick, and they have it easy. They look around for other people's stuff to copy, and then they cut and paste it with a brief comment at the end. A typical shallow blogpost goes like this...
"I just saw this [10 lines quoted from somewhere else] I am . "
Shallow bloggers make the mistake of thinking that we care what they think. Sometimes they're right, and their comment boxes clog up with ranting bile from like-minded souls. But most of the time they're jabbering to an audience of nil. They stick adverts in their sidebar and wonder why nobody clicks on them. They wait for a book deal that never comes. They use their blogs solely to react, and not to interact. They put almost nothing in, and so they get nothing out. I'm not a fan of shallow blogs.
The best blogs are deep, at least in part. They reflect the thoughts and interests of the author. They muse on life's daily struggle and cultivate grand ideas. They're written for the love of it. And they take time and effort to produce. Quite a considerable amount of time, in some cases. Never, under any circumstances, should a deep blogger ever tot up the total amount of time they spend blogging, because it'll be out of all proportion to any returns gained. All those hours, or even days, spent tapping away on the keyboard to produce interesting content. And for what?
Blogging isn't worth it, materially speaking. It might get you noticed in the media, briefly, but it probably won't. It might make you some money, but probably only peanuts. It's something you should always do for yourself, and not for others.
It's a bit like gardening, really. There's no point whatsoever in creating a beautiful landscaped garden, except because you want to. Nobody else is going to stop and admire your garden, apart from friends you specifically invite around and a few random passers by. You'll spend countless afternoons digging and weeding, and you'll spend a fortune on plants and shrubs. Nobody else would care if you concreted over the lawn or let the whole place go to seed, not in the grand scheme of things. But if you put in a bit of effort, over a long period of time, you can create an environment of which you're hugely proud. The outcome should always be measured in contentment, not hard currency. And I'd rather read an exquisitely landscaped garden than a scrap of crazy paving any day.
fivelinks - five favourite London links • Classic Cafes[including the super-classic New Piccadilly, which closes forever in three weeks time] • Exploring East London[where to see free art and history out East, from Beckton to Whitechapel] • Street Sensation[a virtual tour of every major retail location in central London, e.g. Carnaby Street] • Hidden London[as I once said, "More than 200 lesser-known London locations lovingly catalogued..."] • Urban 75[photos, articles and features about London, especially (but by no means exclusively) Brixtonish]
When I started blogging 5 years ago, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. I thought I was just publishing words on the internet. But it turned out to be much more than that.
The first blogs were one-way affairs where the webmaster wrote something and others read it. Sometimes they wrote a little and sometimes they wrote a lot, but it was always just bunged up on screen for others to digest. If you had a blog about, for example, your experiences aboard public transport, then you'd not really have much of a clue about what people thought of it. Neither would your readers get the chance to add their voice to your thoughts. No way to say "ooh, I hate it when the driver says that to me too" or even "those teenagers need to be strung up by their headphones from the top deck". Blogs needed more than just content. There was something missing.
The ability to comment has made a huge difference to blogging. Blogging need not be one-way traffic, it can be a two-way conversation. It's content plus comment.
Every post I publish is, in some way, an experiment in feedback. Will my walk through Bexley get any comments at all? If I ask my readers about Facebook, will they ever shut up? And if I accidentally make a factual error, who will be the first to chip in and point it out? I love the fact that my readers might, or might not, make comments on what I write. Often the comments are the best bit of the blog, adding depth and additional facts that I never knew, and that you probably didn't either.
Of course, just because a blog invites comment doesn't necessarily mean that anybody will. As we discovered in the infamous doughnut experiment two years ago, lack of comments doesn't necessarily equate with lack of interest. Commenting requires effort on behalf of the reader, and readers aren't always known for their effort. Commenting may require reloading the page ("can't be bothered"). It may require typing in some nigh illegible validation script ("can't be bothered"). It may require switching from the RSS feed to the main webpage ("can't be bothered"). It may require registering ("really can't be bothered"). And it always relies on someone being motivated enough to think of something worth commenting about in the first place. Only a tiny proportion of a blog's readership ever get round to commenting, which can be a bit of a problem when readership is low. There's little more dispiriting on a brand new blog than month after month of posts reading 0 comments - because it's the comments that will (one day) tell you what people really think.
I've been lucky - I've managed to build up a veritable army of regular and semi-regular commenters over the years (and only a very few of them have been nutters spouting irrelevant drivel). My commenting community has evolved as readers have arrived, lingered and moved on, and it's very different now to the group it was three or four years ago. But this blog wouldn't be half as interesting without you, so thanks. Because every comment counts.
(And yes, I know, I really ought to comment on your blog more often. We all should.)
I've been to the cinema three times in three days. Unheard of. And on each occasion I went to a cinema I'd never been to before. Here are brief reviews of the films, and the cinemas.
Thursday's film: Knocked Up (15) When a slacker male meets a career female, and mishandles the condom, you can guess the next nine months of plot. What's not quite so obvious is that this film should manage to be one step up from the usual sloppy rom-com. Knocked Up avoids most of the usual character cliches and unnecessary histrionics, and concentrates instead on realistic hilarity. Ben leaves behind his comfortable posse of toking malingerers and learns to live with responsibility, while Alison comes to terms with unexpected belly enlargement and a realigned future. It's proper feel-good stuff, never once wallowing in negativity. The perfect movie to which to take a member of the opposite sex (so long as they don't mind frequent swearing, and close-up birth shots). Thursday's cinema: Vue Greenwich It's the cinema in the Dome! Typical, eh? Peter Mandelson spends millions on a big tent, and here we all are watching Pearl & Dean adverts underneath it. The cinema's up a big escalator, with a ticket machine at the bottom and a nachos & pick'n'mix outlet at the top. The signage for screen 11 (the big one) is appalling, and it's very easy to end up at the top end of the wrong escalator and then having to find your way back down non-existent stairs. The auditorium is huge and comfy, and the screen is supposedly the largest in London. Not from the back it isn't. And the sound quality, oh dear oh dear. There was a bloody annoying echo echo all the way through the film film, yes yes all the way way. I'd like to be charitable and blame the print, but I don't think I'll be rushing back to see if it was a one-off.
Friday's film: Flood (12A) [Contains moderate injury and sustained threat] When a film gets plenty of pre-launch publicity but is then screened in just one tiny West End cinema, that should perhaps be a hint as to its quality. Which is a shame really, because I'd been looking forward to a dramatisation of "Flood" ever since I read (and reviewed) the book four years ago. But the film doesn't stick to the book's plot, not at all, bar the bit about a big surge tide rushing up the Thames and inundating the capital. Cue lots of splashy special effects in water tanks and several CGI shots of central London underwater. The film saves money by concentrating on events at central government command, rather than mass carnage along the overtopped Embankment. Events have been shamelessly shifted from mid-afternoon to after dark, presumably because it's cheaper to shoot with a black background. The laws of physics are frequently twisted for dramatic effect, and the realities of geography twisted even further. We're expected to believe that three of London's flood experts all happen to be related, but not on speaking terms, and that the deluge brings them reconciliation. It's a bit like the melodrama of Casualty, really, but a lot wetter. Robert Carlyle gets to deliver some wholly unbelievable lines, and escapes from the torrent via the most unbelievable route imaginable. And as for the ending, oh come on, you cannot be serious?! Sorry, the book was a whole lot better, and it's clear that much of the destruction wreaked therein proved wholly unfilmable. But OK, I sort of enjoyed Flood really. Because it's always good to be reminded that that one day, maybe sooner than we think, London could very easily go under. Friday's cinema: Apollo, Regent Street There are just 59 seats stacked up in front of this luxurious little basement screen. And only nine of them are filled. We're the only people in the country watching this film this afternoon. Pitiful, isn't it? Still, anything to avoid the humiliation of straight-to-DVD, eh?
Saturday's film: The Bourne Ultimatum (12A) Come on, if you were ever going to see this film, surely you've already been. Matt Damon carves a swathe of death along the Atlantic seaboard as he's chased by scarily-competent CIA operatives from one car chase to another. There are particularly impressive set pieces on Waterloo station (yes really) and across the rooftops of Tangier. And there are several reminders that surveillance techniques are now so good that if the government wants you dead, there's now no place to hide. Unless you're Jason Bourne that is. I'm sure he'll be back. Saturday's cinema: Greenwich Picturehouse I love a good Picturehouse, and this is definitely one step up from my local in Stratford. Luxury reclining seats, an organic tapas restaurant nextdoor and no chavs in the foyer. But also, as it turned out, a grinning moron behind the till. The screening was only a quarter-full but with "designated seating", and she was intent on packing us all into a compact block in the centre of the auditorium. 120 empty seats to play with, and yet she bunged most of us together into the same couple of rows, without even a gap between separate parties. Gibbon. Useless bloody gibbon. Yes, obviously we all shuffled along when the lights went down and nobody else arrived, but that's not the point. Maybe I'll go back to Stratford next time - at least there they treat me like a responsible human.
DLR+20: The Docklands Light Railway was 20 yearsold yesterday. You know, the magic automated railway with no driver that trundles very slowly around the East End of London. I would have celebrated the anniversary on this blog yesterday, except that I was otherwise engaged. In fact, you narrowly avoided August being a whole month of DLR-related posts, but I decided you'd probably not be interested in 31 days of reports from the likes of Westferry, Beckton Park and Elverson Road. But for those of us who live on the DLR's doorstep, as I do, it's the most marvellous way to get around. Regular, reliable, clean, and one of the few ways to get across the river by public transport. So today I thought I'd bring you 20 (clickable) facts about the DLR, many of them shamelessly cut and pasted from elsewhere. And if you fancy a look inside the August 1987 DLR information leaflet, I've scanned it in here.
• The first journey on the DLR, on 31st August 1987, was from Tower Gateway to Island Gardens. • The DLR originally cost just £77m to build, which wasn't bad for a state-of-the-art network of 15 stations. • The cheap build led to safety issues, however, and the railway had to be closed immediately after the official opening by HM Queen Elizabeth II to allow further testing to be done. • Originally there were two DLR routes - the green route from Tower Gateway to Island Gardens, and the red route from Stratford to Island Gardens. • Construction of the DLR acted as a catalyst for the development of Docklands. Here's a flickery cab video from 1987 of the undeveloped viaduct across West India Docks to Canary Wharf. • The DLR was much more popular than anticipated - a few months after opening the hourly ridership was sometimes exceeding the long-term planned daily numbers. • The DLR was extended to Bank in 1991, Beckton in 1994, Lewisham in 1999 and London City Airport in 2005. The tunnelled extension to Bank cost twice as much as the whole of the original railway. • There's no driver! You can sit right at the front and pretend to drive the train! But sit on the right-hand side, because the train operator sometimes requisitions the left-hand front seat. • The DLR suffers from some not terribly good interchanges with the existing underground network; for example at Tower Gateway (for Tower Hill), Shadwell (for Shadwell), Bow Church (for Bow Road) and Canary Wharf (for Canary Wharf). • Items that may not be carried on the DLR include (non-folding) bicycles, inflammable substances, and "anything that is more than 2 metres long". • The shortest journey between stations is the 200m between West India Quay and Canary Wharf (but if you tried to walk it direct, you'd end up swimming). • Original plans for the DLR included a station at "Carmen Street" between All Saints and Devons Road. That station finally opens this autumn, 20 years late, as LangdonPark. • The DLR's official colour on signage and the tube map is Pantone 326 green. • One of the great things about the DLR is that you can check how the trains are running via the internet before you walk to the station. Here's what the platform indicator boards at Poplar station are saying right now, for example. • Today's DLR links 38 stations along 19 miles of track, and uses 94 two-car articulated vehicles. • This being a bloody successful railway, several extensions are planned - to Woolwich Arsenal (due February 2009), to Stratford International (due mid-2010) and to Dagenham Dock (due 2016). • DLR geeks may be interested in this nigh-impossible quiz competition, with the prize of a Thursday afternoon visit to DLR HQ (competition closes Monday). • Some official DLR info: key facts, historical timeline, route map, development projects, map of development projects. • Want more links? Try Wikipedia, Clive's line guide, a very detailed fansite, Londonist's anniversary tribute, a cab ride from South Quay to Deptford Bridge and the full development history. • I live five minutes walk from a DLR station. And I suspect the rest of you are jealous.
What's on this weekend? A.V. Roe Centenary Sunday 12 July, 2pm
A replica triplane celebrates one hundred years since Britain's first ever flight on Walthamstow Marshes.
So London has spoken, and Boris Johnson is to be the Conservative candidate for next year's London Mayoral election. Well there's a surprise. There was me thinking that Victoria would wing it, or maybe Warwick or Andrew would sneak ahead and pip everyone at the post. But no. Boris romped home with more than 75% of the vote, at least among the 19000 Tories and 1000 non-Tories who bothered to vote in the primary phase. He'll need a lot more support than that to win in May.
Boris's Bendy Bus Bingo
Olympic update
It's been two months since the Olympic Park was sealed off and its occupants ejected. Two months since an impenetrable big blue wall was erected all around the perimeter, and a bored-stupid security guard posted at every entrance gate. Two months may not sound long, but it represents more than 3% of all the available construction time. So what's been going on here since July? Is the site still a ghost town of crumbling warehouses, or have the Olympic Delivery Authority and their big yellow bulldozers been busy? It's a bit of both, actually.
The security fence alongside this particular slope has been specially selected as home to 2012's first "branded hoardings". Alice, the ODA's Marketing Manager, is extremely excited by all this. Rather than leave passers-by staring at blue-painted plywood, her department have covered 100 metres of wall with shiny photographic panels and important brand messages. There are some appropriately uplifting images of athletes, and that technicolour 2012 logo we all love so much. There are big yellow warnings signs urging children not to play on site, plus some artists' impressions of what the finished development will look like. There's a list of the four groups funding construction of the Olympic Park, although no sign of the names of the 40 million taxpayers and lottery players whose money is really making things happen. And finally, as a sign of things to come, there's a gleaming list of official Olympic worldwide partner organisations and their corporate logos, just for added visibility. Coca Cola, McDonalds and Samsung have never taken a blind bit of interest in this industrial wasteland before, but the TV cameras are coming in five years' time and it pays to get here early.
Up on the bridge above Marshgate Lane, I had my camera at the ready. I've decided to try taking a photograph from exactly the same spot on the parapet every two months or so until 2012, in an attempt to document all the changes taking place down below. At this stage, with just two photographs, the resulting slideshow plays like an Olympic Spot The Difference puzzle. There are huge changes already, but only on the left-hand side of the road. The large brick warehouse with the wedged-vent roof (built by the University of London Faculty of Engineering, and until recently a waste disposal depot) has been completely demolished. All the beautiful willow trees overshadowing the Pudding Mill River have been uprooted and chopped down. Vegetation on the banks of the river has been stripped away. Workmen with a big orange digger were busy dumping rocks and gravel to block off the concrete channel. A further army of diggers could be seen crawling all over the surrounding scrubland, where teenage motor-scooter petrolheads used to go scrambling, levelling the land ready for the Park's perimeter service road to be built on top. Meanwhile, on the right-hand side of the road, almost all of the factories, offices and big metal sheds still stand... but for how much longer? Be in no doubt, the Olympic Stadium will be ready bang on schedule, and nigh nothing visible in my latest photograph will remain.
Well known autumnal fact 1: There are four seasons in a year
To my mind, the finest dining establishments in London aren't in the Michelin Guide. They don't serve up organic medaillions in mango jus, neither do you need to book a table three weeks in advance. No, the finest dining establishments in London are listed in a book called Classic Cafes. They serve up fried stuff with chips, and anyone can slouch down in a formica booth without an appointment. These very special eateries are survivors of a pre-Starbucks age, back when muffins were toasted rather than shrink-wrapped, and when a great cup of coffee came with sugarcubes, not cinnamon sprinklings. But later this month one of the capital's most famous Fifties cafes is closing down, snuffed out by rising rents and creeping redevelopment. It's a damned shame (even if most Londoners never even realised it existed). So, last Friday, BestMate and I sneaked along for one last supper.
BestMate and I arrived at half past five expecting queues, but there were none. We headed for a booth halfway down the restaurant, opposite the "ching ching" cash register, beneath a deep red lampshade and a "happy retirement" greetings card. Our vintage beverages arrived promptly, his a sparkling Coke in a dimpled tumbler, mine a cup of perfect orange-brown tea. For my main course I selected one of the house specialities, DAN'S COW PIE AND TWO VEGETABLES, although this divine gravy-soaked pastry concoction has had to be restickered STEAK PIE to fit in with the Trade Descriptions Act. As for the two veg, there's none of your poncey courgettes and broccoli florets here, oh no, we're talking yellowy boiled potatoes and a pile of proper green peas. BestMate's plate was half CHIPS, which is never a hardship, along with a dollop of fried EGG and a thin slice of STEAK. Nothing even approximating haute cuisine, but perfect comfort food all the same.
Lorenzo, the cafe's owner, was holding court behind the counter. Every now and then he broke off from his conversation to pull another coffee from the vintage pink espresso machine, then returned to the till to survey his fast fading empire. Two white-jacketed waiters dashed around between the tables, increasingly busy as the evening wore on and further diners arrived. It was easy to tell who were genuine regular customers and who were one-off new-media opportunists. The latter all had cameras with them and were busily snapping souvenir photographs of the cafe's finer interior features. I was one of the latter group, alas, but I tried to keep my image retention to an unobtrusive minimum. "OK, I've taken a photo of the wall of postcards and the pile of plastic lemons and the security notice about gentlemen's hats. Hang on, let me just try one more shot of the big horseshoe menu at the rear of the restaurant, this one might not come out blurred."
Before we left I took the opportunity to visit the prehistoric toilet out the back (which won't be missed when the place closes), and then returned to pay Lorenzo the bill, plus discretionary tip, plus compliments. I'll not be coming back. The cafe closes for good tomorrow evening
Exactly 250 years ago today, on 20th September 1757, the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel opened its doors to the public. This doesn't make it the oldest hospital in the country, but a quarter of a millennium is still a very long time to have been serving the medical needs of some of the poorest communities in the country, and well worth celebrating. If you live in East London this'll be a hospital you'll know well. It's huge, for a start, and the hospital's benefactors also had the sense to build right next to a busy main road. None of this modern greenfield miles-from-anywhere rubbish, where every hospital visit means hopping in your car or catching two buses. The Royal London is where the capital's Air Ambulance service is based, so you've probably seen their big red helicopters either in real life or on a TV documentary. And later this year the BBC will be bringing you Casualty 1907, a historical drama series based on genuine Royal London medical records of the era. Alas infamous hospital resident Joseph Merrick (the "Elephant Man") won't be appearing in any of the stories because he died two decades earlier.
In the middle of a vast featureless wilderness north of Stratford town centre there's a long glass box and a deep hole. The deep hole houses several parallel railway tracks, and is linked by tunnel to St Pancras at one end and Europe at the other. And the glass box is Stratford International station, from which it'll one day be possible to take a train to Paris or Brussels, One day. But not yet. For the time being this continental gateway stands structurally complete but entirely empty, awaiting fitting out and its first passengers. It's going to be a long wait.
The station's other main drawback is that there's currently no sensible way of accessing it by road. We got there in a rickety minibus via a lengthy detour round Clays Lane and along several dusty meandering tracks. The main dual carriageway passing the front of the station ends slap bang in the middle of the fenced-off Olympic Zone, so there's no admittance for taxis, cars or buses via this route. You can't walk to the station from anywhere either, not until they build a new footbridge over the platforms at the other Stratford station. There's absolutely nothing on the surrounding site for half a mile in any direction, apart from barren bulldozed scrubland, and it'll stay that way until the Stratford City development starts to cover the area with shops, offices and unaffordable housing. Even the DLR doesn't get this far until 2010. Come back then and Eurostar might have bothered to add Stratford International to their timetables. But don't hold your breath.
There are an awful lot of different railway tracks passing through Stratford - seven in total. The outermost tracks are for stopping Eurostar trains (and there won't be many of them). Next come the fast lines for non-stop international travel, followed by a pair of domestic platforms. Suburban services from London to Kent will (eventually) pass through this way, splitting at the new Ebbsfleet station to head for either Ashford or Canterbury. And finally, running down the centre of Stratford Box, there's a single track for trains bound for the new Eurostar depot at Temple Mills. Trains will be stopping in the local area, oh yes, but only so that the drivers and staff can get on and off. You won't be coming here any time soon, that's for sure.
define the limit of Cockneydom, but it is a 14th century relic sandwiched between the carriageways of a major trunk road. The vicar was delighted to see a very local resident, and I was fascinated to discover even more local history than ever I knew before. I won't bore you with it, not yet anyway...
the Home Office: There used to be three hideous hulking office blocks in Marsham Street, inhabited by the Department of the Environment and wrecking views of Westminster Abbey and Parliament. No longer. These 60s eyesores have been demolished and replaced by three less intrusive buildings, just six storeys high, now home to the newly reorganised Home Office. For Open House they threw open their security doors (to a mere handful of punters who happened to spot the late-entrant tour hidden away on the website) and let us see inside Jack Straw's Empire of Justice. Hello to both of my readers who work there (or thereabouts), nice offices you've got. But the main focus of the tour was to view the public art around the outside of the three buildings - a series initiated when the new occupiers realised they ought to engage more with the surrounding environment. The rooftop is edged with coloured glass panels which cast mid-afternoon down light into the street
Shri Swaminarayan Mandir: The largest Hindu temple outside India can, of course, be found in Neasden. It's a mile long walk from the tube station, along the smelly North Circular and past IKEA. And then suddenly, at the end of a very normal suburban street (just behind a mini roundabout), the mandir's marble pinnacles rise abruptly skyward
The Roof Gardens: Unseen above Kensington High Street, on top of what used to be the Derry & Toms department store, is a sixth floor green oasis. Its existence explains the appearance this morning in a sidestreet, next to Gap and M&S, of an ever-lengthening queue full of grey-flecked horticulturalist thrill-seekers. If you weren't in line by twenty to nine you faced a very long wait for the lifts. There are three gardens altogether, each as unexpected as the next, as you wander round the rooftop plateau. First a herbaceous Spanish Garden, very Moor-ish, with blooming flowerbeds, watery trench and grape-twined balcony
To the City, for free entry to two very different corporate entrance lobbies. 20 Fleet Street is the former home of Express Newspapers
Village Underground: A rather less middle aged queue here than at many other Open House venues. That's because this is Shoreditch, and the attraction is four tube carriages hoisted up onto the old Broad Street viaduct
Wilton's Music Hall: The world's oldest surviving Music Hall lurks up a side alley behind a terrace of houses off Cable Street, E1. It's somehow survived wartime bombing, slum clearance and woodworm, and owes a debt of thanks to Sir John Betjeman for keeping the bulldozers at bay. As you step into the dimly lit auditorium you can easily imagine East End Victorian singing stars stepping out onto the stage to rouse the audience with a chorus of Daisy Daisy or Down At The Old Bull And Bush. Arched alcoves around the crumbling walls have been lit with delicate fairy lights, and there are three recently uncovered golden murals on the rear wall of the upper balcony. Ornate floral relief arches span the ceiling, and the spotlight shining on the central rose quivers every time someone steps on a supporting floorboard below
Kings Place: A brand new mixed-use development just north of King's Cross, beside a backwater basin on the Regent's Canal. It's a building site at the moment (due to open 2008), so I've just had to get togged up in hardhat and fluorescent jacket for the tour. Also joining us were the world's smelliest man and half a party of German tourists. The first floor and above will be the Guardian's new offices, while down below a new public cultural zone is taking shape. We got to stand on a temporary platform 18m above the new chamber music concert hall, and in the canalside rotunda that's planned to become a cafe/bistro. The outer facade is already complete - a unique design of wavy curved glass. Elsewhere there were blokes working, carrying pipes and drinking tea, even on a Saturday. They'll have to get cracking to get the rest of the building ready, and perfect, on time.
Home Office HQ: major new Government building in Victoria (you had to sign up online for this one, but it wasn't listed in the Open House booklet so none of the tours filled up) (alas, bookings have just closed)
There was a bit of a spectacle down at the Thames Barrier on Sunday afternoon. Bet you missed it. Once a year they raise all the gates, just to check that they still work, and attempt to hold back the tide for ten hours. There are shorter monthly barrier closures too, but Sunday's was the full annual showpiece. It's rather impressive too. The closure started at low tide, around six in the morning, and by the time I arrived at noon there was already a considerable differential between the height of the water on both sides of the barrier. Downstream it was most definitely high tide. A crowd of locals had gathered on the terraces by the visitors' centre, looking out over the glassy water towards the upturned gates. This was London's flood defence in full effect, with millions of gallons of water being held back by an impenetrable wall of steel. Upstream the river looked very different. Here it was still low tide, and the pebbly beach beside the barrier remained fully exposed. Nine silver piers glinted in the sunlight, and a swarm of seagulls bobbed and swooped above the choppy white water inbetween. At one o'clock precisely a siren blared out from Barrier Control and a single gate rolled imperceptibly upwards. It raised into "underspill", just far enough to allow water to gush underneath and to begin filling the channel beyond. A surge tide rushed out across Woolwich Reach, forming a swirling tempest in the middle of the river. This was no scary wall of water, nothing dangerous, but it was a rare sight all the same. Every few minutes another gate was semi-lifted, rolling a few degrees upwards to allow yet more heaving water to tumble through. The assembled crowds stared, and smiled, and snapped photographs on whatever electronic gizmo they happened to have brought with them. It would be another three hours before the water levels had equalised sufficiently to allow the gates to descend back into the riverbed, and for maritime traffic to resume plying its trade up and down the Thames. And it'll be another year before the Environment Agency plans anything similar, should you fancy coming down next September (unless it rains a lot, obviously, in which case those gates might be rolling back up rather sooner).
Today this is just a very ordinary semi-detached house in a well-to-do residential neighbourhood. Cranley Gardens is a wide tree-lined avenue blessed with panoramic views down the hill to the east. Residents keep their front lawns trimmed and their crazy paving hosed clean. Many of the houses have been divided up into flats, and number 23 is no exception. The garden is full of well tended shrubs, the path has been laid with red terracotta tiles and the front door is a too-bright shade of lilac. Most importantly, the drains no longer smell. That was the telltale giveaway back in 1983, the first hint that the new resident in the attic flat might not be quite as normal as he seemed.
The northern stretch of the Parkland Walk begins just a skull's throw from Dennis's old house. The old railway tracks are now a meandering footpath through the trees, emerging from a wooden fence on the site of the old Cranley Gardens station. It's much quieter here than on the southern part of the Walk. The only people I passed along the way were a group of local kids swinging from a rope, and a small girl on her way to piano practice pedalling determinedly behind her "mama".
If there's a major attraction in London less fortunate than the Millennium Dome, it must be Alexandra Palace. This hilltop entertainment hub opened to the public in 1873, attracting more than a hundred thousand visitors in its first fortnight. On its sixteenth day the palace burnt to the ground, killing three members of staff. Oops. So the Victorians tried again and rebuilt the place, and it's only burnt to the ground once since. History was made here in 1936 when Alexandra Palace was home to the world's first TV studios (which I've visited before), and a few years later during the war thousands of German civilians were interned here "for their own safety". And now, apparently, council trustees plan to sell the whole building off to a commercial developer intent on converting broadcasting heritage into a fitness centre and restaurant. Oh it's had quite a history has Ally Pally, not all of it good.
The old BBC studios are in the eastern corner, beneath the giant antenna mast that still pulses TV signals out across North London. And at the far end, by the car park, is the entrance to the ice rink. You won't get very far inside without paying, and you probably won't want to go inside unless you're a screaming pink-jacketed teenage harridan. I don't think I've ever visited another London attraction quite so overrun with gangs of raucous boisterous girls in fat jeans, and I kept my distance as they tottered down through the car park to catch the bus home. Far better I thought to walk peacefully back along the promenade, past the now-snogging bride and groom, to watch the sun breaking through the clouds over Haringey and beyond. Alexandra Palace is a great survivor, and may the council never ruin it.
WALK HARINGEY
This is a photograph of Crouch End tube station. It's no good searching for Crouch End on an underground map because it isn't there. You might find it on a post-war tube map, but this particular station never opened and now all that's left are these two deserted platforms with a dual carriageway of nettles inbetween. The good people of Crouch End therefore have to rely on the number 91 bus to get them up to town, and the rest of us can enjoy standing in a leafy cutting in the middle of nowhere, imagining what might have been.
Continuing westward the embankment gradually descends into a dark cutting, with tall brick arches holding back the banked-up earth. The tracks pass beneath the busy roads of N8, past a mini skate park and adventure playground built into the steep slopes. And then, wholly unexpectedly, the platforms of Crouch End station loom into sight. The view must be a lot clearer in the winter, leaf-free, especially when seen from the tiny footbridge that crosses the cutting. I clambered up a flight of seven concrete steps to walk along the eastbound platform, and was mighty relieved when a passing dogwalker led her muzzled hellhound along the opposite side. Meanwhile a lone runner emerged from the distance and panted her way along the vanished tracks inbetween. At two miles long, this stretch of the Parkland Walk makes for a perfect Parkland Jog.
It's impossible to walk all the way to Highgate station because there are two tunnels in the way, and these have been blocked off because they're considered unsafe. Shame. But you can walk right up to the twin tunnel mouths for a closer look, and you'll probably have the entire cutting to yourself (so watch out for the empty condom wrappers lurking in the undergrowth). A curtain of ivy tumbles down from above and hangs low over the northern portal. See how the tunnels are rather taller than you might expect - that's so that belching steam from the original locomotives could circulate properly. And stare through the iron railings and you might just spot the faint glow of Highgate station beyond. Sorry, the gate's locked, so you're going to have to walk round the long way.
For my Haringey retail experience I headed to Harringay and its central spine road - Green Lanes. The most famous stretch of this old cattle-driving road runs 1½ miles from Turnpike Lane down towards Manor House, with the Piccadilly line rumbling inaccessibly underneath. This is a cosmopolitan shopping street full of hundreds of independent one-off shops, with a Tesco Express the only modern cloned intruder along the Grand Parade. Don't go expecting boutiques or anything bohemian, this is much more down to earth. These shops sell unbranded stuff that never appears in TV adverts, stuff you actually need rather than stuff you don't. Kebabs are a bit of a speciality, along with several other ethnic dishes which may one day enter the English mainstream. There's a definite Turkish presence here, as well as a smattering of Cyprus and Greece. Fancy some lahmacun, pide or tava? Or perhaps sweet delights from a Turkish patisserie? Or just six Polish beers for a fiver. You know where to come. Green Lanes also boasts the usual swathe of laundrettes, hairdressers and clothing importers, plus essential local services like the Cyprus Potato Marketing Board. Halfway down the street is the majestic Salisbury Hotel, now a bar, but with its ornate Victorian interior still very much intact. And there's "North London's oldest furniture store", called Disney's, who've managed not to be sued by American corporate lawyers because they pre-date Mickey Mouse by 15 years. But where are all the crowds? A mile up the road in Wood Green, that's where. They're all milling around the depressingly bland mall at Shopping City, busily acquiring products in mainstream chain stores before treating themselves to a Nando's or some Donut Magic. Some people, it seems, don't recognise choice and diversity on their own doorstep.
I should have been a Tottenham supporter, it's in my genes. Most of my relatives are hardened Spurs devotees, and they still gasp with horror whenever I mention my devotion to "the other" North London Club. But today it was my turn to grit my teeth, as I forced myself to visit their blue and white field of dreams on the Tottenham High Road. White Hart Lane is not, from the outside at least, a particularly glamorous stadium. From the front it looks like an 80s office development with brown tinted windows, from the rear it looks like a brick Victorian factory and from either side it looks like a particularly enormous carpet warehouse. Only the tubular roof adds any character.
Yesterday the pitch was silent (because the goalie was off playing for England) and the ring of sidestreets surrounding the stadium given over to more mundane residential activities. In Park Lane the café was serving up Caribbean treats to the good and faithful from the Cherubim & Seraphim Church. In Worcester Avenue several local lads were having a noisy kickabout on the sports centre's artificial pitches. And in Paxton Street a lone Spurs supporter was promenading his long-suffering girlfriend past the locked-up entrances to the North Stand, just because he could. Up front, however, a steady stream of white-shirted supporters could be seen entering, and exiting, the glass-fronted doors of the Spurs Shop. Tottenham FC is 125 years old this year and they're celebrating with, what else, a commemorative kit. The shirt's a rather odd half-and-half design, launched yesterday, and is already being snapped up in large numbers by the faithful, all keen to fork out £55 for the privilege of wearing a casino advert across their chest. Me, I found it all too easy to resist.
Hmmm, this sounds like it ought to be the home of millionaire Bruce Wayne, with a secret Batcave in the basement, but alas no. It's not even a proper castle, just a Tudor mini-mansion with a castellated round tower in the garden. Haringey Council have opened up Bruce Castle as a small museum telling the borough's story, and you can get inside for free (any afternoon except Mondays and Tuesdays). And, what do you know, the museum's actually worth a look. This is an endearing stuck-in-the-past attraction, with a broad range of local exhibits from Roman remains to tram tickets all lovingly piled high inside glass cases alongside typewritten labels stuck down with glue. This is the place to come if you want to see the Lord Mayor of Hornsey's official chair, or a Victorian school desk, or photographs of what the Broadwater Farm Estate used to look like when it was still a farm. There's currently a whole room devoted to Tottenham's vast Lebus Furniture factory (opened 1904, made thousands of utility wardrobes, closed 1970), and a splendid interactive "inventory" where Haringey's more creative types, such as Heath Robinson, are celebrated.
Even better, Bruce Castle is the site of real, actual history. When the building was used as a school in the 19th century, the first headmaster was a certain Rowland Hill. In 1837 he crystalised his philatelic thoughts in a seminal pamphlet - Post Office Reform, Its Importance and Practicability - which led to the introduction of the national Penny Post three years later. His marble statue now dominates one of the downstairs rooms, and there are four old pillarboxes in a courtyard out the back just in case you'd like to go and reminisce properly. Oh, and one last local hero is commemorated just down the road at number 7 Bruce Grove. A plaque on the wall of the Tottenham Trades Hall reveals this to be the last home of Luke Howard, "Namer of Clouds". In 1802 clouds didn't have names, so Luke categorised them into three groups - cumulus, stratus and cirrus. His simple classification revolutionised meteorology, and we still use his Latin names today. Altostratus yesterday, sadly.
Random borough (14): What better way to celebrate this blog's fifth birthday than for me to take another random trip to one of London's 33 boroughs. Sorry I'm a bit late with this one, but my summer's been rather busy and so I've been prioritising real life over online geographical haphazardry. As I write I have no idea which one of the 20 remaining borough names will be revealed when I unfold the slip of paper I'm about to pick from my "special jamjar". I could pick any of London's other boroughs - inner or outer, urban or suburban, small or large, fascinating or dull. I just know it won't be Merton, Islington, Enfield, Sutton, Lewisham, Southwark, Kensington & Chelsea, Hackney, Hillingdon, the City, Bromley, Lambeth or Tower Hamlets because they're the thirteen (dark grey) boroughs I've picked out already. So far my random jamjar has shown a very distinct preference for south and east London. Look, I've covered the whole of the eastern half of inner London already - what are the chances of that? Is today the day I finally head even further east, or maybe start filling in that gaping void to the west? Or will I just end up making the big grey blob even bigger?
, a total which positively amazes me.
DLR+20: The Docklands Light Railway was 20 years old yesterday. You know, the magic automated railway with no driver that trundles very slowly around the East End of London. I would have celebrated the anniversary on this blog yesterday, except that I was otherwise engaged. In fact, you narrowly avoided August being a whole month of DLR-related posts, but I decided you'd probably not be interested in 31 days of reports from the likes of Westferry, Beckton Park and Elverson Road. But for those of us who live on the DLR's doorstep, as I do, it's the most marvellous way to get around. Regular, reliable, clean, and one of the few ways to get across the river by public transport. So today I thought I'd bring you 20 (clickable) facts about the DLR, many of them shamelessly cut and pasted from elsewhere. And if you fancy a look inside the August 1987 DLR information leaflet, I've scanned it in here.
