Most reviews of the year concentrate on events which happened during the last 12 months. Disasters, triumphs, deaths, victories and other items of general important-ness. But at the end of another turbulent year I'd prefer to reflect on some of the things which didn't happen, even though people thought they might. And I'm not taking about uncovering the fate of possibly-abducted three year old girls, or General Elections that failed to materialise. I'm talking about much more important non-events than that.
During 2007 life on Earth was not wiped out by a passing meteorite. No amateur astronomer suddenly spotted a huge previously-unseen lump of rock hurtling through space on an incoming trajectory. No world leader was forced to go on television and announce the imminent end of global civilisation. No blazing fireball was increasingly evident in the evening sky, no riots broke out as society broke down, and nobody had to decide who to cuddle/snog/shag during the final five minutes of human consciousness. We didn't go the way of the dinosaurs. Not in 2007. • Near Earth Objects; The Torino Scale; list of past impacts; Apophis 2029
During 2007 bird flu failed to decimate the world's population. No evil virus mutated inside the bloodstream of an East Asian chicken, before accidentally transmitting itself to a small child during a freak papercut accident. No unstoppable epidemic spread across the globe unhindered by inadequate air travel safety regulations. No ambulances driven by gas-masked medics clogged the streets of Britain carting away the dead bodies of much-loved relatives inside zipped-up plastic bags. The human race didn't fall foul of pandemic viral evolution. Not in 2007. • Avian influenza; be prepared; UK contingency plan; WHO pandemic alert
During 2007 the atmosphere was not stripped away by rampant global warming. No melting icecaps caused irreversible continental innundation and the permanent cessation of the Gulf Stream. No rising sea levels destroyed coastal cities and inhibited worldwide agricultural production. No deadly radiation slipped through the wafer-thin ozone layer creating lifeless parched landscapes and causing permanent epidermal scarring. No unpredictable hurricanes swept across the face of the planet drowning every unfortunate town and village beneath their path. We're not all living underwater yet. Not in 2007. • climate change; UK climate impact; Bali 2007; American uncertainty
During 2007 the UK was not beset by a string of terrorist atrocities. No evil suicide bombers ran amok in our major cities causing death and destruction on an unprecedented scale. No religious zealots caused planes to crash or trains to explode, nor even managed to cause a mild detonation using bleach and peroxide in an obscure Midlands suburb. Either our security forces are extremely talented in weeding out potential killers or else our home-grown terrorists have been a bit rubbish. The forces of darkness don't appear to be converting threats into actions in quite the numbers our government might like to suggest. Not in 2007. • UK Resilience; London Prepared; defending civil liberties; current threat level
And you're still here. 2007 may not have been your best year, but you've made it through to New Year's Eve in one piece. You may have suffered major disappointments or failed at something you were hoping desperately to achieve. You may have been on the receiving end of bad news or learned something you'd rather not know about your health. You may even have lost loved ones who were very dear to you. But you're still here. And, on a global scale, that's a bit of a triumph. May 2008 be similarly uneventful.
Four of the most important conversations I had during 2007
1) On the Robert Elms Show (BBC Radio London, 12/01/07) Mr Elms: Hello me old china, welcome to my show cor blimey. Tell us about this 2012 Olympic Marathon route then. Me: [puts on best Estuary accent] Well, every Olympic Marathon has to end up at the Olympic Stadium, so that means running up the A11. Mr Elms: Hehe lol. And then where does it go? Me: There's this wasteland up the River Lea where the stadium's going. Mr Elms: Hehe lol. I'm sorry, that's all we have time for. Me: But that was barely five minutes. I had tons more to say. Mr Elms: Sorry, your media career just peaked. And now we've got Joan from Streatham on the line to talk about fish.
2) At the boss's desk (in the office, 05/02/07) The boss: I've got to read out this announcement word for word. There's going to be a restructure. Me: Oh god, not another one. The boss: We're splitting the team up into bits and recombining some bits elsewhere, because a consultant said it made sense. Me: Oh god, oh god. The boss: And, even though I don't yet know it, I'm going to get made redundant as a result. Me: Oh god. But I bet they revert everything back to normal by the end of the year. The new boss: Nearly normal... and yet utterly different.
3) In the hospital ward (Royal London, 23/05/07) Pharmacist: Hello, I'm the nice lady who brings round the tablets every three hours. What medicines are you on? Me: Erm, I'm not on any medicines at all. The nice ambulanceman only just wheeled me in. Pharmacist: But everybody else in this ward is on huge handfuls of smarties eight times a day. Me: I've never actually swallowed a tablet in my life. Pharmacist: Well make the most of today, because from tomorrow you'll be gobbling down my goodies for the rest of your life. Me: Blimey, imagine how much worse it would be if I was actually ill.
4) Outside the usual pub (West End, 16/11/07) BestMate: So, the Americans just turned down my visa. Me: But, but, but, you've been living over there for nearly five years. BestMate: I know, but I can't go back now, they won't let me. So I'm going to have to move back to London permanently. Me: Oh bugger, that's a shame. Where shall we go out tomorrow night?
The five albums I enjoyed most during 2007 1) Except that, erm, it turns out that I only bought five albums during the whole of 2007 2) And it would be wrong to rank those five, because four of them don't really deserve their place 3) In fact there's only one I'm still listening to, and the rest are gathering dust on a shelf 4) I don't know where music and I fell out, but I really don't consume tunes like I used to 5) I blame downloads, and the X Factor, and the unexpected onset of middle aged disinterest [sigh]
The seven links you clicked on the most during 2007 1)Twitter, which I used to keep you up-to-date while I was spending a long weekend in Skegness and a week in Northumberland(and which I still use, intermittently, to get things off my chest to an audience of friends, acquaintances and stalkers) 2) The dead clever London Pedestrian Routemap Map, which shows how walking routes link together key central London locations (a prototype, alas not since updated) 3) The exceptionally hideousJanuary 2008 tube map(still only available on a wall at Langdon Park DLR station) 4) The November tube map, the one with added London Overground, the one which looks like it's being strangled by an ugly tangerine octopus 5)Ollie's photo of the Moo card I hid somewhere in East London as part of the inaugural DG East London Treasure Hunt(really, it's not that exciting a photo) 6) The non-existent product details of the non-existent Z740xi mobile phone which I used back in January to blog "live" from an imaginary London-wide disaster (ah, golden days) 7) The Diamond Geezer Readers Network, which allegedly exists on Facebook (although I'm not a member and never will be, so I've never seen it) [erm, that was your 7th most-clicked link of 2007 but it doesn't work, apparently, this does]
London Journeys: To the centre of Hampton Court Maze
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", reads 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]
[2] This looks promising. A long twisty-turny-path between high green walls, with what looks like a hidden right turn at the end. Damn, no, it's a dead end. OK, time to save face. Turn round slowly and head back, grinning innocently at the steady stream of equally misguided tourists shuffling to a similar fate. Should any of them ask whether this is a dead end or not, just smile and lie. Then pray you don't meet them again further along in your travels. Try that first junction again. Straight ahead? [3] Or through the gap and straight ahead? [3]
[3] That's right, it doesn't matter which of these two paths you take, you still end up at the same second junction. This is one of those cunningly-designed loops where you could keep walking round and round in circles for ever. But don't. It's just a short distance ahead to the next fork in the path. Hmm, isn't it foolproof to keep your hand on the left-hand hedge? [4] Or maybe it's the right-hand hedge? [5]
[4] On into the heart of the maze, bend after bend after bend. But rounding the fifth and final corner reveals - damn - an impenetrable green barrier. You've been unlucky here. Contrary to what you might expect there are only three dead ends inside Hampton Court Maze, and you've just wandered down the longest of them. If it's any consolation, King William III probably made exactly the same mistake. Retrace your steps to the previous junction and take the other path [5]
[5] This long path skirts around the central clearing, where jubilant finishers can be glimpsed oh-so tantalisingly close on the other side of the hedge. But no premature short-cut through the foliage is possible - the maze's iron-railing skeleton makes certain of that. Although you can pass through the hedge at the next junction, where 20th century gardeners have cut an elegant archway to link two of the original pathways. Are you tempted through? [left 6, right 8] Or will you ignore the arch and carry on round the bend? [6]
[6] Two of the paths from the arch follow opposite ends of a single hedge, recombining at another junction on the maze's perimeter. A motion sensor is hidden here, one of several installed a couple of years ago as part of a permanent "sound installation". Your passing might trigger genteel laughter, or some softly spoken quotation, or the clang of tiny cymbals - a randomly-generated sound at every location. Rest assured that the overall effect is enchanting rather than intrusive. And that any swearing you might hear is real-life frustration, not art. Head north, away from the arch [7] Or go back [5]
[7] When Harris took a stroll around Hampton Court Maze in Three Men in a Boat, it was probably within this eastern section that he and the baying crowd got horribly lost. There's one pathway in particular where, no matter which wall you try to follow, the maze will always bring you back to the same spot. Bring along a penny bun and drop it in the right spot, and this truth is easily proved. But Jerome K Jerome was undoubtedly exaggerating the maze's difficulty for comic effect - eternal entrapment is an entirely improbable outcome. Back west? [6] Down south? [8] Or away to the east? [9]
[8] If you've brought a toddler with you, they're probably gurgling merrily by now. You'd better run after them before they totter headlong down the next leafy canyon and disappear round yet another corner. Back west? [6] Up north? [7] Or away to the east? [9]
[9] At this point your sense of direction will be screaming that you must, surely, be going the wrong way. The centre of the maze is far behind you, and you really ought to be heading back. So when a new path appears leading even further away from the centre, you'd be forgiven for ignoring it, wouldn't you? Take it [10] Ignore it [7] or [8]
[10] A single decision stands between you and salvation. One of the two paths ahead looks like the correct route but is in fact a dead end. And the other looks like a dead end but is in fact the correct route. You know which way to go [11]
[11] Look, the mazekeepers really do have a big green stepladder, over there on the other side of the hedge. Presumably they clamber up and bark directions during periods of labyrinthine crisis, such as when a school party is in danger of missing their coach home. But no assistance is needed from this point on. A small green sign is now visible ahead, blatantly announcing that the "centre" is just around the corner. They've had to erect it here in case disoriented punters stop at the gate labelled "fast exit" immediately beforehand, and pass out through the turnstile without ever reaching their goal. It would be a crying shame to miss out. On to the centre! [12]
[12] Is this the central courtyard, or is this a concrete patio knocked together by some Channel 4 lifestyle programme? Bland wooden trelliswork holds back a ring of replanted hornbeam. To left and right, where two tall trees once cast a welcome shadow, sit clumps of squat stools awaiting weary backsides. And, in the very centre of the centre, an upturned conic pedestal bears the legend "We found the Maze Centre at Hampton Court Palace 2007" (with the final "7" daubed on in thick temporary paint). You might want to ask those two foreign students over there to take your photograph, before they ask you. Smile - you’ve just solved a classic 17th century puzzle. Bet you want to go back and solve it again [1]
Originally butchered by over-zealous sub-editors in Time Out Magazine London [12 September 2007]
• With chips • Curry, obviously • Lightly fried in a pesto sauce with diced shallots • Take the leftovers back to the supermarket and demand a refund • Mince it up to create vol-aux-vents for your New Year's Eve buffet • Drive up to Norfolk and post it through Bernard Matthews letterbox • Leave it outside your local police station inside a plastic bag labelled "Extreme Danger - Bird Flu" • Throw it out for the seagulls • Whatever the meat is on page 47 of Nigella's latest, try using turkey instead • Dip a chunk in cocoa, hide in a box of chocolates, and watch auntie's face when she tries one • Hide it in your neighbour's recycling bin and see how long it takes them to work out where the smell's coming from • Wrap in tinfoil and post to starving people overseas • Fondue • Dig a hole in your back garden and bury the lot • Make some turkey sandwiches and leave them on the bus • Cut into snowflake shapes, spray with varnish and hang on the tree as decorations • Stick the rest at the back of the freezer and get it out for Easter • Why not just buy a smaller turkey next year? • Or go vegan - they never have this problem with nut roasts • [I'm sure you can come up with a 20th]
1 Now when Christmas was nigh in Mayfair of Westminster in the days of Nigella the Great, behold, there came fur-coated ladies from the shires to OldBond Street, 2 saying, Where are they who are selling Bling and the shoes? for we have seen their adverts in the glossies, and have driven our 4×4s to worship him.
3 When Ken the Mayor had heard these things, he was troubled, and all London with him. 4 And when he had gathered all the chief policemen and councillors of the people together, he demanded of them where this shopping madness should be borne. 5 And they said unto him, In Mayfair of Westminster: for thus it is written by the Evening Standard, 6 And thou Mayfair, in the land of Congestion Charge, art not the least among the wealth of aristocracy: for out of thee shall come luxury purchases, that shall tempt my people decadently.
7 Then Prince Boris, when he had privily called the fur-coated ladies, inquired of them diligently what time the pre-Christmas sales appeared. 8 And he sent them to Mayfair, and said, Go and search diligently for the shiniest jewellery and designer-iest handbags; and when ye have found them, bring me word again, that I may come and spend my fortune also.
9 When they had heard the floppy-fringed one, they departed; and, lo, the deluxe brand awareness, which they saw in the West End, went before them, till it came and stood over where the exclusive retail destination was. 10 When they saw the shops, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. 11 And when they were come into the boutiques, they saw the fabulous riches with Dolce and Gabbana, and fell down, and worshipped them: and when they had purchased their treasures, they presented unto themselves gifts; gold, and fine fragrance, and accessories.
12 And being warned by Boris in a dream that they should not return to Ken, they hailed a taxi and departed into their own country another way.
1 And there were in the same country East Enders abiding in the estates, keeping watch over their budgets by night. 2 And, lo, the economic decline of the country came upon them, and the taxation of the Chancellor shone round about them; and they were sore afraid.
3 And the market inspector said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all immigrants and indigenous Cockneys. 4 For unto you is sold this day in the market of ChrispStreet a Special Offer, which is Three For Two. 5 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the bargains wrapped in a blue plastic bag, lying on a trestle table.
6 And suddenly there was with the inspector a multitude of the heavenly stallholders trading goods, and saying, 7 Glorious plastic toys are the cheapest, and on racks t-shirts, fake trainers toward men.
8 And it came to pass, as the stallholders were gone away from them into Fred's Cafe, the residents said one to another, Let us now go even unto the pawnbrokers, and sell our things which have come to pass, to pay for that which the Christmas adverts hath made known unto us. 9 And they came home with haste, and found three Uncles and Grandma, and the kids lying on a sofa. 10 And after they had seen Christmas, they made savings which were required of them concerning the New Year.
11 And all they that heard it wondered at these things.
No longer true... • There are 12 London Underground lines. No longer true. There are now 11, and will be for the foreseeable future. When the East London line reopens in 2010 it'll be part of the London Overground, not the Underground network. • The Underground has 274 stations. No longer true. There are now 268. Today we've lost Wapping, Rotherhithe and Surrey Quays, which now exist only as replacement bus service stops. We've lost New Cross and New Cross Gate, which now exist only as National Rail stations. And we've lost Shadwell, which is now only on the DLR (which isn't a London Underground line, as any fule know). • The Underground runs over 253 miles (408km) of line. No longer true. Now it's 248 miles (400km)... plus four particularly useless replacement bus services. • The East London Line is the only line without a station in Zone 1. No longer true. All the remaining lines do. • Five London boroughs are not served by the London Underground. No longer true. Today Lewisham joins that list to make six, along with Bexley, Bromley, Croydon, Sutton and Kingston. • The Jubilee line is the only Underground route that connects with all others. No longer true. (I wonder how long it'll take the O2 website to change this one. Ages probably, given the number of other howlers on the same page). Let's work this one out. Any line which connects with all others must connect with the Waterloo & City line. So we're only interested in lines that pass through either Waterloo or Bank. Through Waterloo we have the Jubilee, Northern and Bakerloo (all of which link up). And through Bank we have the Central (which also links) plus maybe the Circle (if we're allowed to treat Bank/Monument as one station, which TfL increasingly do). But we can't have the District, because that just misses the Metropolitan by a few metres (at Aldgate). So the newly-updated statement should be "The Jubilee, Northern, Bakerloo, Central and Circle lines are the only Underground routes that connect with all others." Which just isn't interesting any more, sorry. • The Thames Tunnel is the oldest section of tunnel in the London Underground. No longer true. Now the oldest is along the original Metropolitan railway tunnel between Paddington and Farringdon, opened 1863. Probably. Unless you know better. • Wapping is the only station which has no letters in common with the word 'lobster'. No longer true. Now every Underground station shares at least one letter with the word 'lobster'. Is nothing sacred?
The East London line, now departing If you ever seek to meet London's entire population of trainspotters, take a ride on the final service to an about-to-be-disused tube station. And if the last train runs well after midnight don't worry, because you'll easily spot them earlier in the day too. They're the blokes wielding big-lensed cameras on the platforms, and the blokes sitting by themselves in each carriage with a sad but contented smile on their face, and the blokes who stay aboard the train at the end of the line so that they can travel straight back again. And so it was yesterday on the East London line. It's not every day an entire line closes, even if it is only for 30 months, so any excuse to spend a Saturday well away from the wife and the Christmas shopping. Even if the last day is actually the very worst day to try to take photos, because every shot ends up full of other blokes trying to take photos.
All the stations on the East London line were busy, noticeably busier than usual. TfL appeared to have rostered an additional member of staff on every platform keeping an eye on the all the additional enthusiasts lest they accidentally misbehave. You know the sort of thing - using flash photography, or trying to walk into off-limits bits of the station, or leaning out in front of passing trains in search of the perfect photo. I'm not sure what grim fate faces these members of staff today now that their stations are closed until 2010. Pointing passengers towards replacement bus services, maybe, or perhaps redeployed in less important posts at other stations elsewhere. Amputating a limb from the Underground network has a human cost as well as a financial price.
I do wonder what the line's usual passengers made of it all. They expect to be sharing their carriage with the odd well wicked hoodied bro, not a crowd of excitable photographers. They expect to have plenty of room to stand on the platform, not having to walk round a phalanx of eager snappers. And they expect to be able to walk up the stairs at Rotherhithe unhindered, whereas yesterday afternoon I wandered straight into a bunch of paid-up enthusiasts on the Brunel Museum's Tunnel Tour. Thanks for turning on the floodlights in the tunnels, guys, I got a much better photograph as a result. Erm, yes, I admit, I was there taking a few photographs myself. Sorry if I got in the way of your shot.
Today is the very last day of service on the East London line. Tonight, after the last train to New Cross Gate (probably about quarter past one), the entire line faces prolonged shutdown. Come back in June 2010 and the tracks and stations will have been re-engineered and reborn as part of the London Overground network. But come back tomorrow and you'll have to ride the replacement bus service instead. It's not an exciting prospect.
As you'll remember from my in-depth feature 18 months ago, the East London line is a historic little railway. It includes Sir Marc Brunel's pioneering Thames Tunnel, the very first tunnel to be bored beneath a navigable river, as well as some wonderfully atmospheric subterranean Victorian brick stations. And it's also a very modern railway. The entire line was shut down for three years as recently as 1995, enabling the tracks and tunnel to be restored and a brand-spanking new station to be built at Canada Water. As you'll remember. Look, I'm not going to go into all the history again. It's over here if you're interested, in 6000 words and 70 pictures. Think of it as a pen portrait of an endangered species, facing extinction tonight.
But for this week at least, it's been business as usual on the East London line. At Whitechapel folk still descend the steps from the District line platforms to catch a little four-coach train south. At Shadwell they still ride the lift down to almost-platform level rather than taking the stairs. At Wapping they still stand somewhat precariously on what must be the narrowestplatform on the entire tube network, watching down the tunnel beneath the Thames for the headlamps of an approaching train. At Rotherhithe they still listen to the ominous dripping of pumped-out water rushing somewhere above their heads. At Canada Water they still swarm down the escalators to ride the much more popular Jubilee line into town. At Surrey Quays they still wait beneath the orange-topped columns and ornate iron work clutching bags from the nearby shopping centre. And at bifurcated New Cross and New Cross Gate they still wait patiently for an all-too-rare train to arrive, and pause, and eventually depart. Nothing ever happens quickly here, nor on a grand scale, and that's part of the line's subterranean charm.
The East London line's not the busiest on the tube network. If you ever want to get a seat during the rush hour, head here. A mere 34000 souls use its services daily (compared to half a million on the Piccadilly and two-thirds of a million on the Northern), perhaps because it doesn't really go anywhere useful. But for local residents and cross-river commuters it's an extremely convenient lifeline, and one they're going to have to learn to live without. Let's hope that the shiny new East London Railway which finally emerges in 2½ years time will be worth the wait.
• New entries in the top 20: Isabelle, Evie • New entries in the top 50: Summer, Ava • New entries in the top 100: Evelyn, Sara, Victoria, Rose, Maria, Hollie, Lexie, Julia
Britain's longest-lived monarchs 1) Elizabeth II: 29829 days (81y 8m) 2) Victoria: 29828 days (81y 7m 29d) 3) George III: 29823 days (81y 7m 25d) 4) Edward VIII: 28463 days (77y 11m 5d) 5) George II: 28109 days (76y 11m 15d)
• Elizabeth II slips into first place today (well, actually 5pm yesterday afternoon) • The longest-lived British ruler is Richard Cromwell(86y 9m 8d). Our Queen will overtake him on 29th January 2012, a week before her Diamond Jubilee. • Prince Charles won't enter this Top 5 list (assuming he lives long enough, and becomes King) until October 2025
Britain's longest-reigning monarchs 1) Victoria: 23226 days (63y 7m 2d) 2) George III: 21644 days (59y 3m 4d) 3) James VI (of Scotland): 21066 days (57y 9m 3d) 4) Henry III (of England): 20482 days (56y 0m 28d) 5) Elizabeth II: 20407 days (55y 10m 15d)
• Elizabeth II has been in 5th place on this list since 2002 (when she overtook Edward III) • She'll leapfrog into 4th place on 7th March next year, into 3rd place on 11 October 2009 and into second place on 20 May 2011. • She'll become Britain's longest reigning monarch (assuming she lives long enough) on 10th September 2015.
Where will you be watching telly on Christmas Day? On a television set, probably. But this Christmas there's going to be a brand new alternative - on your computer. The BBC has chosen 25th December to launch its iPlayer service, making the last 7 days of original BBC programming available to watch again online. If you have a UK broadband connection, this new broadcast opportunity might revolutionise your viewing.
Christmas Day is a strange date to launch a new online service. Will there be any BBC technicians around if things go wrong? And don't most people spend December 25th being sociable rather than hunched over a computer? But the launch date has been chosen, apparently, because there are so many great festive specials to watch at this time of year. Miss the Top of The Pops Christmas Special because you you were eating lunch? Watch it on your computer after the Queen's Speech. Sick of Strictly Come Dancing later in the evening? Click through and watch Oliver Twist instead. Miss the Doctor Who Kylie Special because granny wanted to watch Emmerdale? Sneak off and watch it on your laptop later after she's fallen asleep. And yes, you could do all of that already using a videotape or DVD recorder. But with the new service you can watch anything, even programmes you hadn't realised were on and therefore didn't think to record in advance. Trust me, it's a winner.
iPlayer has been running in beta since the summer, and I've been fortunate enough to be signed up as one of the triallists. Until very recently this beta trial has been download only, and Windows only, and Internet Explorer only, and really rather slow. Programmes sometimes took hours or days to be made available online, or maybe never even appeared at all. And each programme had to be downloaded from the website before you could watch it, which often took well over an hour and significantly slowed down my computer while it was arriving. No instant gratification there. What was fantastic was being able to watch each downloaded programme offline, at any time during the following month. But the hassle and delay involved in downloading everything meant that I lost interest in the service, and pretty much stopped using it.
Suddenly, iPlayer is different. Now there's a really simple streaming option, and I can be watching a new programme in less than a minute. Pick something fresh from the index (arranged by transmission date, initial letter or category), click on "Play" and off I go. Watch the programme in a small window, or expand it and watch a slightly pixellated version full screen. Good news - the streaming service isn't restricted to Windows or to Internet Explorer, so Mac and Linux users should now be rather happier. Viewers won't need to be logged in with a username any more either. But post-watershed programmes will bring up an advisory message (yes, I am over 16, honest) and parents can lock down dodgy programming with a password if they so choose.
Want to fast forward to the really good bit five minutes from the end of the program? No problem. Can't hear the soundtrack? Pump the volume up to 11. Want to start again when the videostream breaks down ("There seems to be a problem playing this video - please try again"). Sigh and refresh the page. Want to watch something from 7 days ago? Sorry, you only get the last 6 to choose from. Want to download the programme (with much higher video quality) to watch offline later? Well, you can still do that with some/most shows if you want. But I shall be streaming from now on, because I prefer the here and now.
With the Christmas launch of the iPlayer, the BBC enters YouTube territory. Watching videostreams online is where it's at, and the younger generation may now start viewing BBC programmes they'd normally have ignored. And look what this does to blogging. In the past I'd have had to write "Did you see Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe Xmas Special last night, it was great?" and you'd all sigh because you missed it. And now I can write "Did you see Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe Xmas Special last night, it was great?" and you can all click through and watch it for yourself. Well, if you've got nothing else to do at work this afternoon, why not? And if you've got nothing else to do on Christmas Day, maybe you could watch it again then too.
With the Christmas last post deadline fast approaching, I've been busy writing lots of addresses on envelopes. You know, the sort of addresses you only write to once a year, belonging to people you no longer see but can't bear to lose contact with. And, every December, I have the same pangs of mild guilt as I write the first line of each address on each envelope. Like this...
• To <Forename 1> <Surname 1> Hmmm, I wonder if that's still the right address? He didn't send me a card last year, so maybe he's moved. Maybe he thinks I didn't send him a card last year, even though I did. But if he's moved then I sent it to the wrong address, so he never got it, so he thinks I don't care any more, whereas I do. Maybe I'm wasting my time every year sending a card to an old address where the new owners just throw it in the bin. But not sending a card at all would be wildly impolite. Oh it's so difficult when you only communicate once a year.
• To the <Surname 2> family Hmmm, I wonder if I ought to reply to the letter they sent in their card 12 months ago. There were lots of fascinating things in that letter, but it's probably too late to reply to them now. I bet that this year's card, and letter, are winging their way through the post as we speak. Maybe I ought to wait until they arrive and then reply to this year's letter in this year's card. But if I wait too long I'll miss the last posting date, and then they'll get my card too late. Perhaps I won't reply to their letters at all, I'll just sign my card and post it. Even though that would be wildly impolite given all their effort in writing me an annual letter. Oh it's so difficult when you only communicate once a year.
• To <Forename 3> <Surname 3B> Hmmm, I wonder if that's still her surname? There was a hint in last year's card that she was having marital problems, so maybe she's split up with her evil cheating husband by now. In which case the last thing she'll want is to see <Surname 3B> on the envelope. But I can't risk going back to her maiden name and calling her <Surname 3A> because, if the two of them are still together, that would be wildly impolite. I've got to write the same surname as last Christmas, but I could be really putting my foot in it. Oh it's so difficult when you only communicate once a year.
• To <Forename 4i> and <Forename 4ii> <Surname 4> Hmmm, I wonder if both of them are still alive. There was a hint in last year's card that he was distinctly unwell, perhaps chronically, so maybe she's been widowed by now. In which case the last thing she'll want to see is <Forename 4ii> on the envelope. But I can't risk missing him off because, if he's still hanging on, that would be wildly impolite. I've got to write the same two forenames as last Christmas, but I could be really putting my foot in it. Oh it's so difficult when you only communicate once a year.
• To <Forename 5> <Surname 5> Hmmm, I wonder if he's still alive. He's getting on a bit, and he didn't send me a card last year. If he has died in the last couple of years then nobody would have thought to write to me about it, because all I do is send him a Christmas card every year. But maybe this year I'm sending a card to a dead man's house. The new owners might be throroughly sick of receiving a dead man's mail by now. And I'll probably now carry on sending a pointless card to a dead man every year because nobody's told me it's pointless. But I can't risk not sending a card, because assuming that he might have died would be wildly impolite. Oh it's so difficult when you only communicate once a year.
Well that didn't take long. It's still less than six months since the 2012Olympic Park was sealed off, but the wholesale demolition of the site has been extremely rapid. Back in July there were warehouses and factories where the running track will be laid, but they've all been knocked down. Back in July there was a river where the grandstand will be erected, but that's been piped underground. Back in July there were trees where the hotdogs will be sold, but they've all been cut down. Back in July the view from the Greenway bridge was green, but now it's brown. Not one single building now remains on the stadium site, bar a couple of electricity substations just to the south. All that's left are the original roads, a row of lampposts, some walls and fences, and an awful lot of piles of earth.
There are now enough piles of earth in the Lower Lea Valley to make me think that London ought to have applied for the Winter Olympics instead. All it would take is a major snowfall and, hey presto, we'd have ourselves a ready-built range of mountainous downhill sporting facilities. But no, by next summer this entire area needs to be flat as a pancake, ready for the construction of the Olympic Stadium to begin. All the piles of earth and rubble have to be moved out, or at least moved to a different part of the site to be recycled as landfill. This is a sustainable Olympics, remember, so little of the rock-y brick-y debris will be wasted.
No time is being wasted in clearing the land. On Sunday morning the Olympic Park was crawling with big yellow lorries, each carrying yet another truckload of former-factory away from the site. A steady stream of lorries, approximately as frequent as buses along Regent Street, rumbled up and down Marshgate Lane. Each branched off down some different sideroad, through the wreckage of some demolished building, or away across some newly constructed temporary bridge. Diggers swarmed over every distant hillock, like giant orange ants on a compost heap, busy removing every trace of the area's former existence. It won't be long before their endless scavenging leaves the land barren, level and ready for renewal. The only constant in my monthly series of bridge-top photos is irreversible change. Hmm, do you think that curvy embankment down there could be the very first signs of the stadium perimeter?
It's annoying, isn't it, when you try to type one word into your mobile phone using predictive text and it insists on writing another. You're trying to write "me" and it writes "of". You're trying to write "home" and it writes "good". You're trying to write "bastard" and it writes "word not in dictionary".
Well, there's a special name for words that are different but are typed the same way on a mobile. They're called T9onyms (after the T9 system of predictive text). So I wondered whether we might be able to construct a list of T9onyms. I'm not interested in two or three letter words, preferably five letters and above please. And nothing over-obvious either (like "reduce" and "seduce"). I'm only after interesting T9onyms, the ones that don't have lots of letters in common and are maybe a bit clever.
First sight of the new January 2008 tube map, at Langdon Park DLR station, has made me shudder. From a simple and elegant 1930s design, the tube map appears to have evolved fairly recently into a rampant visual monster, jam-packed with unnecessary information. The emphasis has shifted very much from lines to stations, with every square inch of the map increasingly crammed with "local" detail. It's about close-up complexity, rather than zoomed-out ease of use. It's a mess. And it can only get worse.
Here are a few photo snapshots of some of the latest abominations on the new map...
Here's the reason the updated January tube map is needed. The East London Line closes next weekend, and will eventually reopen as part of the new London Overground. There'll be no more tubing from Whitechapel to New Cross, just four replacement bus services for the next 2½ years. Two of those bus services meet here, at Canada Water. Previously this was a very simple-looking single-blob interchange, but not any more. Now it appears as a triple-blobbed mega-interchange, as does Whitechapel on the opposite side of the river. This over-complex rearrangement ensures that nobody thinks they can travel from Rotherhithe to Surrey Quays on one bus, because that would be a terrible mistake to make. Incidentally the replacement bus service will be wheelchair accessible, but the wheelchair symbol is only used to show step-free access to a platform. Brilliant, eh?
Here's the first appearance of the new stations being built on the East London Line extension. It's good news for residents of central Hackney, but perhaps not for tube map users. These stations don't open until summer 2010, but they'll still be clogging up the map and confusing tourists for the next 30 months. Even more uselessly, the "under construction" connection from Dalston Junction to Canonbury is also shown, and that won't be opening until 2011. Meanwhile the southern section of the extended ELL (from New Cross Gate to West Croydon) also appears on the new map. It's already open, but still being run by Southern trains so Oyster pay-as-you-go isn't yet valid. As a lot of very small orange print tells you.
Here's a ghastly redesign of one major interchange, attempting (but failing) to better represent reality. As anyone who's ever changed trains in Docklands will know, there are two Canary Wharf stations, a five minute slog apart. The new map makes this a lot more explicit, replacing a single interchange blob with this triangular mess. Linkage is now via the walking distances between Canary Wharf Jubilee line station and its two DLR neighbours. If your eyesight is good enough you may be able to spot that Heron Quays DLR is 50m nearer than Canary Wharf DLR. If the map designer had been good enough he/she might have spotted that the DLR stations are to the west of the Jubilee line, not to the east. And above it, not below it. Come on TfL, if you're attempting to better depict reality, at least do it consistently.
Here's an even grimmer interchange revamp. There are three stations at West Hampstead, all along the same busy road - one on the Jubilee line, one on the London Overground and one served by First Capital Connect. As this graphic attempts to make clear, it's a 100m walk from the Jubilee to the Overground. The third station, West Hampstead Thameslink, is apparently 200m away - but from which of the other two? Real life evidence suggests it's 200m from the Jubilee, but you can't tell this from the map. Would a single blob really be so bad?
Here's the northwest corner of the new map. The big difference here is the appearance of ticket zones 7, 8 and 9 (replacing A, B, C and D). This isn't too messy - it actually makes more sense that the previous zoning. Except in nearby Watford. Watford Metropolitan line station is in Zone 7, but nearby Watford High Street station is in Zone 8 and even nearer Watford Junction isn't in a zone at all, not even zone 9. Oh, and doesn't Chalfont and Latimer station look complicated? The perfect example of how the designers think they've added clarity, but have actually taken it away.
And finally, here's the new map layout for "Heathrow Airport". There are three stations named after terminals, one of which doesn't open until Easter. I hope you can understand how the loopy one-way system works. Travellers can't get directly from Terminal 4 to Terminal 5, nor directly from Terminals 1, 2, 3 or 5 to Terminal 4. I'm sure that tourists just arrived by plane will find this crystal clear to understand and to follow. Oh, and see that big red dagger next to Terminal 4? There are more than 30 of these littered across the tube map, and they all refer to additional text in the station index beneath. In this case TfL want to warn you that Terminal 4 station closes at quarter to midnight (whereas most stations close nearer half past). Somebody presumably cares. One day, maybe, all this "crucial" red dagger information will be plastered across the map itself. Like I said, the way tube map design is going, information pollution can only escalate.
The new January 2008 tube map, first seen in the London Overground timetable, has already appeared on the platforms at the new Langdon Park DLR station. Here's a photograph of some of the most offensive redesign.
• So far I've still only spent £1 on Christmas presents. One Christmas present. Is this a) lunacy? b) cautious? c) procrastinating? d) miserly? e) astute? f) saving the planet? • I still haven't written any Christmas cards yet. And time is fast running out. Must try harder. • Thanks to the two of you who've sent me homemade cards, they're lovely. • So far this year I've only received 12 Christmas cards. I know it's still "early", but that's a bit rubbish isn't it? And not one single card from anybody at work, pah! • Last Christmas I sent out 70 cards, but received only 34 back. Two to one against. That really is a bit rubbish. • The people who do send me Christmas cards tend to be family members, people I'm still in touch with from university, the odd friend and a few select former work colleagues. But very few current work colleagues. Maybe I shouldn't bother this year. Their loss. • I suspect that, by the end of this weekend, I'll have written lots of cards but still only have spent £1 on Christmas presents. I may have my priorities completely wrong. Or I may not.
The road east from Aldgate to Stratford has a long and mighty history. It's been the main road to Essex from London for the best part of a millennium - the route taken by armies and revolting peasants and stagecoaches and trams. It's part of one of the UK's great trunk roads, the A11, home to traffic jams and exhaust fumes and bendy buses. And in five years time, for a few short hours, it'll be part of the route of the Olympic Marathon. Hundreds of the world's fastest long-distance athletes will be puffing past my front door, just one mile from glory in a billion pound stadium. But Tower Hamlets wants the Olympic legacy to last a bit longer than a couple of brief afternoons. They've had a transformational idea. And that idea is called "High Street 2012". Anybody interested in bringing their vision to life?
An invitation to tender has just been issued, attempting to recruit a team who can enable the delivery of transformational change along three and a half miles of East End street. Someone, surely, can breathe new life into the Whitechapel Road, Mile End Road, Bow Road and Stratford High Street. Someone, surely, can suggest improvements which will enhance the area's ambience for both visitors and residents alike. And hopefully something a bit more exciting than tying multi-coloured balloons to all the lampposts.
The original plan was to name this scheme "Olympic Boulevard", but presumably that was too difficult for local people to spell (and a bit too French), so "High Street 2012" it is. The chosen scheme could be a really exciting blueprint that brightens up my local linear neighbourhood and acts as a catalyst for future regeneration. I could be stepping out of my front door into a thriving cosmopolitan community buzzing with excited tourists and re-energised East End citizens. There might be landscaped public spaces, dynamic transport projects and fully-restored historic buildings. How exciting. But it'll be crucial to assemble the best possible planning team, or else the end result might be nothing more than a few replaced roadsigns and the 2012 Olympic logo painted repeatedly onto the pavement.
The successful planning team will have between 150 and 200 thousand pounds to play with, and six months to deliver a coherent vision strategy for the High Street 2012 project. There's nothing in the tender application which says that ordinary citizens can't apply, so long as they have economic, technical and financial capability. So I wondered if any of you lot were interested in joining me to form a multi-disciplinary consortium to take on the big guys and bid for the big prize. Any architects out there, or urban planners, or bureaucrats who like writing mind-numbing technical documents in project management-speak, please make yourselves known. We've got until noon on 11th January to put together the pre-qualification questionnaire, and then the council will let us know by 21st January whether or not "DG Regeneration Inc" will be invited to participate in the tendering process. Wouldn't it be exciting to be asked to formulate an overarching design vision to shape the foundations of legacy-based renewal in a challenging inner-urban environment? Because I'd love to live somewhere great, and not a street full of plastic palm trees and Starbucks.
London's ten busiest tube stations (2006) 1) Victoria (73m)2) Waterloo (72.9m)3) Oxford Circus (68.4m)4) Liverpool Street (57.9m)5) Kings Cross St Pancras (52.5m)6) London Bridge (51m)7) Paddington (38.7m)8) Canary Wharf (38.5m)9) Bank/Monument (38.2m)10) Piccadilly Circus (37.6m)
London's ten busiest tube stations that aren't also National Rail stations (2006) 1) Oxford Circus (68.4m)2) Canary Wharf (38.5m)3) Bank/Monument (38.2m)4) Piccadilly Circus (37.6m)5) Tottenham Court Road (32.8m)6) Bond Street (32.7m)7) Leicester Square (32.6m)8) Green Park (28m)9) Hammersmith (District & Piccadilly) (27.7m)10) Holborn (27.5m)
London's ten busiest tube stations outside Zone 1 (2006) 1) Canary Wharf (38.5m)2) Hammersmith (District & Piccadilly) (27.7m)3) Finsbury Park (26.3m)4) Stratford (22.4m)5) Brixton (19.7m)6) Camden Town (18m)7) Ealing Broadway (14.9m)8) Wimbledon (13.6m)9) Highbury & Islington (13.3m)10) Tooting Broadway (12.2m)
London's ten least busy tube stations (2006) 1) Roding Valley (179000)2) Chigwell (258000)3) Grange Hill (287000)4) Chesham (404000)5) Fairlop (526000)6) Theydon Bois (562000)7) Barkingside (620000)8) Croxley (656000)9) Ruislip Gardens (672000)10) Moor Park (694000)
London's ten least busy tube stations that aren't on the Central line (2006) 1) Chesham (404000)2) Croxley (656000)3) Moor Park (694000)4) South Kenton (697000)5) Upminster Bridge (822000)6) Mill Hill East (872000)7) North Ealing (894000)8) Kensington (Olympia) (902000)9) Ickenham (921000)10) West Harrow (957000)
London's ten busiest National Rail stations (2005/6) 1) Waterloo (61m)2) Victoria (48m)3) Liverpool Street (47m)4) London Bridge (37m)5) Charing Cross (29m)6) Euston (27m)7) Paddington (26m)8) King's Cross (20m)9) Cannon Street (18m)10) Fenchurch Street (16m)
London's ten busiest National Rail stations that aren't central London termini (2005/6) 1) East Croydon (15.4m)2) Clapham Junction (13.4m)3) Wimbledon (11.8m)4) Kings Cross Thameslink (8.8m)5) Stratford (7.7m)6) Vauxhall (7.7m)7) Richmond (7.3m)8) Ealing Broadway (6m)9) Surbiton (5.8m)10) Finsbury Park (5m)
Things are rarely as bad as they first appear. Not usually. When bad news strikes we often assume that there'll be unbearably terrible consequences. We let our thoughts run away with us and jump to unnecessarily pessimistic conclusions. But that's not usually how situations work out. Just because something really awful could happen doesn't mean that it will. Real life is rarely as dire as our first thoughts suggest.
Things are rarely as bad as they first look. The reason why you can't find your front door keys might be because you left them at home, not on the bus. That brown envelope on your doormat might be junk mail, not a bill. Just because your train stopped between stations doesn't mean you're going to miss your connection. The bland-looking meal your mother-in-law just served up might actually taste quite nice. The row you just had with your partner doesn't mean your relationship is over. That glare your boss just gave you doesn't mean you're about to get the sack.
Things are rarely as bad as they first seem. That newspaper headline hinting at mortgage meltdown might just be the same old story repackaged. Those two lost data discs are probably misfiled in a store cupboard somewhere, not in the hands of evil online crimelords. Sudden plane turbulence usually ends in the air, not on the ground. Eating processed meat probably won't kill you, it'll just make you feel unnecessarily guilty. That lad in a hoodie advancing towards you up a dark alley is almost certainly holding a mobile, not a knife.
Things are sometimes far worse than they first seem. That first swear word your child just uttered might mean they'll grow up to be an uncouth brat. That crack you've just spotted in your wall might mean that your house will soon be worthless. That gathering storm cloud may contain a lightning bolt that strikes you. That lump you just found might get bigger. All these terrible things happen somewhere, to some people, in the evil lottery of life. But usually these worst case scenarios are exactly the things we fear might happen, but never do.
Sometimes bad news is merely the herald of instability. You've been used to your world running one way, but suddenly there's an unplanned diversion ahead. You thought you knew where you were heading, but you were wrong. That exam you didn't pass, maybe the failure will set your career on a different, more appropriate track. That worrying diagnosis your doctor just gave you, perhaps it'll finally encourage you to change your lifestyle and prevent the onset of something far worse. That job you're about to be made redundant from, maybe losing it will be just the kick you've long needed to find something better. Bad news might rock your boat, but it probably won't sink you.
When faced with bad news, always stop and consider how bad that bad news really is. If, genuinely, the worst has been confirmed then grit your teeth, hold tight, and try to ride out the storm. But if things aren't yet really bad, or if this is merely unconfirmed speculation, then don't panic. Hold fire, and wait to see how events pan out. Because things are rarely as bad as they first appear. Most probably. Fingers crossed.
With just a fortnight to go until Christmas Day (ulp) it's time to do a little forward planning, courtesy of the double issueRadio Times. Because if you don't organise your Yuletide viewing in advance you might well end up surrounded by grannies watching Emmerdale or trapped with the nieces watching CBeebies, rather than enjoying the festive sitcom special you'd hate yourself for missing. Select yourself a happy Christmas from the list of options below...
Christmas Eve afternoon - shopped and wrapped (2pm-ish) My Fair Lady: luvverly musical (BBC2) The Railway Children: knicker-waving drama (ITV1) The Snowman: ice-hearted classic (Channel 4) Wallace and Gromit: cheesy adventures (UKTV Gold) Mince Pie Masterchef: homebaked tastiness (kitchen)
Christmas Eve early evening - excited and expectant (5:30pm-ish) The Princess Diaries 2: sugarsweet movie (BBC1) Carols from Kings: choral perfection (BBC2) Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: truly scrumptious (ITV1) The Simpsons: 500th repeat (Sky One) Turkey Giblets: a fowl task (kitchen)
Christmas Day afternoon - bloated and stuffed (4:30pm-ish) Romeo and Juliet: the annual ballet extravaganza (BBC2) All Star Family Fortunes: celebrity trifling (ITV1) The Simpsons: 60th repeat (Channel 4) The Simpsons: 600th repeat (Sky One) Monopoly: bankrupt in Mayfair (dining room table)
Christmas Day early evening - tipsy and comatose (7pm-ish) Doctor Who: drowning with Kylie (BBC1) Andrea Bocelli: highbrow operatics (BBC2) Emmerdale: rustic Dales gossip (Channel 4) The Simpsons: 700th repeat (Sky One) Scrabble: a night on the tiles (living room)
Boxing Day afternoon - bored and restless (3pm-ish) Carmen: keep yourself Bizet (BBC2) Moonraker: traditional Bond outing (ITV1) Deal or No Deal: Noel's Christmas presents (Channel 4) Robbie Williams: not The Simpsons (Sky One) Ten Pin Bowling: Grandpa plays Wii (living room carpet)
Boxing Day evening - relaxed and mellow (9pm-ish) Ballet Shoes: girls' own drama (BBC1) QI: some Fry-ed outtakes (BBC2) The Old Curiosity Shop: what the Dickens? (ITV1) Prime Minister's Questions: despatch box repeat (BBC Parliament) Charades: give us a clue (round the fireplace)
Langdon Park DLR Opened: 9 December 2007 [i.e. yesterday] Initial feasibility case: May 2000 [blimey, look how long it takes to launch a station] Reasons for opening: neighbourhood regeneration, too long a gap between adjacent stations.
When the DLR was built, back in 1987, there was a glaringly long gap on the Stratford extension between Devons Road and All Saints. It might have looked obvious on a map but nobody really cared, because there was nothing important in the gap apart from a couple of crumbling housing estates. There was no "business case" for a station here, apparently. And anyway wasn't it more important that Essex commuters travelling to and from Canary Wharf should be able to save precious seconds by speeding through without stopping? So residents of the Lansbury and Teviot estates got used to watching DLR trains whizzing by behind a big fence, and carried on catching the bus instead. It's taken 20 years to finally put a stop to this rather blatant case of transport neglect.
Here we are in Poplar, just north of the East India Dock Road and close to Chrisp Street Market. The Germans bombed the area quite heavily during the war, and the existing landscape owes much to the un-pretty era of postwar council block redevelopment. The authorities did at least try - the Lansbury was a showpiece estate built for the Festival of Britain, and Erno Goldfinger's Balfron Tower is almost as big an icon as its big sister Trellick on the other side of town. But years of neglect and disinterest eventually led to increasing crime levels and greater marginalisation. If Tower Hamlets ever offer you a council flat here, you'd think twice.
But now there's a new way out, with the opening of a brand new DLR station at the heart of the community. It opened yesterday without any fanfare whatsoever, not even a mention on the TfL website (which still has the opening date listed as "Late 2007"). I think the Mayor is due to pop along and perform some official ceremony sometime this week, but presumably he has better things to do on Sunday mornings than eulogise about regeneration in a speech littered with media soundbites. The station was, I suspect, due to open on Saturday because the DLR had scheduled a mini "open day" with leaflets and giveaways for local residents. But the entrances remained boarded up while workmen scurried around finishing off a few urgent paving slabs, leaving a surprisingly long queue of damp souls waiting patiently beneath umbrellas in the howling rain. Anything for a freebie.
The new station gleams like a shiny alien mothership, miraculously landed in the midst of some decaying backwater spaceport. Its signature feature is the elegantly curved glass footbridge, with a splayed metal cone at each end encircling a pair of liftshafts. Unlike the footbridge it replaced, you'd not feel unsafe crossing the tracks here after dark. Access from Chrisp Street is fairly mundane, up a brief alley, but the plaza on the eastern side is rather more impressive. Up on the roof the station's name has been picked out in big white plastic letters, a bit like at Wembley Park, while down below a row of black bollards prevents local joyriders from smashing into the glass platform walls for a laugh. They would do, I'm sure, given half a chance.
So, will you be stopping off at Langdon Park DLR in the near future? Probably not. Really, there's nothing much around here you might want to come and see. Langdon Park itself is just a threadbare grassy quadrilateral with playground equipment and football pitches - you probably have one of those where you live. Across the road at Langdon Park School (sorry, "Specialist Sports College") there's not yet a blue plaque commemorating Dizzee Rascal's musical scholarship. And festival-goers may have traipsed round the Lansbury Estate in 1951, but you wouldn't want to wander inbetween the apartment blocks today, not for the fun of it. But for those who live here the new station is a precious lifeline to the outside world, and a beacon of hope that somebody somewhere actually cares. Every five minutes, in both directions, life round here just got better.
So, by way of experiment, I've listed below my most and least viewed photographs. No thumbnail, just a link and a brief (maybe tempting) description. And then I intend to update the list once every hour, for the rest of the day. If I can entice enough of you to take a look, maybe the list will change several times during the day. Let's see...
My most viewed photo(12 midnight - final update) » London Eye - New Year 2006(1 January 2006) [2115 views] New Year fireworks viewed from the Embankment
My least viewed photo(9am)(10am)(11am)(12noon)(1pm)(4pm)(5pm)(6pm)(7pm)(8pm)(9pm)(10pm)(11pm)(12 midnight) » London City Airport approach(8 December 2007) [15 views] The runway at London's smallest airport, with a Docklands backdrop » Puffin edge(23 June 2007) [19 views] 50 very small puffins lined up along a Northumbrian cliff » Autumn leaves(10 November 2007) [22 views] Golden leaves in Greenwich Park » Green Park(26 October 2005) [26 views] A very shadowy number 38 Routemaster in lower Piccadilly » Langdon ParkDLR station(and footbridge)(9 December 2007) [18 views] Opening morning at London's newest station » Rupert Street (Trocadero)(26 October 2005) [27 views] Close-up of a 38 Routemaster speeding along Shaftesbury Avenue » Old Bond Street(26 October 2005) [28 views] Last of the rarely-viewed Routemaster photos, honest » Skegness seafront(10 April 2007) [32 views] All the bleak beachside joy of the Lincolnshire coast » Skeggy buckets(10 April 2007) [33 views] A rack of brightly coloured buckets and spades, like seaside holidays used to be » Under the bridge(25 March 2007) [34 views] Monochrome shot from the beach beneath the Millennium Bridge » The Willett Memorial(27 October 2007) [35 views] 1-hour-ahead sundial commemorating British Summer Time's inventor » Waterworks River(4 July 2007) [36 views] Peaceful Olympic backwater, before the bulldozers moved in » BeadnellHarbour(24 June 2007) [36 views each] Two boat-y Northumberland photos (at least one of which would make a nice jigsaw) » AtopBecktonAlp(9 December 2007) [0 views each] The view at the summit of East London's derelict ski slope
It's always dangerous to try to turn an acclaimed book into a film. People who've read the book will watch the film and say "but that's not what happens, and you've missed loads of bits out". And people who haven't read the book will say "hang on, I don't quite understand what's going on". This film, based on Philip Pulman's trilogy His Dark Materials, is no exception. The book is brooding, complex and philosophical, while the film has to be suitable for 8 year-olds. It was always going to be a fine balancing act. Thankfully it's just fine enough.
The film is in two parts. First a gradual set-up, in and around a fictional Oxford college, with characters rounded and the basic back story established. This bit of the film works, pretty much. It's fun to see how the director has brought heroine Lyra's alternate universe to life, especially the animal "daemons" and the ornate fantastical skyline. This could almost be an urban Harry Potter movie, were it to remain coddled within academia. But then suddenly part two kicks in. Suddenly Lyra and a motley crowd of hangers-on are on a quest to the snowbound Arctic, first in a boat then in a balloon, haring after some secret evil experimental facility in which the world's pre-teens are being emotionally neutered, 50 at a time. Oh, and there are talking ice bears who wrestle one another clad in armour made of sky-iron. Please, now is the time to suspend disbelief.
Nicole Kidman is very good as the evil Mrs Coulter, a scheming blonde in heels. Daniel Craig is underused as Lord Asriel (as indeed are most of the starring names - a few lines here and there, every now and then). Just as well that the actress who plays young Lyra is so convincing, as she virtually holds the plot together. I particularly enjoyed trying to spot where certain scenes had been filmed, especially when it turned out I'd visited several of them in the last six months. Look, the Old RoyalNaval College in Greenwich, and Chatham Naval Dockard, and even Kempton Steam Engines in Hounslow.
The film really ought to have a third part. There were muted sighs of disappointment in the cinema when it became apparent that a not-really conclusive point in the plot was the closing scene. Those who've read the book will be particularly disappointed, although the actor destined to die a few chapters after the credits will no doubt relish the opportunity to come back in the follow-up movie. Ah yes, there's a lot more of this franchise still to come. And I might be back to see which bits of the next volume they cut out, you never know.
King's Cross Thameslink Opened: 10 January 1863 [this is (near enough) the site of King's Cross underground station, on the Metropolitan Railway, opened on the very first day of London's very first underground railway] Closed: 8 December 2007 [this station terminates today] Reasons for closure: Too small, too crowded, too inconveniently located, too old.
It's not a lovely station, this. It's a long hike from the main King's Cross station, either across several sets of traffic lights or along a very longpedestrian tunnel (the one where they painted "Smile" on the walls to try to cheer up commuters). The steps down to the platforms are narrow, and if you get stuck behind a family lugging a pushchair you're in trouble. The platforms are called A and B, not 1 and 2, so passengers don't get them confused with the mainline station across the road. Everybody waits at the westernend, clogging the platforms, waiting for the next service to Bedford, Brighton or Wimbledon to appear. Can you hear it? No, that's a completely different train chugging invisibly somewhere nearby. The Circle line runs past on the other side of a wall (although it used to stop close by until a new underground station was built up the line). For a quiet wait, walk past Gatwick-bound suitcases or gangs of Luton youths up to the far end of the platform, out in the open air. Waiting here's a risk, because most trains aren't long enough to stop this far up, but you might just get a bench or square metre of platform to yourself. Until escape arrives, up the tunnel, and whisks you away somewhere nicer. Somewhere with a future.
King's Cross Thameslink closes forever at the end of today, to be replaced tomorrow by a brand spanking new station directly beneath St Pancras International. This'll be far more convenient for international travellers and commuters alike, and a lot more spacious too. From a passing train the new station looks like a big grey box, charmless and featureless, and far easier to exit through. But in 24 hours time it'll be the old station that trains will whizz through, past empty benches and fading adverts, past a century and a half of history. All change please.
Not all places of work have an Office Christmas Party. Some, including my own this year, have an Office Christmas Meal instead. A meal is a lot easier to organise than a party, although not generally quite so drunken and debauched. Having attended my OCM this week, here are ten tips to help you survive yours.
1) Never organise the meal yourself: Somebody has to do it, but you'll not gain any friends by organising it yourself. Whichever sort of restaurant you pick - French, Chinese, Indian or whatever - somebody won't be happy and will tell you so, repeatedly, for the next six months. Let somebody else organise things, and then you can slag off their choice along with everyone else.
2) Don't eat lunch beforehand: Office Christmas Meals tend to be scheduled to start during work time, usually mid-afternoon. This allows those with childcare arrangements to participate fully in their work colleagues' social life. It also allows restaurants to fill their tables before the evening rush begins, so expect to be chucked out by seven. It's also a bloody silly time for an enormous meal. So don't eat lunch beforehand.
3) Plan your arrival carefully: The next three hours depend on you arriving at the restaurant with your favourite workmates. Not the boring bloke from accounts, not the tedious secretary from the third floor, and most definitely not your immediate line manager. You really don't want to end up sitting next to them for the entire meal, not with all their boring conversations about work and recycling targets and work and Pink Floyd's back catalogue and yet more work. Make sure you sit at a completely different table and surround yourself with your interesting workmates, the life and soul of the party. Arrive with care.
4) Remember what you ordered: The Office Christmas Meal is always planned far too many weeks in advance. Somewhere in October an officious email will come round with a pdf menu attached, demanding that you select starter, main course and dessert RIGHT NOW because there's a deposit to be paid. And now it's December, and you're sitting in a restaurant under pressure from a stern waitress who's demanding to know who ordered the salmon mousse. C'mon, c'mon! And whose is the soup, and who wanted wild mushroom tartlets? Avoid embarrassment, print out your sent email before you arrive.
5) Don't wear that paper party hat: Look, there's a cheap cracker on the table. It's the restaurant's sole nod towards making this a festive meal, and it contains the usual embarrassing pink/green paper hat. Whatever you do don't place this hat on your head, not even for a minute. Everybody has a camera on their mobile phone these days, and your festive plonker moment will no doubt be captured, uploaded and shared on the office intranet tomorrow morning. Don't let this happen to you.
6) Eat, drink and be merry: Come on, this is the one occasion during the year when your company actually wants you to enjoy yourself, and is paying for the privilege. Order the most expensive stuff you can get away with (especially the wine), because tomorrow you'll be back at your desk trimming down budget forecasts again.
7) Try to keep the conversation flowing: It's difficult isn't it? These aren't the people you'd normally choose to spend a social evening with, they're just a random selection of people who Human Resources have deemed work in the same department as you. You have virtually nothing in common. They know nothing about your interests and you care nothing about theirs. Stick to the usual safe conversational topics (house prices, holiday arrangements, children's TV programmes) and you should make it through.
8) Go to the toilet before you arrive: You didn't, did you? And now all that free wine has trickled through your digestive system to your bladder and is waiting, nay begging, to be released. So it's not good that you're sitting in a seat jammed in the far corner, right up against the wall, trapped behind the chairs of four other semi-drunken colleagues who aren't going to be moving anywhere soon. Keep your legs crossed, it's your own fault.
9) Swap seats during the dessert course: Quick, after you've finally managed to sneak out to the toilet, return and sit down at a completely different table. Leave all the boring sods behind and go sit with the fun crowd, the ones who've been laughing and whooping and knocking back the wine all evening. Go on, be brave and sit down next to the really attractive one, the one you've been eyeing up from afar all year. If this was a proper Office Christmas Party you'd be taking advantage of their drunkenness and snogging them in the stationery cupboard by now, but for now a mild "accidental" grope of their leg will have to do. Until the same time next December.
10) Don't stay for coffee: Make your excuses and leave. Whatever you do don't hang around until the waitress starts clearing away the coffee cups and staring pointedly at her watch. It'll be at this point that somebody will suggest retiring to a nearby pub for the rest of the evening, and only the boring friendless geeks with no social life will take up the offer, and then you'll end up waking in the morning somewhere in the suburbs with a ghastly hangover and your head resting on a colleague's naked chest. Don't let that be you. Go home alone, and come to work semi-sober tomorrow to discover which two other workmates made the dreadful post-pub shagging error. Office Christmas Meals, don't you just love them?
When I was little, baking was a national obsession. Every afternoon the UK's ovens would be heated up ready for a tray or two of something cake-y or pastry-like to be slipped inside, for half an hour or so, before being scooped out, sliced and served up at the kitchen table as a teatime or suppertime treat. Perhaps some fruit cake, or a caramel slice, or an oaty flapjack, or just a small moist cupcake in its fluted paper wrapping. You know, the sort of home-baked delight that a much-loved grandmother might have given you alongside a glass of orange squash or a mug of instant Nescafe. Or that some dear old lady in a flowery hat might have served up on the refreshment stall at a bring and buy sale in a musty church hall. Mmm, chocolate crispie cake and shortbread. Be still my beating tastebuds.
But most people don't bake any more, because they think baking takes time and effort. It certainly involves a lot more washing up than going shopping and buying some cakes instead. I blame Mr Kipling, launched in 1967 with ready-cut Bakewell slices and mini Battenburgs, for kick-starting the rot. Why bake your own almond slices, caramel shortcake and tiffin when some big factory could fill a six-pack for you? For most of us, baking became just too much effort. And now, in the Convenience Age, it seems that we've all completely caved in. Food manufacturers know that we can't resist a slice of cake or a chocolate brownie, especially at any location where hot drinks are sold, and have taken steps to exploit our inner weakness.
Enter the "traybake". There they sit near the cash till, identical small slabs of moulded carbohydrate shrink-wrapped in plastic. See how moist they look. Look at the currants and chocolate chips sprinkled liberally throughout each pastry slice. Imagine those succulent stodgy crumbs slipping down your throat and resting snugly in your stomach. Perhaps best not to look at the list of ingredients printed in tiny writing on the back of the wrapper - emulsifiers, stabilisers, saturated fats, etc - or to check out the unnaturally distant sell-by-date somewhere in the middle of next year. The manufacturers, and the catering establishments in which they sell their wares, just want you to stop and buy one. Mmmm, traybake.
But have you seen the prices they're charging? £1.15 for a small square of pecan & maple syrup flapjack. £1.95 for an individually wrapped organic walnut brownie. £2.20 for a three-bite chunk of chocolate caramel shortbread. I see consumer sheep picking up these pseudo-homemade nibbles every day in the canteen at work, without ever stopping to think what appalling value for money they are. The catering company simply sticks a few easy-to-come-by ingredients into an industrial oven, waits half an hour, and then cuts up the resulting rectangular slab into tiny £1 squares. Easy money. Fancy more profit? Just cut the squares a little smaller, they'll still get eaten. It's nothing more than a modern version of the old catering trick of dividing a restaurant gateau into 20 slices and charging a fiver for each.
I don't care how tasty the ingredients, I hereby pledge never to purchase a mass-produced machine-sliced individually wrapped cake-y chunk. Not at work, not at Starbucks, not at a station kiosk, not anywhere. Join me and "Just say no to traybakes".
londonerama the capital fanzine online edition 2 - December 2007
Welcome to London's essential new online newsletter! londonerama is the number 1 online mag for Europe's number 1 city. We have all the news, all the goss and all the up-front info. Well, some of it anyway. Read on...
NEW LONDON WALKING MAP! Do you need a decent walking map to find your way around the West End? A map you can slip into your pocket rather than read on a big plinth? Well, now you can pick up a folded full colour West End map as part of the Legible London initiative. Apparently it's available from Bond Street tube station (although I didn't see one there myself). Or you can download a copy off the website and, er, print it out onto A3 paper or something. Whatever, it looks rather useful should you ever want to walk from the Angolan Embassy to the Café Royal, or just potter around some posh shopping streets inbetween. Me, I'm waiting with anticipation for further maps covering other bits of town. Please. Download your map here.
OH WHAT A CIRCUS Have you ever wanted to see your name up in lights at Piccadilly Circus? It's easy if you're called Mr Coca Cola, or maybe even TDK Sanyo, but otherwise you're going to have to pay for the privilege. The iconic advertising boards above Eros now have their own website (don't get excited, it's marketing guff) and can be hired by anybody with sufficient money to spend. One minute of scrolling message will cost you £1000 (inclusive of "creative and digitisation" and "one set of ammendments"), while 10 minutes will set you back £4000. I hate to think how many bright young City boys will use the service to propose to their wives-to-be. Read Piccadilly Lights trivia here.
THE BIG SMOKE Is your Smoke collection up to date? The latest edition of the thrice-yearly London fanzine has just hit bookshops, and and no doubt you'll be wanting a copy. Within its covers (bedecked this issue by the gorgeous North Greenwich gasometer) you can read all about Fortress Wapping, Bunhill Fields, the Brentford Musketeer, Jonas Hanway the umbrella man and the 108 bus. And all in a very descriptive essayish style, along with moody photographs, camp statues and the usual Routemaster cartoon. You'll know the score by now. And just £2.90 a copy. Website here, list of stockists here.
BUS ROUTES TWEAKED If you live, work or shop around Shepherd's Bush, you might be interested in proposed adjustments to several local bus services. These changes are related to the new White City shopping centre, and TfL are seeking your feedback before the end of January. Me, I'm much more interested in their proposals for the Bow area. Ooh, we EastEnders can expect a brand new 425 bus service from Stratford to Hackney via Mile End. And they're going to renumber the S2 and call it the 488 (because lettered routes aren't politically correct any more) and terminate it at my local Tesco. If any of this affects you, do click through and have your say, before you end up with a bus network you don't want. White City consultation here, Bow consultation here.
PAPERBACK LONDON If you're looking for an under-a-tenner Christmas present for the Londoner in your life, I can heartily recommend Chambers London Gazeteer. This addictively browseable volume is now available in paperback, and Amazon can sell you a copy for just £8.99. They can also give you a glimpse inside, from Abbey Mills to Aldersgate, giving you an inkling into just how finely detailed each of the thousand other descriptions is. Less than a penny each too, what a bargain. London's bigger than you thought. Visit Hidden London - the website of the book.
There are certain trains that you should never catch. You won't spot them specially marked in any timetable, nor will their doomed status be flagged on any station departure board. But climb aboard and you may never reach your destination, nor indeed any other destination. Two such trains collided in thick fog in southeast London on the evening of Wednesday 4th December 1957. Ninety passengers and crew lost their lives that night, just east of St John's station, in what is still Britain's third worst railway disaster.
It had been a foggy day across southeast England, and by evening all the rail services to Kent were seriously disrupted. Commuters piled aboard delayed trains in an attempt to get home, and one by one each locomotive headed off towards the commuter belt. But the misty conditions, combined with unscheduled timetabling, led to a series of unfortunate mistakes being made. The over-worked signalman at Parks Bridge Junction, just west of Lewisham town centre, accidentally muddled the order of two eastbound trains. He thought the first train was heading to Hayes, whereas the Hayes train was actually second behind a Hastings-bound service. Both trains queued unnecessarily in the fog, protected to the rear by a red signal. But a red signal is only of any use if somebody spots it in time, and the next train driver didn't.
Driver William Trew left Cannon Street station at 6:08pm, on the footplate of a steam engine heading for Ramsgate. His train was a whole hour and a quarter late, and it's likely that he was trying to make up some lost time. Trew steamed through New Cross at 35mph, then rushed onwards through the cutting towards St John's. Two amber signals to the right of the track should have warned him to slow down, but he saw neither out of his tiny window through the thickening fog. A red signal at the far end of the St John's platform therefore came as a complete surprise and, with just 138 yards of clear track remaining, a crash was inevitable.
There are certain carriages that you should never sit in. They're not labelled on the window, and they're not always the obvious ones at the front or rear, but you should never ever climb inside. For the Hayes train, stood waiting on the embankment, the carriage to avoid turned out to be number eight. Carriage ten, at the rear, survived mostly intact because the brakes were on. Carriage nine was shunted forwards and upwards, again mostly intact. But carriage eight had the misfortune to end up directly underneath carriage nine and was almost completely crushed and destroyed.
The carnage in the Ramsgate train was even worse. Trew's engine stayed on the rails but the coal truck behind shot off to the left, smashing into a nearby bridge support. Unfortunately this bridge carried a second railway line, running diagonally over the tracks. Collision with the tender caused the entire central section to collapse, girders and all, flattening the front two and a half carriages of the train below. If only the crash had occurred a few feet further on, just past the bridge, scores of lives might have been saved.
There was one particular lucky escape, however. The driver of a Dartford-bound train chugging towards the overbridge managed to spot the twisted girders ahead just in time, and drew his train to a halt before it toppled down onto the tracks below. But that was the only bright spot. By the time local residents had raised the alarm and the emergency services had pulled survivors from the wreckage, ninety commuters were dead and 176 seriously injured. No other UK rail disaster in the last 50 years has had so high a death toll.
Stand on the lonely island platform at St John's station today (as a handful of irregular commuters still do) and the crash site can still be seen . You have to walk right to the eastern tip of the platform to be able to view the tracks where the collision happened (over there, beneath the "temporary" replacement overbridge erected two weeks after the crash). Every couple of minutes another sleek white train rushes through this very complicated junction, but there's far less danger nowadays because each is equipped with AWS cab signalling (rolled out nationwide as a direct consequence of this particular incident). Watch them speed by - only a handful of services are actually timetabled to stop at St John's to pick up passengers. Maybe that's why there's no memorial plaque anywhere on the station (councillors decided to erect one on the front of the Lewisham ticket office instead, which is on the wrong line altogether). But there are many people in the area, and across northern Kent, for whom this is a location tinged with great sadness and emotion.
There are certain stations that we should never forget.
Being the sort of bloke who counts things, I thought I'd spend last month totalling up all the money I spent on stuff and things. Just to see if I'm the sort of bloke who doesn't spend very much. And I think I might be. See if you agree.
• Rent & Bills (over £1000): Well, you have to, don't you? Thankfully November wasn't an especially bill-y month, but I think this means there are a lot due imminently. • Food (£200-ish): Hmm, that's rather more than I was expecting. There were only two trips to a supermarket in there, but also rather a lot of lunches in the works canteen. And I somehow managed to "dine out" five times last month, which is very unlike me (although rest assured that one of the five was a greasy spoon in Plaistow). • Drink (£75-ish): That's six beery nights out, and me buying a round or two each time. Six nights out, eh? I'm getting more sociable again (even if none of them were Saturday nights). • Newspapers and magazines (£40-ish): That's a daily paper and a couple of weeklylistings mags. Nothing big and glossy with endless car adverts and pages that smell of aftershave, no thanks. • Admission charges (£15-ish): Because researching this blog doesn't come free, OK? • Music (£13): That's one CD (which I played twice and is now sitting gathering dust on a shelf) and one CD single (which I could have downloaded cheaper, but I never did buy into this iTunes lark). I'm slipping. • Books (£10): Honestly, the publishing industry brings out all these supposed autumn blockbusters and I ignore the lot in favour of an end-of-daysthriller that came out in July. • Mobile phone (£10 top-up): Ditching my contract phone and switching to pay-as-you-go was one of the best decisions I've made recently. But then I only tend to use my mobile for text messages and the (very) occasional call, I'm not someone who haemorrhages money surfing the net or downloading ringtones. • Travel (£6-ish): Hmm, I appear not to have left London in November (and I only pay for my Oystercard in September). How green is my carbon footprint? • Christmas presents (£1): Blimey that's pathetic isn't it? I can foresee hours and hours of December being wasted attempting to buy gifts that nobody really wants. But at least the single quid I've paid out so far was perfectly spent. • Clothes/shoes (£0): There are sales every January. Why buy stuff inbetween? • Credit/debt (£0): Go on, tell me I'm not normal. • Other stuff (£60-ish): I bought a new camera in October but it didn't come with either a memory card or a carrycase, so a bought a memory card and a carrycase. Bit of a con that, I thought. And I bought a very nice map, because I like maps. And I didn't buy anything else. December may be quite different, however...
Blimey, aren't the marketeers at St Pancras desperate to whip up a festive frenzy of excitement? Not to get you to come and ride on Eurostar, that's not their job. Nor even to get you to come and admire the station's great architecture, nothing so innocent. Oh, no, they want you to come shopping. Please.
I first noticed the Pancras PR squad's advertising onslaught on Friday, when some underpaid lackey outside Holborn station tried desperately to force a free copy of the Evening Standard into my hand. The newspaper had a glossy wraparound cover full of arty snowflakes, plus a dangly luggage label stickered to the front on a bit of string. On the back cover was a very long list of all the special events being held at St Pancras over the next three weeks. No times or anything, just dates, but that's still considerably more useful than the Flash version on the website where you can't see the entire list in one go (and, indeed, will probably have fallen asleep before you've clicked through to the end). And inside the cover sheet, in full blue and gold technicolour, a double page spread inviting London to visit "the world's largest advent calendar". So yesterday I went to have a look.
The world's largest advent calendar is indeed very large. It covers one entire end of the majestic Barlow Train Shed, which must slightly piss off anybody who's turned up specifically to take photographs of the original building. Yes the famous station clock is still visible, but it's been incorporated into the central logo and appears somewhat overwhelmed. And what of the 24 windows? We're promised on the website that "Every day at 10am a door the World's Largest Advent Calendar will be opened by a celebrity or intriguing character". That sounds exciting, doesn't it? Except it's not. I do hope you weren't expecting revealed images of any religious significance. Day 1's picture is some orangey-pink Art Deco flower fairy abomination, with the logo of Boots the Chemist slapped rather blatantly across the bottom. This is no Advent Calendar, this is the world's largest Advert Calendar. Is nothing sacred any more? Well, no, obviously not.
Elsewhere inside St Pancras, a Victorian Christmas has arrived. Everywhere I turned yesterday, the crowd was peppered with top-hatted gentlemen and ladyfolk in crinoline dresses and lacy shawls. Their job seemed to be handing out mini Advent Calendars, each a small rectangle of glossy card, again with 24 windows just begging to be ripped open. I couldn't resist taking a peek. "Thursday 06" <rip> "Singles Dance Card Dating Night". "Friday 07" <rip> "Mulled wine and shopping evening". It was at precisely this moment that I realised there are no litter bins anywhere inside St Pancras station. Damn. So I ended up taking the calendar home and blogging about it instead. Cunning that.
Children were rather better catered for. Outside the Body Shop a crowd of almost-animated kids were watching a bunch of costumed actors performing something melodramatic on a mini stage. Further up the undercroft, past the big artificial Christmas tree, Santa was in his grotto. He'd arrived by Eurostar on Saturday morning (from Paris, presumably, or more likely EuroDisney). If you should turn up on a weekday when he's not in, never fear, there's a Father Christmas Post Box you can visit instead. It's also fat and red, but this time surrounded by a circular Habitat-sponsored seating area. A big sign on the front of the box warns children to ensure that their letters to Santa have a stamp on them, otherwise they might not receive a reply. And the postbox slot is filled by a solid black block with a narrow slit across the middle, presumably so that evil terrorist children can't post letterbombs to Santa instead. Such is a 21st century Victorian Christmas.
And does all this shameless marketing work? Yes of course it does. St Pancras was crawling with people yesterday, with far more of them downstairs in the undercroft (where the shops are) than upstairs where the pretty architecture is. There's nothing people like better at Christmas than standing around in a shopping mall buying gift sets of organic body scrub whilst sipping cappucinos, and clearly the King's Cross area has been sadly lacking in such retail opportunities. Up until now, anyway.
Look hard enough at the what's on list and you're bound to spot several interesting-looking events being held at St Pancras between now and Christmas, especially if you like historical guided tours, film screenings, carol singing or munching pfeffernüsse. But if you're not really into shopping or travelling to Paris, and you just want to bring your camera for a good look round, you might want to hold back until January 7th.
Before I moved to London, I lived in a small village in Suffolk. Me and 500 other people. It was a charming village just outside Ipswich, complete with 14th century church, tithe barn and watermill. There was an old pub at the top of the main street, and proper half-timbered cottages painted chocolate box colours, and a millpond down by the river. You know, all the things that make a village utterly perfect. I was a lucky man.
Except that village life wasn't all roses. A major dual carriageway ripped through the river valley and severed the village from surrounding civilisation. The B-road through the village was a rat-run used by an endless stream of rumbling traffic. The local pub was a carvery, so it was full of roast-munchers who'd driven in from miles around. The watermill was a crumbling shell, held up with scaffolding while the owner and the local council battled over who should pay to restore it. The local bus service was one rattly coach every two hours (stopping before 6pm) so I was forced to travel everywhere by car. It was a village where nothing much ever happened - the social highlight of my three year stay was an exhibition of teatowels in the church hall. And, worst of all, it was impossible to buy a pint of milk.
My village boasted one community essential - a tiny post office squashed into half a cottage in the High Street. It smelt a bit funny, and it was very dark inside, but it was oh so convenient for buying a stamp or paying my TV licence or sending a parcel to Australia. The postmaster sold newspapers (generally a big pile of Daily Mails and one of everything else) and also organised a paperboy-based delivery service - it's the only place I've ever lived where I've woken up to a broadsheet on my doormat every morning. The remainder of the post office was given over to a small "shop", which sold all sorts of non-perishable goods that weren't quite useful. Tins of rice pudding, cheap plastic combs, packets of cake mix, that sort of thing. There was also a half-hearted selection of greetings cards for a handful of birthday and anniversary needs, most of them featuring a bouquet of flowers or a racing car on the front. But there was no milk. If I wanted milk I had to hop into my car and drive a couple of miles into nearby Ipswich. Living in the countryside is rarely as green as it sounds.
The post office closed down last year. It's now impossible for local residents to buy a postage stamp or a Daily Mail, and even those tins of Ambrosia creamed rice are unavailable. For elderly residents in particular, the loss is keenly felt. The bus service is still rubbish, and anyone attempting to walk down narrow lanes to the nearest outpost of retail civilisation is likely to be knocked down by a thundering lorry. The only items left to buy in the village are a pint of beer, a roast beef lunch and a guidebook to the local church. I think I got out just in time.
This week regional ITV viewers have been voting for community projects they think are deserving of "The People's Millions". And my old village has pulled together and submitted plans for a new community shop. The western end of the tithe barn, they think, would be the perfect location for an eco-store selling green products and everyday essentials. I agree. Local residents would be able to save time, and petrol, with this new service at the heart of the village. The project was featured on Anglia News on Thursday, along with a phone vote, and expectations were high. Would £80000 of lottery money be coming to rescue a declining community? Alas no. Viewers decided to give the money to a bunchof allotments in Ipswich instead. A new village shop will have to wait.
I'm lucky in London, I can buy milk at countless shops within walking distance. I don't need a car to buy a newspaper or a greetings card, or even a tin of rice pudding. I may not have a view of fields from my window any more, nor a tithe barn on my doorstep, but at least I can brew a cup of tea with ease. Meanwhile, back in Suffolk, my old village has lost out. Sorry folks, no milk today. Something feels very wrong when the future of a village hinges on a failed phone vote. The parish council may be doing a sterling job of maintaining a sense of local community, but without local services more and more people are going to find living in the countryside unsustainable. Let's hope that not everybody follows my example and abandons ship.
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.
[1] "The aim of the Hampton Court Maze", reads 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.
[5] This long path skirts around the central clearing, where jubilant finishers can be glimpsed oh-so tantalisingly close on the other side of the hedge. But no premature short-cut through the foliage is possible - the maze's iron-railing skeleton makes certain of that. Although you can pass through the hedge at the next junction, where 20th century gardeners have cut an elegant archway to link two of the original pathways.
[8] If you've brought a toddler with you, they're probably gurgling merrily by now. You'd better run after them before they totter headlong down the next leafy canyon and disappear round yet another corner.
[12] Is this the central courtyard, or is this a concrete patio knocked together by some Channel 4 lifestyle programme? Bland wooden trelliswork holds back a ring of replanted hornbeam. To left and right, where two tall trees once cast a welcome shadow, sit clumps of squat stools awaiting weary backsides. And, in the very centre of the centre, an upturned conic pedestal bears the legend "We found the Maze Centre at Hampton Court Palace 2007" (with the final "7" daubed on in thick temporary paint). You might want to ask those two foreign students over there to take your photograph, before they ask you. Smile - you’ve just solved a classic 17th century puzzle.
1 Now when Christmas was nigh in Mayfair of Westminster in the days of Nigella the Great, behold, there came fur-coated ladies from the shires to Old Bond Street,
9 When they had heard the floppy-fringed one, they departed; and, lo, the deluxe brand awareness, which they saw in the West End, went before them, till it came and stood over where the exclusive retail destination was.
1 And there were in the same country East Enders abiding in the estates, keeping watch over their budgets by night.
6 And suddenly there was with the inspector a multitude of the heavenly stallholders trading goods, and saying,
No longer true...
• The Underground runs over 253 miles (408km) of line. No longer true. Now it's 248 miles (400km)... plus four particularly useless replacement bus services.
All the stations on the East London line were busy, noticeably busier than usual. TfL appeared to have rostered an additional member of staff on every platform keeping an eye on the all the additional enthusiasts lest they accidentally misbehave. You know the sort of thing - using flash photography, or trying to walk into off-limits bits of the station, or leaning out in front of passing trains in search of the perfect photo. I'm not sure what grim fate faces these members of staff today now that their stations are closed until 2010. Pointing passengers towards replacement bus services, maybe, or perhaps redeployed in less important posts at other stations elsewhere. Amputating a limb from the Underground network has a human cost as well as a financial price.
Today is the very last day of service on the East London line. Tonight, after the last train to New Cross Gate (probably about quarter past one), the entire line faces prolonged shutdown. Come back in June 2010 and the tracks and stations will have been re-engineered and reborn as part of the London Overground network. But come back tomorrow and you'll have to ride the replacement bus service instead. It's not an exciting prospect.
But for this week at least, it's been business as usual on the East London line. At Whitechapel folk still descend the steps from the District line platforms to catch a little four-coach train south. At Shadwell they still ride the lift down to almost-platform level rather than taking the stairs. At Wapping they still stand somewhat precariously on what must be the narrowest platform on the entire tube network, watching down the tunnel beneath the Thames for the headlamps of an approaching train. At Rotherhithe they still listen to the ominous dripping of pumped-out water rushing somewhere above their heads. At Canada Water they still swarm down the escalators to ride the much more popular Jubilee line into town. At Surrey Quays they still wait beneath the orange-topped columns and ornate iron work clutching bags from the nearby shopping centre. And at bifurcated New Cross and New Cross Gate they still wait patiently for an all-too-rare train to arrive, and pause, and eventually depart. Nothing ever happens quickly here, nor on a grand scale, and that's part of the line's subterranean charm.
The East London line's not the busiest on the tube network. If you ever want to get a seat during the rush hour, head here. A mere 34000 souls use its services daily (compared to half a million on the Piccadilly and two-thirds of a million on the Northern), perhaps because it doesn't really go anywhere useful. But for local residents and cross-river commuters it's an extremely convenient lifeline, and one they're going to have to learn to live without. Let's hope that the shiny new East London Railway which finally emerges in 2½ years time will be worth the wait.
With the Christmas last post deadline fast approaching, I've been busy writing lots of addresses on envelopes. You know, the sort of addresses you only write to once a year, belonging to people you no longer see but can't bear to lose contact with. And, every December, I have the same pangs of mild guilt as I write the first line of each address on each envelope. Like this...
Olympic update
Well that didn't take long. It's still less than six months since the 2012 Olympic Park was sealed off, but the wholesale demolition of the site has been extremely rapid. Back in July there were warehouses and factories where the running track will be laid, but they've all been knocked down. Back in July there was a river where the grandstand will be erected, but that's been piped underground. Back in July there were trees where the hotdogs will be sold, but they've all been cut down. Back in July the view from the Greenway bridge was green, but now it's brown. Not one single building now remains on the stadium site, bar a couple of electricity substations just to the south. All that's left are the original roads, a row of lampposts, some walls and fences, and an awful lot of piles of earth.
T9onyms
Here's the reason the updated January tube map is needed. The East London Line closes next weekend, and will eventually reopen as part of the new London Overground. There'll be no more tubing from Whitechapel to New Cross, just four replacement bus services for the next 2½ years. Two of those bus services meet here, at Canada Water. Previously this was a very simple-looking single-blob interchange, but not any more. Now it appears as a triple-blobbed mega-interchange, as does Whitechapel on the opposite side of the river. This over-complex rearrangement ensures that nobody thinks they can travel from Rotherhithe to Surrey Quays on one bus, because that would be a terrible mistake to make. Incidentally the replacement bus service will be wheelchair accessible, but the wheelchair symbol is only used to show step-free access to a platform. Brilliant, eh?
Here's the first appearance of the new stations being built on the East London Line extension. It's good news for residents of central Hackney, but perhaps not for tube map users. These stations don't open until summer 2010, but they'll still be clogging up the map and confusing tourists for the next 30 months. Even more uselessly, the "under construction" connection from Dalston Junction to Canonbury is also shown, and that won't be opening until 2011. Meanwhile the southern section of the extended ELL (from New Cross Gate to West Croydon) also appears on the new map. It's already open, but still being run by Southern trains so Oyster pay-as-you-go isn't yet valid. As a lot of very small orange print tells you.
Here's a ghastly redesign of one major interchange, attempting (but failing) to better represent reality. As anyone who's ever changed trains in Docklands will know, there are two Canary Wharf stations, a five minute slog apart. The new map makes this a lot more explicit, replacing a single interchange blob with this triangular mess. Linkage is now via the walking distances between Canary Wharf Jubilee line station and its two DLR neighbours. If your eyesight is good enough you may be able to spot that Heron Quays DLR is 50m nearer than Canary Wharf DLR. If the map designer had been good enough he/she might have spotted that the DLR stations are to the west of the Jubilee line, not to the east. And above it, not below it. Come on TfL, if you're attempting to better depict reality, at least do it consistently.
Here's an even grimmer interchange revamp. There are three stations at West Hampstead, all along the same busy road - one on the Jubilee line, one on the London Overground and one served by First Capital Connect. As this graphic attempts to make clear, it's a 100m walk from the Jubilee to the Overground. The third station, West Hampstead Thameslink, is apparently 200m away - but from which of the other two? Real life evidence suggests it's 200m from the Jubilee, but you can't tell this from the map. Would a single blob really be so bad?
Here's the northwest corner of the new map. The big difference here is the appearance of ticket zones 7, 8 and 9 (replacing A, B, C and D). This isn't too messy - it actually makes more sense that the previous zoning. Except in nearby Watford. Watford Metropolitan line station is in Zone 7, but nearby Watford High Street station is in Zone 8 and even nearer Watford Junction isn't in a zone at all, not even zone 9. Oh, and doesn't Chalfont and Latimer station look complicated? The perfect example of how the designers think they've added clarity, but have actually taken it away.
And finally, here's the new map layout for "Heathrow Airport". There are three stations named after terminals, one of which doesn't open until Easter. I hope you can understand how the loopy one-way system works. Travellers can't get directly from Terminal 4 to Terminal 5, nor directly from Terminals 1, 2, 3 or 5 to Terminal 4. I'm sure that tourists just arrived by plane will find this crystal clear to understand and to follow. Oh, and see that big red dagger next to Terminal 4? There are more than 30 of these littered across the tube map, and they all refer to additional text in the station index beneath. In this case TfL want to warn you that Terminal 4 station closes at quarter to midnight (whereas most stations close nearer half past). Somebody presumably cares. One day, maybe, all this "crucial" red dagger information will be plastered across the map itself. Like I said, the way tube map design is going, information pollution can only escalate.
X-10
The road east from Aldgate to Stratford has a long and mighty history. It's been the main road to Essex from London for the best part of a millennium - the route taken by armies and revolting peasants and stagecoaches and trams. It's part of one of the UK's great trunk roads, the A11, home to traffic jams and exhaust fumes and bendy buses. And in five years time, for a few short hours, it'll be part of the route of the Olympic Marathon. Hundreds of the world's fastest long-distance athletes will be puffing past my front door, just one mile from glory in a billion pound stadium. But Tower Hamlets wants the Olympic legacy to last a bit longer than a couple of brief afternoons. They've had a transformational idea. And that idea is called "High Street 2012". Anybody interested in bringing their vision to life?
"Title attributed to the contract by the contracting authority:An invitation to tender has just been issued, attempting to recruit a team who can enable the delivery of transformational change along three and a half miles of East End street. Someone, surely, can breathe new life into the Whitechapel Road, Mile End Road, Bow Road and Stratford High Street. Someone, surely, can suggest improvements which will enhance the area's ambience for both visitors and residents alike. And hopefully something a bit more exciting than tying multi-coloured balloons to all the lampposts.With just a fortnight to go until Christmas Day (ulp) it's time to do a little forward planning, courtesy of the double issue Radio Times. Because if you don't organise your Yuletide viewing in advance you might well end up surrounded by grannies watching Emmerdale or trapped with the nieces watching CBeebies, rather than enjoying the festive sitcom special you'd hate yourself for missing. Select yourself a happy Christmas from the list of options below...
Here we are in Poplar, just north of the East India Dock Road and close to Chrisp Street Market. The Germans bombed the area quite heavily during the war, and the existing landscape owes much to the un-pretty era of postwar council block redevelopment. The authorities did at least try - the Lansbury was a showpiece estate built for the Festival of Britain, and Erno Goldfinger's Balfron Tower is almost as big an icon as its big sister Trellick on the other side of town. But years of neglect and disinterest eventually led to increasing crime levels and greater marginalisation. If Tower Hamlets ever offer you a council flat here, you'd think twice.
The new station gleams like a shiny alien mothership, miraculously landed in the midst of some decaying backwater spaceport. Its signature feature is the elegantly curved glass footbridge, with a splayed metal cone at each end encircling a pair of liftshafts. Unlike the footbridge it replaced, you'd not feel unsafe crossing the tracks here after dark. Access from Chrisp Street is fairly mundane, up a brief alley, but the plaza on the eastern side is rather more impressive. Up on the roof the station's name has been picked out in big white plastic letters, a bit like at Wembley Park, while down below a row of black bollards prevents local joyriders from smashing into the glass platform walls for a laugh. They would do, I'm sure, given half a chance.
My most viewed photo (12 midnight - final update)
It's not a lovely station, this. It's a long hike from the main King's Cross station, either across several sets of traffic lights or along a very long pedestrian tunnel (the one where they painted "Smile" on the walls to try to cheer up commuters). The steps down to the platforms are narrow, and if you get stuck behind a family lugging a pushchair you're in trouble. The platforms are called A and B, not 1 and 2, so passengers don't get them confused with the mainline station across the road. Everybody waits at the western end, clogging the platforms, waiting for the next service to Bedford, Brighton or Wimbledon to appear. Can you hear it? No, that's a completely different train chugging invisibly somewhere nearby. The Circle line runs past on the other side of a wall (although it used to stop close by until a new underground station was built up the line). For a quiet wait, walk past Gatwick-bound suitcases or gangs of Luton youths up to the far end of the platform, out in the open air. Waiting here's a risk, because most trains aren't long enough to stop this far up, but you might just get a bench or square metre of platform to yourself. Until escape arrives, up the tunnel, and whisks you away somewhere nicer. Somewhere with a future.
londonerama
Have you ever wanted to see your name up in lights at Piccadilly Circus? It's easy if you're called Mr Coca Cola, or maybe even TDK Sanyo, but otherwise you're going to have to pay for the privilege. The iconic advertising boards above Eros now have their own website (don't get excited, it's marketing guff) and can be hired by anybody with sufficient money to spend. One minute of scrolling message will cost you £1000 (inclusive of "creative and digitisation" and "one set of ammendments"), while 10 minutes will set you back £4000. I hate to think how many bright young City boys will use the service to propose to their wives-to-be.
Is your Smoke collection up to date? The latest edition of the thrice-yearly London fanzine has just hit bookshops, and and no doubt you'll be wanting a copy. Within its covers (bedecked this issue by the gorgeous North Greenwich gasometer) you can read all about Fortress Wapping, Bunhill Fields, the Brentford Musketeer, Jonas Hanway the umbrella man and the 108 bus. And all in a very descriptive essayish style, along with moody photographs, camp statues and the usual Routemaster cartoon. You'll know the score by now. And just £2.90 a copy.
There are certain trains that you should never catch. You won't spot them specially marked in any timetable, nor will their doomed status be flagged on any station departure board. But climb aboard and you may never reach your destination, nor indeed any other destination. Two such trains collided in thick fog in southeast London on the evening of Wednesday 4th December 1957. Ninety passengers and crew lost their lives that night, just east of St John's station, in what is still Britain's third worst railway disaster.
Driver William Trew left Cannon Street station at 6:08pm, on the footplate of a steam engine heading for Ramsgate. His train was a whole hour and a quarter late, and it's likely that he was trying to make up some lost time. Trew steamed through New Cross at 35mph, then rushed onwards through the cutting towards St John's. Two amber signals to the right of the track should have warned him to slow down, but he saw neither out of his tiny window through the thickening fog. A red signal at the far end of the St John's platform therefore came as a complete surprise and, with just 138 yards of clear track remaining, a crash was inevitable.
There was one particular lucky escape, however. The driver of a Dartford-bound train chugging towards the overbridge managed to spot the twisted girders ahead just in time, and drew his train to a halt before it toppled down onto the tracks below. But that was the only bright spot. By the time local residents had raised the alarm and the emergency services had pulled survivors from the wreckage, ninety commuters were dead and 176 seriously injured. No other UK rail disaster in the last 50 years has had so high a death toll.
Retail checkup (November 2007)
The world's largest advent calendar is indeed very large. It covers one entire end of the majestic Barlow Train Shed, which must slightly piss off anybody who's turned up specifically to take photographs of the original building. Yes the famous station clock is still visible, but it's been incorporated into the central logo and appears somewhat overwhelmed. And what of the 24 windows? We're promised on the website that "Every day at 10am a door the World's Largest Advent Calendar will be opened by a celebrity or intriguing character". That sounds exciting, doesn't it? Except it's not. I do hope you weren't expecting revealed images of any religious significance. Day 1's picture is some orangey-pink Art Deco flower fairy abomination, with the logo of Boots the Chemist slapped rather blatantly across the bottom. This is no Advent Calendar, this is the world's largest Advert Calendar. Is nothing sacred any more? Well, no, obviously not.
