People of London, hear my voice. It's been a rip-roaring rollercoaster of a year. Economic grimness, houses in Belgravia plummeting in value, the City in crisis, all sorts of terrible and ghastly things. But also a year of celebration. London elected a new Mayor for a start, and I got to wave a big flag in Beijing. So I'm throwing a big party down by the Thames tonight, and 180000 of you are invited.
London's New Year fireworks are the envy of the world. Nowhere else are taxpayers herded prematurely into a waterside enclosure to stand for hours in the freezing cold waiting for ten minutes of flashy pyrotechnics. Nowhere else do annoyingly tall men in bobble hats stand directly in front of you drinking imitation champagne out of plastic cups and blocking your view of the pretty explosions. Nowhere else do citizens turn to one another at ten past midnight and say "Oh, was that it, I suppose we ought stumble home through this enormous crowd and watch it properly on the telly." You really wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
At this point I must interrupt my speech for a message from this year's sponsors.
I thought it would be good to have a sponsor this year because big fireworks are terribly expensive. So I asked a fridge manufacturer to give us lots of cash, and in return I'm allowing them to write patronising PR drivel on websites, and plaster their logo across the Embankment, and give out thousands of branded hats in the hope that gullible members of the public will still be wearing them on the train home. Now where's the harm in that? It also saves me having to charge £10 a ticket for spectators (although, hmmm, maybe next year). Oh, and for the first minute of the display all the fireworks will be red and white, because those are the LG colours, but in no way has this compromised the artistic integrity of the event.
And there's one other big change this year. I introduced a new byelaw back in June which bans the drinking of alcohol on public transport, and yes, it still applies tonight. We must feel safe in our capital, and that means nanny knows best. I know under Old Ken things were different. I know swilling down cans of lager on Hogmanay tubes used to be commonplace. I know getting blotto on the bus was once an integral part of everybody's New Year's Eve preparations. I know late night trains on December 31st used to resemble pubs on wheels. But cease your beery singing, because it isn't happy hour on public transport tonight.
Now I like a drink as much as the next man, especially if the next man is the great Roman emperor Pistus Fartus. But it's important to be a responsible citizen this New Year's Eve and not to make our tube carriages a den of vice. By all means get blind drunk before you come up to town. By all means leave a trail of vomit from the bus stop to the tube platform. By all means bring a bottle of bubbly to enjoy in Trafalgar Square when you arrive. But whatever you do don't crack open a six pack on the Circle line and proceed to pour the contents down your throat, because that's now very naughty indeed.
Oh, and I'd be much obliged if you lot could police this alcohol ban amongst yourselves tonight. All the police are going to be extremely busy sniffing for knives in town, and our transport workers have more sense than to confront hordes of drunken yobs on New Year's Eve. Let's keep it dry out there, lest LG's firework sponsorship be tarnished by alcoholic impropriety. Together we can make the end of 2008 just that little bit less enjoyable. And let's see in 2009 with a value-for-money bang.
Seven things to do in London over the New Year Hiatus
» (Monday) » Alexandra Palace Open Day: A rare opportunity to look inside the TV studio from which the world's first high definition television service was broadcast way back in 1936 (that's pre-iPlayer, kids, and well historic). The not-very-restored Victorian Theatre will also be open, with tours from 10am to 3pm. (Thanks to John for the tipoff) (Martin's taken some photos so the rest of you can see what you missed) » (Tuesday) » Museum in Docklands: Rare amongst London museums because it costs money to get in, which is probably why you haven't been. But this Christmas the entire place is free to enter, at least until next Sunday, so this might be a great time to finally go. » (Wednesday) » New Year Fireworks: If you enjoy standing like sardines for hours, then watching featureless pink smoke drifting towards you for ten minutes, then battling your way home through hordes of drunken revellers until you finally find a tube station that's still open, head for the Embankment around 10pm. Me, I'm giving it a miss this year. » (Thursday) » New Year Parade: Believe it or not I've never been. Maybe this is the year I wake up in time to watch the inflatables (and the Coulsdon Old Vehicle Engineering Society and the Isle of Sheppey St John Ambulance Band) waving down Piccadilly. Or more likely not. (A much better option, suggested by Debster and Geoff, would be to celebrate 250 years of Kew Gardens with free entry all day on New Year's Day) » (Friday) » Late at Tate: Where to go on a post-hangover Friday? Maybe to Tate Britain for their "first Friday" event, which this month features a bit of an artistic hotchpotch including zinesters Savage Messiah, synthpopsters Petit Mal and a selection of award winning contemporary films from Romania. Or go down the pub and get drunk again. » (Saturday) » Winter Wonderland: Imagine a tacky over-priced funfair with disappointing rides, a Biggish Wheel and a fake German market. Imagine not, it's up and running in Hyde Park until Sunday. (unless, perhaps, the event's got a lot better than last year, but somehow I doubt it) » (Sunday) » Geffrye Museum: Sunday's the last day to see the museum's period rooms decked out in all their traditional Christmas finery. And then on Twelfth Night (Tuesday) there's the annual burning of the holly and the ivy accompanied by carols, mulled wine and cake.
My Top 5 albums of 2008 (because I only bought five, so this is easy) 1) CutCopy - In Ghost Colours: Because everybody needs a favourite obscure band nobody else loves, and mine's from Melbourne. You might try sampling Lights and Music as an introduction to their catchy electronica, or maybe Feel The Love (but I'd rather you didn't, and I kept their marvellousness exclusively to myself). I think my heart's still in 1981. 2) Neon Neon - Stainless Style: An 80s style DeLorean-themed concept album from one of the Super Furry Animals - it so shouldn't work, but so does. And should've won the Mercury. 3) Hot Chip - Made In The Dark: As soon as bouncy chugging Ready For The Floor was released back in January, I knew this catchy little album was going to be a 2008 favourite. 4) MGMT - Oracular Spectacular: Futuristic pop retro, including the majestic Time To Pretend (which I've adored since it graced the Skins season 2 finale) 5) The Streets - Everything is Borrowed: Not Mikey's best, but definitely heading back in the right direction. (it's still all proper physical albums at DG Towers, none of this electronic download nonsense) (and yeah, I know I'm carving a narrow musical niche here, but I know what I like)
A retail behemoth enters its dying phase. The first tranche of Woolworths closed down yesterday (farewell Bedford, Braintree and Bognor Regis), another batch go on Monday, more on Tuesday, a penultimate phase on Friday and the final nail in the coffin on Monday 5th January. As closedown approaches, watch the bargains deepen. From 50% off to 70%, 80%, even 90%, all stock must go. Fancy buying your shopping basket? That'll be another quid, thanks. That clothes rail's going too if you want it. But the girl behind the till, sorry, she's walking out of the door for nothing.
The Woolworths in Norwich used to be huge. You know the one, sandwiched between Stadium Delia and the station, just off the inner ring road. It opened ten or so years ago as "The Big W", Woolworth's attempt to break into out-of-town pile-it-high warehouse shopping. Local people flocked to spend their boomtime cash in this vast cathedral-sized space, and it could take a good half hour to get round from one side to the other. The toy section had everything a child could want, and homewares stretched as far as the eye could see. Even Roys of Wroxham had nothing on this place. Alas, the good times couldn't last.
It's only half a Big W now, with one end sold off to Curry's to flog flat screen TVs and laptops. Woolworths has clung on to the dingier half, not quite so well heated, and not a laptop in sight. Several aisles are boarded off, and a sign apologises that the toilets are shut now that the in-store cafe has closed down. It's not a welcoming sight, but there are still massive bargains to be had if you happen to want the motley assortment of goods they've got left.
In particular, toasters and ironing boards. There are still racks and racks of plain blue ironing boards to be snapped up. Nobody wanted them at £8, and even at half price they're hardly flying out of the door. Wait until Friday, however, and you might well get one for under a quid. Not that you need a new ironing board, obviously, but at those prices it would be a shame not to. And toasters too, very ordinary white toasters, very own brand, very Woolworths. Again they're hardly a necessity, but if you have any children who might be heading to university in the next 15 years it'd be criminal not to buy one for them.
The toy department was a pale shadow of its former glories. A few colouring books, some stickers, various Doctor Who action figures from less popular episodes, that sort of thing. Over in homewares just the last dregs remained - assorted crockery, plastic coathangers and an awful lot of WorthIt J-cloths. On one forlorn shelf I spotted the lemon squeezer I'd bought last month for £2 now down to just a quid (and soon, I suspect, to be even cheaper than a single lemon). There was rather more interest from the public in the entertainment section at the rear of the store. Mass produced mainstream CDs for a few pounds, unwanted books for less, and an assortment of computer games now reduced low enough to keep several teenagers happy.
I took the opportunity to stock up on a few more of life's essentials at rock bottom prices. A couple of plastic luggage tags for £1.24, a proper metal tape measure for 37p, twenty plastic wallets for £1.18, and six rolls of sticky tape for 49p. Sure it'll be possible to buy similar stuff in the High Street after next week, but no doubt tackier imports and not of equivalent value. I was even persuaded that what I really really need in my kitchen is one of those drawstring bags that holds scrunched up carrier bags, because at 26p it was almost as cheap as not buying one. I felt like a vulture picking the last scraps of fresh meat off a freshly dead carcass (but I tried not to show this in my eyes when I queued up at the till on the way out).
"7 days" proclaimed the sign in the front window yesterday, you have seven days to strip us dry. But I suspect there'll not be much left by Friday, just a few Daniel O'Donnell CDs, a selection of green check Ladybird dresses (age 7-8) and the unquenchable Pic'n'Mix. It's not how the place would like to be remembered. Come in store number 1247, your time is up.
Thank you for my present. It was very kind of you to buy me a book that I did not want.
I only received three presents exactly the same. What were you thinking of, you stupid old witch. Do you not read my Facebook profile? I've got all my likes and dislikes listed on there and "books" do not appear. Nobody my age reads books any more. I even opened your present in front of my friend Dan because I thought it was going to be a well wicked computer game, but it was only a stupid book. Now Dan will tell everyone at school I got a book for Christmas and I will be homphobically bullied for months. I hate you I hate you.
Daddy says I have to thank you for letting us come round for tea on Boxing Day. God knows why because your cooking is pants. Your sandwiches tasted like cardboard and your Christmas cake was well sick. When I'm older I will sue you for making me fat and lardy, and it'll all be the fault of that extra slice of stodgy fruitcake you forcefed me.
Why did we have to play Monopoly all afternoon? Monopoly is the most boring game in the entire world, except perhaps for charades (which is maybe why we played that next). Do you not have a games console in your house? We have six. Daddy says that some old people never had games consoles when they were young and they had to make their own entertainment like collecting stamps or whittling twigs or even reading books. And there wasn't even the internet either. No wonder you're a bit screwed up.
I cannot believe you made us watch television. TV is for old people and for saddoes. I did not want to watch the bloody Narnia film. It is not 'family viewing' (or whatever you called it), it is a lot of posh kids talking to lions and it is for babies. I watched it at Dan's when I was about six, and it was rubbish then. At least his house didn't smell of lavender and rich tea biscuits. Yours does.
Next year please text me in advance and we can avoid any embarrassing scenes. You could even buy me something I actually want. A knife would be good. Daddy won't let me have one, but I'm sure you're more reasonable. In fact I bet you used to have one when you were little, so why can't I? I promise I'll only use it for whittling.
And next year, please do not kiss me. Not like ever.
Sending out 60 Christmas cards, but only getting 20 back. Receiving a card from someone you decided not to send to this year because they forgot last year.
Discovering which song Simon Cowell plans to hijack the Christmas charts with this year.
Ringing around for a must-have present that isn't in stock. Waiting at home all day for a delivery that never appears. Traipsing the shops in vain looking for nothing in particular. Buying presents even when you know the recipients won't like them. Trying to wrap something that isn't cuboid shaped, and making a mess. Wrapping two CDs as presents, then going to write the label and forgetting which is which.
Arriving at your destination and discovering you left a bag of presents back home. Meeting up with family and remembering you ought to visit them more often. Remembering everyone who was here last Christmas but isn't here this Christmas.
First discovering that Santa lives closer to home than you were led to believe. Trying very hard to stay awake, but falling asleep before Santa arrives. Being woken at 4am on Christmas morning by a loud text message greeting. Being woken at 5am on Christmas morning by a bouncy overexcited toddler. Being woken at 6am on Christmas morning by the onset of 48 hour flu. Hoping for snow, and pulling back the curtains to drizzle.
Opening a gift you didn't want, and trying not to let on. Opening a gift expecting it to be one thing, and finding it's another. Realising that the present somebody else bought you cost ten times what you bought them. Realising that the present you bought somebody else cost ten times what they bought you. Realising that your most special present won't work until the batteries are charged, probably tomorrow.
Discovering that the turkey won't be fully cooked for, damn, another three hours. Scoffing countless seasonal foodstuffs in the full knowledge that they're very bad for you. Serving up sprouts on everyone's plate "because it's Christmas". Opening the box of Quality Street to find only green triangles. Opening the fridge to find three more days of turkey leftovers. Buying lots and lots of food before Christmas, but throwing half of it away afterwards.
Being forced to watch Emmerdale rather than Doctor Who. Getting home after Christmas to discover that none of your favourite programmes recorded.
Checking your credit card balance on December 31st, then panicking.
turkey (phew), venison (for the upwardly mobile diner), more turkey, tofu (for vegetarian pretenders), yet more turkey
turkey with the skin left on (and the odd hair), goose, duck, ham (with or without cloves), boar's head (for the stubborn traditionalist)
crackling (obviously, but damn), cocktail sausages (with or without sticks), mini sausages wrapped in crispy bacon (doubly evil), pate, pork pies (it's not going to be a fun Christmas, is it?), Iceland creamy vol-aux-vents
Fish
smoked salmon, unsmoked salmon (especially that posh but cheap tinned stuff with bones in)
prawns (includes cocktails)
chip shop fish (looks like being five consecutive days of turkey, then)
Eggs & dairy
skimmed milk (you can't make decent bread sauce with that), low fat cottage cheese (why o why?), meringue
full fat milk, delicious double cream (mmm, but so very wrong), brandy butter, the rest of the cheeseboard (that's crackers), eggnog (it's like injecting cholesterol deep into your veins), Jacobs Cheese Footballs
Fats
none (obviously)
still none (obviously)
buttery dollops (just don't), congealed spoonfuls of dripping, gravy (OXO-free), all that lovely thick fatty gloop which gives Christmas meat its taste
Fruit & veg
almost all fruit (especially cranberries), almost all veg (especially sprouts), salad (for that righteous Boxing Day side dish)
olives (Islington party staple), avocado (Islington dinner party staple), pickles
marzipan (typical, the only thing in the "often" column, and it's bloody marzipan)
Turkish delight
Christmas pudding (go on, just one slice can't hurt), cake (especially Christmas cake), anything with icing (especially Christmas cake), mince pies (sheesh), panettone, Lebkuchen, chocolate (in all forms, especially Toblerones, and gobbling down an entire box of Milk Tray in one sitting, and Quality Street, yes, even the green ones), creamy chocolatey biscuits (from that luxury selection tin your Auntie bought), Elizabeth Shaw mints (damn, everything nice is in this box)
Drinks
water, fruit juice, beer, brandy (flaming or otherwise), wine, mulled wine, sherry (it's zero cholesterol, all this alcohol, but don't overdo it)
after dinner coffee with skimmed milk
Baileys, chocolate liqueurs, hot chocolate
Misc.
licking an After Eight (preferably without taking the wrapper off)
swallowing three Pringles (but not the entire tube)
scooping the contents of a Christmas hamper slowly and persistently into your mouth
Or just put your diet on hold until New Year (and then starve yourself throughout January).
I thought I'd have a lie in this morning because I'm not at work today. I didn't see the point of going into the office for three lifeless days in the run up to Christmas. The last two days of the week are bank holidays, rather special ones, and I'll be elsewhere gorging on sprouts and turkey. Then next week the office is closed so I couldn't go in even if I wanted to. Which means that I appear to have an entire complete fortnight off work, starting now. Which is why I'm still asleep. Sorry, you're obviously not.
Maybe you're one of the poor sods who has to go into the office this week. Perhaps you've been given a Christmas Eve deadline by some evil project manager, so there's no escape right up until Wednesday afternoon. Perhaps you've run out of leave entitlement for this year, so you're trapped at your desk no matter what. Perhaps you just like going in when it's quiet, because that way you get paid to surf the internet and look out of the window while nobody's looking. Whatever, I'm sorry, I've got a fortnight off and you haven't. Still, at least you might get most of next week off.
Maybe you don't work in an office at all. Maybe you'll be selling stuff in a shop today, hoping desperately that members of the public actually turn up and give you money. Maybe you work in banking instead, hoping desperately that members of the public go away and stop asking you for money because you haven't got any. Maybe you work in public transport, or in a restaurant, or on the dustcart, or delivering the post, and are busy counting the days until Christmas Eve. Whatever, I'm sorry, I've got a fortnight off and you haven't. Still, at least you might get a couple of days off later this week.
Or you might be one of the sterling public servants who work through Christmas to make sure the rest of us can enjoy ourselves. Possibly you keep the electricity going, or the gas flowing, or the water running, so that the rest of us can cook and flush and Wii. Possibly you work on a farm or in a care home, because growth and decline don't pause just because it's Christmas. Possibly you keep the health service afloat, so that hypochondriacs with manflu can ring 999 and waste the resources of a nation. Possibly you're a TV announcer, or a vicar, or the cleaner in a hotel, or some other profession that doesn't shut down for a festive break. Whatever, the rest of us are really extremely appreciative of your self-sacrifice. Still, at least you might get a quick nap between shifts sometime on Thursday if you're lucky.
Or maybe you don't work at all. If you're retired then a mere fortnight off is nothing special. If you're still at university then your break is probably twice as long as that. But if you have the misfortune to be unemployed then the coming two weeks probably look like more of the same, just hugely more expensive. It's a grim time of year to be struggling, and it's a grim time for more folk than usual this year. So look, I'm doubly apologetic. I'm getting paid a salary for the next fortnight even though I'm doing bugger all productive, and you're surviving on nothing much and grafting hard in an attempt to celebrate Christmas as tolerably as possible.
I love my fortnight off. Sorry. I may even wake up soon.
Just what's needed at a time of economic depression - a free exhibition about small change.
You must have found some of these shiny new coins in your pocket by now, assuming you still buy things using cash and haven't completely defected to the plastic side. You might have wondered what they were, or even tried handing them back to the shopkeeper thinking they were foreign. I've not quite collected the full set yet, I'm still missing the 50p, and then I'll be able to twiddle around with the coins as the designer intended. Like this.
Here's Matt Dent's grand coinage concept, enlarged to wall-mounted size with a notice underneath saying "Please touch". This tactile model shows precisely how the new bronze and silver coins were carved out from the historic Royal Arms. The 50p at the pointy bottom of the shield, the tiny fivepence crammed into the middle, and the big ten and two in the top corners. It seems this symmetrical arrangement wasn't quite Matt's original plan. The exhibition also contains his first paper draft, with six circular holes cut out to deliberately highlight the most interesting parts of the Arms. But no, much better to fit the coins closer together and to see what random images they contain. Matt moved over to his Mac to tweak 25 slightly different arrangements, again displayed here, before submitting just one to the Royal Mint Advisory Committee. Success.
There are many stages from drawing board to pocket. A large plaster model is created, about a foot across, so that the intricacies of the design can be finalised. Here's the 20p version, featuring the rear end of a lion passant. This is then shrunk down to a real-size die stamp, shiny and perfect in every way, and the coin-to-be is slammed hard between the logo and the latest version of the Queen's head. It's all done with machines, millions of times, somewhere in South Wales, before being shipped out to banks and shops and businesses. And that's how Matt's most original concept went forward to grace the nation's purses and wallets for the foreseeable future. No numerals on the tails face, though, so visiting tourists had better learn our language fast.
Also on show at the exhibition are the designs from the last time our coinage was updated, way back in 1971 for decimalisation. The designer was Christopher Ironside and he had to go through the process once in secret and then again in a public competition. Christopher put forward four different sets of linked designs, each featuring a selection of iconic images, but none of them quite the combination we see today. A futuristic gyroscope on the 2p (er, no thanks). A thistle on the 5p (yes, fine). A sailing ship on the 1p (too old school) and Britannia on a circular 20p (doubly wrong). All the old favourites are there somewhere, though, lovingly sketched on thin paper as designers had to in the 60s before computers made life simple.
It's not a big exhibition, little more than a handful of display cases in a tiny cell-like chamber. You'd be hard pushed to find it if you didn't know it was there, up on the third floor beyond a room full of Greek and Roman relics. Everybody I saw stumbling upon it yesterday appeared to be a foreign visitor, and all of them quickly deduced that this was a very British very modern exhibition and disappeared back out to their favoured classical antiquities pretty sharpish. But you might find it more fascinating, especially if you're interested in the evolution of good design, or if you just want to know where the art gallery in your pocket originated.
Many thanks to Martin, who's post yesterday first alerted me to Designing Change's existence. His report also contains far more photos than mine, so do take a look if the subject's of interest. But, sigh, the exhibition has already been running for three months and not a whisper of it had come my way before. Either I'm slipping or the British Museum's publicity department is obsessed solely by Babylon and statues. You have just over two more months to take a look yourself.
It's that special time of year again, where I waste a day of my annual leave entitlement in retail hell.
At least pre-Christmas Friday morning on Oxford Street isn't too nightmarish. I can wander from shop to shop relatively unhindered without being hemmed in by the bag-carrying hordes. All looks fairly normal - traffic jams, scaffolding, dull Christmas lights, buskers in Santa hats - apart from one thing... the sales! Not every shop has a sale, of course, but in any normal non-recessional year surely there'd be none. So why venture into a full price department store, not when there's a bargain basement chain store just across the road? BHS appears to have given up all hope of selling festive novelties and is flogging the lot off at half price. I'm easily tempted inside a shoe shop where 50% off appears to be the norm. The shop's interior already looks like it's January, with stacks of genuinely bargain cut-price footwear up for grabs, while a few hardline brands lurk at full whack in one corner only. I'm almost tempted, but move on unshod.
The pavement clears, and a smiling lady in a red tabard turns her gaze upon me. Oh bugger, I'm about to be chugged. Normally I'd be safely protected by my headphones, but the power's failed and I've made the fatal mistake of removing them. So I attempt to shoot her my best "piss off, curl up and die" face in the hope that she'll turn away and bother some other poor sod instead. No such luck. I frown a little more convincingly. She edges towards me with a beaming grin.
"Cheer up!"
Grrr. I was perfectly happy until she turned up. But with just two ill-chosen words my mood darkens and an inner gloom descends. Oh for goodness sake who do you think you are you patronising uncharitable scum? How dare you lecture me on my state of mind when you know absolutely nothing about it? I know it's your job to wheedle your way into conversation with strangers and thereby extract direct debit promises from the guilty and the gullible. But did your training really suggest kicking off with a tactless faux pas which serves only to demoralise your intended victim? I feel the urge to spit in her face or punch her in the stomach, but thousands of years of evolution prevent me.
"And you!"
Damn, that really wasn't insulting enough. I should have let rip with a four-letter riposte and told her what I really think, but my mouth retreated before my brain could speak. I should have told her to mind her own business, or to take lessons in positive customer engagement, or just to piss off, curl up and die. I should have vowed never to give another penny to the international charity she purports to represent, because ultimately her coin-shaking assault was their responsibility. Instead I walk swiftly past, inwardly huffing, every scrap of Christmas spirit instantly dissipated. And she turns to approach another innocent shopper with some alternative fixed-grin opening gambit. Cow.
Thankfully my inner smile returns a few minutes later, the incident overshadowed by a few bars of Jona Lewie pumping out onto the pavement from an empty clothes shop. And I continue to wander around shop after shop after shop, staring at all the unnecessary over-priced trifles, and buying nothing. Some time next week I'll probably return and stare at exactly the same festive fluff again, except this time I'll buy some of it out of sheer desperation. Because the only thing worse than buying a disappointing Christmas present is buying no Christmas present at all. Thank goodness everything's half price this year.
Seven months after coming to power, Mayor Boris has made good his pledge to find a replacement for the Routemaster. His New Bus For London design competition has been hugely successful, attracting hundreds of entries from top architects and ordinary members of the public. BoJo's inner circle of advisors has scrutinised the suggestions to see which they likebest, and today the chosen design can finally be unveiled. And here it is!
Magnificent, isn't it? It embodies everything that was great about the old Routemaster but with a firmly post-retro twist. It looks like it's straight out of a Sixties toy cupboard, which makes it extremely lovable and nostalgic. It has a knobbly roof. It doesn't bend in the middle. And it's red.
It's the "People's Bus", sent in by 8-year-old Rupert de Vries-Hoffman from Bromley. Young Rupert was encouraged to enter the competition by his father, who's a local councillor, and created this stunning design in just half an hour using plastic Lego bricks. A well deserved winner, I'm sure you'll agree. And now this lovely omnibus is going to be manufactured and reproduced hundreds of times over, before being rushed out onto the streets just in time for the next Mayoral Election.
Here are some of the key design features of the new design:
» Rear platform: A must-have. In Boris's new car-friendly capital, it's essential to be able to jump off the back when the bus gets stuck in snarled-up traffic. » Grab pole: Perfect for tying a wheelchair to. Oh yes, this new bus is fully accessible. » Conductor: A jovial clippie in a bright blue uniform, whose job it'll be to herd passengers down inside the bus and to tell teenage girls to take their feet off the seats. » On-board announcements: These will be in Latin. Obviously. » First class saloon: To increase profitability, customers wishing to use the luxury non-plastic seats on the upper deck will have to pay extra. » Soundproof cell: Under the stairs, for locking up disrespectful kids who insist on blaring tinny R&B from their mobiles. » Reserved seats for pensioners: Just inside the door, lovely, with a space for your shopping, nice. » Special segregated area for pushchairs: Buses serving Dulwich will also include nappy-changing facilities. » Live screening of security camera footage: "Look at him, he's picking his nose, and she hasn't washed her hair properly, and he's got an iPod worth nicking, let's mug him when he gets off." » Drinks machine: Swipe with your Oyster for cappucinos, hot chocolates and a liquid resembling tea. » Sealed-shut windows: Sorry, we know summertime ventilation is important, but we can't risk vandals throwing cappucinos out of the top deck windows onto innocent passers by. » Drug and knife detector: Every bus will have a fibreglass sniffer dog located near the entrance to deter crime and make Londoners feel safer. » Inward-facing exhaust pipe: To reduce carbon emissions, this bus belches its fumes inside instead.
Today's winning design will one day become a much-loved icon of London, replacing the evil cyclist-crushing bendy bus, and tourists will flock from all around the world to ride it. Londoners will once again have confidence in their elected officials, safe in the knowledge that their hard earned taxes aren't being wasted on pointless vanity projects. And residents in the Outer London suburbs will be able to say "Look, there goes Boris's new Routemaster, it's great to have this noble beast back on our streets again, now hop into the car darling and let's drive down to the shops."
• What you really need today, obviously, is to waste some time on one of those pointlessly addictive Flash online games. Here's two. Super Stacker tests your ability to pile up boxes without them falling over, while Assembler is about using physics to shift a box to the correct spot on the screen. [I finished the former in in 22 minutes flat, and I'm still going with the latter]
• If Twitter runs too fast for you, try the more sedate world of Dawdlr. Participants send lovely postcards to an address in Soho, and then the website updates twice a year to reveal the results. [participants needn't hurry, the next update's not until May]
• Hurrah! The latest edition of Smoke - a London Peculiar is now available in (London) shops. Smoke's a marvellous literary-ish periodical, all glossy and handbag sized, with atmospheric photographs throughout and a penchant for the quirkier side of the capital. Read snippets here, find stockists here. [some of us have all thirteen, you know]
• Lovers of windswept coastal beverages will mourn the loss of the Jug of Tea, a run-down refreshment kiosk on Morecambe seafront. Very recently demolished, there are photos of happier times on Flickr. [maybe it was the price rise from 99p to £1.50 which killed the place off]
• It's Review of the Year time again, and Geoff's is always one of the best. He's produced twelve monthly audio snippets mixing the year's best tunes with the biggest news stories, and all are downloadable, listenable or podcastable for maximum flexible enjoyment. [it's all desperately professionally done]
• How long does your blog take to load? Cut and paste your URL into Stopwatch and find out. If it takes too long, maybe your potential visitors get bored and wander off somewhere else instead of waiting. [my blog took 8½ seconds flat, apparently. I know of other blogs which take more than 60]
• It's been around a while, but the Multicolr Search Lab is a damned clever online tool which uses "visual similarity technology" to display colour-matched photos. [add colours, delete colours, it's addictive this]
• Have you seen a truly awful piece of Photoshop work? The Photoshop Disasters blog celebrates the visual commercial depths. [including rather a lot of brushed-up ladies, and several Daily Mail disasters]
• And finally (because a list like this wouldn't be complete without kittens) kittens! At Cute Things Falling Asleep. [plus bears, and babies, and the odd sloth]
Supermarkets: Bejam, Caters, David Greig, Fine Fare, Gateway, International, Kwik Save, Liptons, MacFisheries, Presto, Safeway, Wavy Line, William Low (the increasing dominance of the big few has throttled diversity) Shoe shops: Bata, Curtess, Dolcis, Freeman Hardy Willis, Manfield, Saxone, Truform (they no longer fit) Clothing: C&A, Dunn & Co, Etam, Foster, John Collier, Littlewoods, Chelsea Girl TV rental: DER, Granada TV Rental, Multi Broadcast, Radio Rentals, Rediffusion, Visionhire (an almost completely vanished service industry) Electrical: Dixons, Powerhouse, Rumbelows, Tandy, The Link Homeware: Brentford Nylons, The Reject Shop, Timothy Whites Restaurants: Berni Inn, Golden Egg, Happy Eater, Kardomah, Pizzaland (I'm getting quite nostalgic) Pubs: Charrington, Courage, Ind Coope, Truman, Watney, Whitbread DIY: Do it All, Great Mills, Payless, Queensway, Texas Homecare Furniture: Courts, MFI, Perrings Jewellers: Ratners (I mean "jewellers" in inverted commas, obviously) Newsagents: John Menzies Record shops: Andy's Records, MVC, Our Price, Tower, Virgin Megastore, V Shop (you remember records...?) Bookshops: Dillons, Hammicks, Ottakars Cinemas: ABC, Cannon, Classic, Gaumont, Granada, Ster Century, thefilmworks, UCI, UGC, Virgin, Warner Village Toy shops: Beatties Banks: Midland, William's and Glyn's (that's banks whose names have 100% vanished, so not TSB) Off licence: Peter Dominic, Unwins Travel agents: Lunn Poly Catalogue shops: Green Shield stamps, Index Energy: Electricity showroom, Gas showroom (I'm feeling my age now)
• Yes, inspired by comments to yesterday's post, thanks. • Yes, I know I've probably made several mistakes, please point them out. • Yes, I know I've probably omitted several stores, feel free to suggest more. • These are the ones I remember, so your suggestions may not appear. • I've updated the list three times so far, any more thoughts? • I will confess to finding this forum thread very useful. • Expect this list to get longer in 2009, alas.
Woolworths in liquidation:10 Vesey Path, Poplar E14 Three weeks since my last visit, and it's all change at my almost local Woolworths. Last time the shelves were full and the aisles were empty. Now it's the other way round. The store is closing, the merchandise is being liquidated, and the local population has been through the store like a plague of semi-efficient locusts. Buy now while stocks last.
There's no security guard at the entrance any more, which says a lot about the quality of the goods remaining inside. Shelves of sweets, especially of the foamy sugary Haribo kind, are still particularly well represented. Will nobody buy the 20 boxes of mint green Mingles stacked opposite the checkout? And don't worry, because further inside there's still a plastic rack of multi-coloured pic'n'mix. I suspect these scooped candies are a bit like the ravens at the Tower of London - when they've vanished, all is truly lost.
The toy section's looking a little depleted. There's still plenty here to fill Santa's sack, but nothing any self-respecting kid would have written on their Christmas list. One aisle is already empty, taped off to prevent further disturbance. Close by is what's left of children's clothes. This aisle looks like a tornado's swept through it, with blouses and coats and tiny plastic wellingtons scattered haphazardly across the floor, intermingled with discarded cards from a single pack of Doctor Who Top Trumps. Look carefully, there might be something left in your toddler's size.
Homeware, now a far more eclectic mix than usual. Don't come looking for Pyrex or toasters, the decent stuff's longgone. But if it's something of the order of a pair of scissors or a novelty penguin mug you need, then you might still be in luck. Certain colours of paint are available, but not many, and the haberdashery section is not yet fully diminished. In the stationery department a mute store worker busies himself restacking the shelves. It seems there are plenty more notepads in the storeroom out the back, and an awful lot of packs of economy biros, but just the one book of raffle tickets.
Groups of local youths wander in and out, maybe searching for a bargain Wii game (all gone) or perhaps just hoping to shoplift a DVD before the doors close. A weary assistant returns an opened tin of Jelly Babies to the front desk - someone's helped themselves to a handful and the remaining sugar offspring must now be condemned to destruction. Two veiled ladies pick through the assorted remnants on a shelf of entertainment leftovers. Something here will do the kids for Christmas, not that they celebrate it, but you have to buy something don't you?
And on every shelf is a big red percentage mark-down, be it ten or twenty or 30% off. There's a helpful table underneath for those who can't work out what 20% is ("was £1, now 80p" "was £2, now £1.60"). Very little is priced at the maximum half price discount, just greetings cards and school clothes you'd never have dreamed of buying anyway. Signs everywhere warn "No Refunds, Exchanges only". The chain's wholesale buyer misjudged the local population when they purchased umpteen black laptop bags - no amount of downpricing will shift these. But nobody needs to leave empty handed, this is still a store filled with useful bits. For now.
I head to the snaking queue at the checkout, weaving my way through a canyon of under-a-quid sweet packets. I am conspicuously the most well-off person in the queue, and also one of only four white faces in the store. Three mixed-race schoolgirls stand together in front of the till, their hair in frizzy bunches, and with tasseled boots sticking out from beneath off-black leggings. As formulaic R&B plays over the in-store loudspeakers, they jiggle and sway and mime along to the lyrics. The assistant drops their pile of chocolate-based purchases into a bag, and takes their pennies, and eventually they move on.
I hand over my purchase selection to the nearly-redundant bloke at the till. I'm buying 80 large envelopes and some shoelaces and a roll of brown paper, because you never know when you're going to need brown paper and in the future you'll never know where to get it. I offer a twenty pound note from my wallet, and am pleased to be given more than fifteen back. I sigh at the message printed at the bottom of my receipt: "Avoid Jan Sale queues, Xmas returns can be accepted from Monday 29th Dec". Somehow I'm not convinced this store will last that long. But there are still some real bargains to be had here, and I fear that whoever takes over this shell of a building in 2009 won't sell any of them.
London's ten busiest tube stations (2007) 1) Victoria (76.4m)2) Waterloo (74.8m)3) Oxford Circus (72.0m)4) ↑1 Kings Cross St Pancras (66.4m)5) Liverpool Street (61.3m)6) London Bridge (57.0m)7) ↑2 Bank/Monument (41.9m)8) Canary Wharf (41.6m)9) ↑* Leicester Square (38.7m)10) Piccadilly Circus (38.1m)
London's ten busiest tube stations that aren't also National Rail stations (2007) 1) Oxford Circus (72.0m)2) ↑1 Bank/Monument (41.9m)3) Canary Wharf (41.6m)4) ↑4 Leicester Square (38.7m)5) Piccadilly Circus (38.1m)6) Tottenham Court Road (37.3m)7) Bond Street (36.7m)8) ↑2 Holborn (31.1m)9) Green Park (30.0m)10) Hammersmith (District & Piccadilly) (27.2m)
London's ten busiest tube stations outside Zone 1 (2007) 1) Canary Wharf (41.6m)2) Hammersmith (District & Piccadilly) (27.2m)3) ↑1 Stratford (25.6m)4) Finsbury Park (24.8m)5) Brixton (20.6m)6) Camden Town (18.8m)7) Ealing Broadway (17.5m)8) ↑* North Greenwich (17.3m)9) Wimbledon (14.8m)10) Bethnal Green ↑* (14.1m)
London's ten least busy tube stations (2007) 1) Roding Valley (201000)2) Chigwell (380000)3) Grange Hill (395000)4) Chesham (432000)5) ↑1 Theydon Bois (641000)6) Fairlop (697000)7) ↑1 Croxley (730000)8) ↑2 Moor Park (735000)9) Ruislip Gardens (771000)10) ↑* Upminster Bridge (781000)
London's ten least busy tube stations that aren't on the Central line (2007) 1) Chesham (432000)2) Croxley (730000)3) Moor Park (735000)4) ↑1 Upminster Bridge (781000)5) South Kenton (806000)6) ↑1 North Ealing (870000)7) ↑1 Kensington (Olympia) (952000)8) Mill Hill East (958000)9) ↑* Chorleywood (999000)9) Ickenham (1068000)
London's ten busiest National Rail stations (2006/7) 1) Waterloo (84m)2) Victoria (67m)3) Liverpool Street (55m)4) London Bridge (48m)5) Charing Cross (35m)6) ↑1 Paddington (27m)7) Euston (26m)8) King's Cross (23m)9) Cannon Street (21m)10) ↑* East Croydon (20m)
London's ten busiest National Rail stations that aren't central London termini (2006/7) 1) East Croydon (19.5m)2) Clapham Junction (18.9m)3) Wimbledon (15.9m)4) ↑1 Stratford (13.1m)5) ↑1 Vauxhall (10.5m)6) ↑3 Surbiton (9.0m)7) ↑* Romford (7.4m)8) ↑* Putney (6.9m)9) Richmond (6.5m)10) ↑* Sutton (6.0m)
The UK's ten busiest National Rail stations that aren't in London (2006/7) 1) Glasgow Central (21.0m)2) Leeds (17.3m)3) Edinburgh Waverley (15.2m)4) Birmingham New Street (14.5m)5) Manchester Piccadilly (14.5m)6) Reading (14.4m)7) Glasgow Queen Street (14.1m)8) Brighton (12.9m)9) Gatwick Airport (11.9m)10) Cardiff Central (9.1m)
» Tube passenger data here(total annual entry and exit frequencies) » Rail passenger data here(total annual entry and exit frequencies)
There's nothing quite like Old Moore's Almanack. It's jam packed with horoscopes, dodgy adverts and superstitious tosh. If you want to know the highs and lows of the Saggitarian year or check your lucky lottery numbers or discover what the stars hold in store for Noel Edmonds, it's the publication for you. And who could resist the bonkers adverts for postal witchcraft, spriritual silver talismans and lucky Cornish piskeys? I like Old Moore especially for the 12 pages of astronomical information in the middle - high tides, phases of the moon, famous anniversaries, that sort of thing. Before the internet came along there was no easy way of finding out this sort of thing, and a quid or two was small price to pay for horological peace of mind. The almanac's been published every year since 1697 (I don't think celebrity astro-profiles featured in the first issue) and I own a copy of every edition since at least 1990. Except for 2009.
Old Moore's Almanack is published in midsummer each year, and normally I spot a copy in a shop soon after publication. In a box beside the till in Smiths in Stratford or lying on a shelf in some godforsaken provincial bookshop. But not this year. I've not seen a copy anywhere, not for six months, so I wondered whether the publication had finally gone bust. Aha no, there it is on Foulsham's website, which opens up the online purchase option I've had to use once before. And all for a totally reasonable £2.20 plus 33p postage and packing. Add to basket, go to checkout, type in personal details and card number... and click on "Make Payment".
Now, what is it that banks are always telling us? Never (repeat NEVER) enter your personal details on a suspicious website. And what am I starting at? A big white screen with a small amateurish frame in the middle, like some web designers idea of cutting edge page layout 2001 style. Distinctly suspect. There's also a completely different web address to the site I was originally on. I appear to have been transported to www.securesuite.co.uk (which, if I was an online crime spammer, is precisely the sort of fake URL I might select). Questionable, most definitely. The text on the screen isn't much more reassuring. "Simply complete the details below to activate this free security service." Precisely what a viralphishingsite might say. And then space to enter all my most secret financial information. Call me paranoid, but there is absolutely no way I'm going to sign up to this supposed service mid-transaction. £2.53 unspent. Payment fail.
My bank hasn't yet thought fit to warn me about any of this in any official communication, which is one reason I'm a little apprehensive. But, as I understand it, Verified by Visa is an opt-in service designed to improve online security. Its watchwords are reassurance and trust. Once I've signed up to V-by-V, every online transaction will be one stage longer, demanding yet another password at the crucial purchasing moment just to delay things a little. It'll stop evil restaurant waiters from scratching down my card details and buying a new car with the proceeds. But, touch wood, no sneaky shop assistant has yet abused my financial identity, so I'm not convinced it's an extra stage worth having. Unfortunately, that's not a choice I appear to be allowed to make.
If I don't sign up to Verified by Visa, I can't complete this purchase. The added security is supposedly for me and not the retailer, but the store won't confirm my transaction unless I accept it. Unless I make every future online purchase more awkward, I can't pay for this one. And something tells me I'm doing them a favour, not the other way round.
So I refused. And Foulsham's website refused in return. Damn you, Visa, damn you and your imposed restrictive security system. Looks like my long-standing collection of Old Moore's Almanacks will have a 2009-shaped hole in it. Until I finally submit to Visa's online bullying, I fear my online purchasing days are numbered.
A Christmas appeal on behalf of the shopkeepers of Britain
These are desperate times. Severe economic decline has slashed the profits of countless UK companies. Customer numbers in our retail heartlands are in freefall. The credit crunch has bitten, and it hurts.
The situation is now critical. Many shops are struggling to sell things, especially luxury expensive goods, and their tills are empty. Merchandise that would normally be flying off the shelves is staying resolutely unsold. Store managers have become downcast and dejected, and many of their low-paid staff face imminent redundancy.
At this very special time of year, Britons are normally willing to buy anything and everything in the name of consumer commercialism. They head for the shops and rack up enormous debts purchasing novelty gifts, expensive gadgets and party nibbles. But this is not a normal year, and this is not a normal Christmas. The world has entered an era of deep depression, and it's all your fault for not buying stuff.
Today the Great British High Street faces a severe shortage of shoppers. Shelves are not being emptied, carrier bags are not being carried, and credit card transactions are at breaking point. Should this desperate situation continue much longer, many much-loved High Street names face certain liquidation. This is a national crisis and no mistake.
And it could get much worse. We're only a few weeks from the beginning of the sale season, which usually leads to manic purchasing and snapped-up bargains. But this year an already severe situation has been compounded by continuing cash shortfall. Traditional "25% off" notices have appeared earlier than ever before, several weeks before Christmas Eve, and it's not a pretty sight. The economic future looks bleak.
We need to act now. We need to show UK shopworkers that we care. We need to go shopping. And we need to go shopping today.
Get involved. Get down to your local High Street and throw some money in their general direction. Dig deep into your pockets. Take out a loan if necessary, but whatever you do don't come back until your arms are heavily laden with produce. Imagine the joy on the faces of the till staff as your VAT-free coppers tinkle loudly into their hands.
Remember, there are many exciting, valuable and easy ways to support UK Retail plc. Why not drive to your nearest out of town warehouse and take advantage of all the expenditure opportunities provided? Or log onto your favourite online store and donate large sums of money to their unseen coffers? Or pop round to Canary Wharf and offer your life savings to some needy bankrupt fund manager? Generating additional economic activity such as this is vital to the nation's continued productivity and wellbeing.
Give whatever you can afford, and then some. Stretch your credit to bursting point and pledge as much as you're able. Pretend it's an ordinary Christmas and buy things you don't really need and that other people don't really want. Your continued financial sacrifice can help to keep the nation's shareholders afloat.
Please buy something today. Every penny counts, and your selfless donation could save a job. Support the shopworkers of Britain today, and together we can make a real difference.
On Tuesday evening, while you were travelling home (and I was sitting in the bowels of the London Transport Museum), tube bosses took part in a live online Question Time. Members of the public sent in questions, and top brass answered. Detailed sensible answers in most cases, even when the questions were way off the mark.
"Hello, I wanted to ask why so many tube stations do not have lifts? I dont think its right in this day and age. Every other tube/metro/train station in most countries have them -e.g. in Paris France and in San Francisco, California, USA. It makes it so hard for elderly customers and those who cant manage escalators very well. When can we expect to see lifts or at least more stairs at EVERY station? I hate the escalators -theyre often crowded, and feel dangerous as theyre so steep/big. [Asked by DiVa]
If you've ever wondered when the upgrade at Earl's Court will be finished (#24), or why more trains go to Hainault than Epping (#10), or why the Northern line's filthy (#45), you'll find the answers here.
Casually tossed into the discussion are two potentially important announcements about splitting lines. There's long been talk that the Northern line might be dividedin two, with all trains from High Barnet heading along the City branch to Morden and all trains from Edgware heading via Charing Cross to Kennington. This is strongly hinted at in Answer #44, but only during rush hours and only against the flow. And not until at least 2017, apparently, because there isn't the technology or money before that.
Answer: We have developed a service proposal that would operate an even split of services from High Barnet (or Edgware) to both City and Charing Cross branches in the morning peak, but with all northbound (ie contra-flow) services split so that all services from the City would go to High Barnet. This pattern would reverse in the evening.
But the really interesting suggestion is in Answer #69. It's to do with long-standingplans regarding the Circle line, which is undoubtedly the rubbishest underground line of all. It looks so tempting on the map, but in reality the trains are only scheduled to run every eight or nine minutes. The Circle also shares its tracks with too many other sub-surface lines, so services are often late, or slow, or cancelled. Alas there's no easy way to improve things, not without undertaking a radical overhaul of precisely where the Circle line actually runs. Not without splitting the Circle. And, it appears, this might be happening in just 12 months time...
I have a problem with the interaction of the trains at Edgeware Road circle, district, H&C. [Asked by Dan] We're currently looking at the possibility of introducing a change to the service pattern in December 2009 which would help to address some of the issues that you describe.
The plans, as I understand them, are as follows. Only the Circle line will be tweaked. The trains won't go round in circles, they'll start and finish. One end of the line will be Hammersmith. Trains will shadow the Hammersmith & City line between here and Paddington, doubling the frequency of the service. Then they'll pull into Edgware Road (platform 1) before heading on a big loop all the way round the existing Circle line to Edgware Road (platform 2). And here they'll stop. And then they'll go all the way back round the loop again, via Edgware Road (platform 4) to Hammersmith. That's going to be fun explaining to tourists, isn't it? There's an informative map here, courtesy of London Connections (and a bloody useless map here, courtesy of the thelondonpaper).
The upshot of these changes is that it won't be possible to travel from Baker Street round to Notting Hill Gate without changing trains. At the moment you can take the Circle line, but in the future you'll have to get out at Edgware Road and wait for another train. Travelling through Edgware Road makes me shudder at the best of times, and it can only get worse. Meanwhile, what of those attempting to travel to Paddington? Every train approaching from the south will end up at the main underground station, but every train approaching from King's Cross will end up at the overcrowded H&C station at the wrong end of platform 8. Not fun for a quick exit, especially in the rush hour. And you can just imagine what a mess the tube map might look like around here in 12 months time.
Just to confuse people, the newly-unlooped line will still be called the Circle line. The Yo-Yo line might have been more appropriate, or the Spiral, or (a long established nickname, this) the Teacup. Hell, it could even have been called the Hammersmith & Circle, but no. Meanwhile the existing Hammersmith & City line will also keep its current name, despite the fact that it only runs through three City stations whereas the new line will run through nine. Please, this is not about logic, it's about creating a more regular service.
Answer: There is a long-standing proposal to change the service pattern on the Circle line - this would allow the full capacity and reliability benefits of the new trains that will be introduced from 2011, and the signalling upgrade that will be carried out thereafter, to be realised. While this is still under consideration, please accept my assurance that we are doing our best to improve the service for our customers.
There you go, it'll all be for the best, honest. But be warned, the circular Circle line might not see out the decade.
You know Simon Patterson, I go on about him toooften, he's an artist, he did that "Great Bear" poster, the one where he replaced all the stations on the tube map with famous people's names, back when that was still an original thing to do, made him famous, has done lots of other stuff, the boy I went to school with, we had the same art teacher, you know, that Simon Patterson
and about 40 of us turned up to hear him speak.
There's a theatre hidden underneath the London Transport Museum, you wouldn't know, through a glass gate opposite the entrance, down some stairs, big open space at the bottom, ring of chairs in it, that's where the first people sat down, more people joined them and grabbed the best seats, turned out it was only the foyer, the real theatre's through some big doors, bit embarrassing that.
Simon was introduced by Oliver Green, the Museum's head curator, who said some intelligent effusive things and then dashed off to another engagement. And then the talk proper, in which Simon discussed some of his many and varied works.
It's strange innit, someone you went to school with, standing up in front of you talking about their life, and all that they've done, and they've clearly been very successful, and they're artistically "recognised", projects in so many countries, and they speak about it all eloquently, and you think "I could have done that", except you couldn't, and good luck to him.
Of course the piece that most people were interested in was The Great Bear, and Simon described its evolution.
The Great Bear was one of those "wouldn't it be a good idea..." ideas, a spark of inspiration, conceived and created in a squat off Tottenham Court Road. Took decision to seek official permission from London Transport, not just rip off their copyright, so took ages to get agreement, turned out to be well worth it, also meant that the fake map was put together by LT's proper lithographers using cutting edge early 90s computer technology, so the finished poster had credibility. The names on each line had a theme, for example footballers on the Jubilee, or Chinese dissidents on the DLR (out east), or saints in alphabetical order on the Piccadilly. As for the interchange stations, there was no deliberate attempt to find a clever name which matched all the lines meeting there, although Gary Lineker is both a footballer and a saint, that was intentional. The map may be static but it continues to evolve, people's perceptions change, for example if famous comedians die, or when Pluto was declassified as a planet. The Great Bear was first exhibited at the Hayward Gallery, nearly didn't make it into the show, the rest is history.
Simon then skipped through many of his other artistic projects, especially those with a transport bent, although the laptop and projector technology didn't always work smoothly.
"Is the there any way to focus this one?" "Can you sort the focus out?" "Have you tried the auto focus?" "Sorry about the focus everyone"
(it's always the same isn't it, you spend ages putting together a presentation, proper multimedia and everything, sweated buckets over it, then the technology let's you down, just fails, or goes fuzzy or malfunctions or something, totally outside your control, have to make the best of a bad thing, it's so annoying)
"Can you turn the slideshow off so I can show a DVD" "I don't want to show both simultaneously, it looks awful" "I said turn off the slides, not the DVD" "Mr Projectionist, hello?"
A lot of Simon's work is graphically based, or three dimensional, or quite possibly both, he's really very hard to pigeonhole.
One final look at a project he's been asked to do in France, commemorating Wilfred Owen's last resting place, and then off.
Bit of a rush at the end, missed out a few planned slides, overran by nearly half an hour, nobody minded, fascinating stuff, should have paid more attention in art lessons.
Further events to follow at the LT Museum next year if you're interested.
I SPY LONDON the definitive DG guide to London's sights-worth-seeing Part 25:The Museum of the Order of St John
Location: St John's Gate, St John's Lane EC1M 4DA [map] Open: 10am - 5pm (until 4pm Saturday, closed Sunday) Guided tours: Tue, Fri & Sat (11am and 2:30pm) Admission: free (suggested donation for tours, £5) 5-word summary: HQ for hospitable medieval knights Website:www.sja.org.uk/museum Time to set aside: two hours
You've no doubt heard of the St John Ambulance, you may even have been put back together by them. But you may not be aware of the Knights of St John, a noble order of medieval crusaders, and the peculiar history that links them to today's armband-wearing first-aiders. A small museum up an arched Clerkenwell sidestreet aims to put that right.
The order dates back to 12th century Jerusalem, established to protect the Holy Land from invaders. Because the St John's crew set up a hospital they became known as the Knights Hospitaller, as opposed to the better known (but less long lived) Knights Templar. After the Crusades were lost the Order of St John retreated to bases on Rhodes and Malta, and in the 1500s set up their English Priory in Clerkenwell. Theirs was the last monastery to be dissolved by Henry VIII, but the gatehouselingered on in a variety of guises and its arch still spans St John's Lane to this day. The surrounding buildings, mostly Victorian reproductions, are now used by the St John Ambulance as their London HQ. And the eight-pointed Order of St John are going strong too, reinvented by Queen Victoria as a Royal Order of Chivalry with a mission to spread Western medical practice to the empire.
As museums go, this one's woefully overlooked. They claim to get 14000 visitors a year, but I suspect many of these are Dan Brown fans who've got their Knights mixed up. When I turned up I was the only visitor, or at least the only person to stay for more than five minutes. I snooped around the three free ground floor exhibitions while I waited for the afternoon tour to begin. One room uses glass cases full of medals and armour (and other stuff) to attempt to tell the story of the Knights of St John. Another smaller room is devoted, slightly more successfully, to the history of the gatehouse and priory. And a third more modern space forms a museum for the St John Ambulance, focusing on the lives of volunteers worldwide who've devoted so much of their spare time to mopping up and making better.
Eventually I was led off on my solo tour. Had I'd not turned up my guide could have taken the afternoon off and gone home with a Lemsip, but instead she led me up the fairly ordinary stairs to... woo, an extraordinary wood-panelled Chapter Hall. It had stained glass windows, chandeliers, the lot - all convincingly ancient until I was told it was an expensive Victorian fake. Then across into the small gatehouse room perched above the middle of the road. In its time this has been the room in which Shakespeare's plays were licenced, the editorial base for Britain's first magazine, a coffee shop owned by Hogarth's father, and the upper room of a pub called the Jerusalem Tavern. Standing here was wonderfully atmospheric, at least until the revelation that the space is now used for committee meetings which dulled the feeling somewhat. We exited down a marvellous Tudor wooden spiral staircase in the gatehouse tower opposite, and then out into the street.
Part 2 of the tour was on the other side of the busy Clerkenwell Road, which didn't exist when the original Priory was here. This is where Clerkenwell's first church used to be, and the outline of its circular nave is still etched into the cobbles outside the ModernPantry restaurant. A not quite-so-old church on the same site was completely destroyed by a direct hit from the Luftwaffe, so the Grand Priory Church here today is an austere post-war cuboid, brightened only by St John's banners hanging from the whitewashed walls. But there's a secret space down below, visible to the public only on tours such as these. It's the original 12th century crypt, perfectly preserved beneath solid foundations, and still used for communions and christenings. It's enchanting down beneath the low ancient arches, a proper step back into the medieval past with an appropriately reverential ambience. And various plaques on the wall of the east transept remind visitors of the site's true meaning, to commemorate the selfless service of millions supporting the weak and needy. by tube: Farringdonby bus: 55, 243
A quick message to everyone who uses Haloscan comments (which would be me, and a lot of your blogs, and everybody who comments here). You may not have noticed, but Haloscan commenting is about to change, big time, within the next few weeks. Steel yourself.
Haloscan's been my comment system of choice since 2002. Blogger didn't have commenting functionality back then, so early adopters had to make do with adding third party pop-ups. I liked Haloscan's simplicity, plus the fact commenters didn't need to log in or anything complicated. The system was fairly resilient, if not always perfect. Haloscan still has an annoying habit of pretending that comments more than 4 months old don't exist, even though they're all still there if you click on comments (0). Try contacting Haloscan's owners for a response, especially in more recent years, and you met with a wall of deafening silence. But, overall, their service is straight forward and it works and I'm happy with that. Maybe not for much longer.
Back in January, Haloscan "partnered" with up-and-coming web business JS-Kit. That partnership lasted until July, when JS-Kit suddenly acquired the lot. They snapped up the entire user-base, back comments and all, and promised a bright new more stable future. I wasn't entirely comforted when I read sentences like "JS-Kit empowers publishers by delivering must-have features, promoting rich interactivity and building community and customer knowledge" but so far I've had no worries. Until I read this.
"We are making it dead simple for you to upgrade your comment service to JS-Kit Comments and keep all your old comments! When we're done, HaloScan users will have a brand new data center that will be much faster and more reliable than the old HaloScan systems. HaloScan users will also get 12 engineers writing new features and improving the user experience."
It was all sounding so good until those last four words.
What will change after I upgrade? • All new comment threads will use the new JS-Kit comment system (hmm) • All your existing Haloscan Comments will progressively convert to JS-Kit Comments over the next few months (eek) • JS-Kit has different templates, including a "Haloscan Classic" which looks like the current HaloScan skin. (ahh) • You will start moderating your comments from the JS-Kit Administrator Dashboard (ulp) • No more loss of comment data after 4 months (hurrah) • Free for everyone under 25,000 impressions per month (fingers crossed) • New complimentary widgets such as ratings, polls, navigator, and more to come (tremble)
The word "threads" has me worried, because I hate the complexity of threaded comments. Hopefully that's a switch-off-able function. The conversion of past comments has me nervous, because not every comment written with the old system in mind will look right in a new skin. And there are rumblings about changes to comment moderation features (i.e. editing and deleting comments) that have me unnerved. I might be less concerned if I could see precisely what the future might look like, but so far I've failed to locate a single existing website that's already using JS-Kit pop-up commenting. Instead I have to make do with an example of in-page commenting, kindly offered by JS-Kit for reassurance purposes, which has actually worried me more than anything else they've said.
And then there's this.
"Users who choose not to upgrade right away will be auto-upgraded over the next couple of months. We will be upgrading remaining users in batches. Each batch will be notified via email before a migration occurs. The default settings will be applied to your new JS-Kit Comment."
So it's happening whether we like it or not, and it's happening soon. Better get used to the idea, then. I know I'm change averse, and I don't like change for change's sake. I know that the new systemmight turn out to be a lot more resilient and responsive. I'm reassured that JS-Kit appear to be going out of their way to provide detailed upgrade information, in advance. I'm sure owner Khris will tell me not to worry. But I remain concerned that the new system might be a bit too clever, too fiddly, too 2.0, when all I really want is a simple way for commenters to write text in a box. Be prepared, the interactive future is on its way, and it's unstoppable.
London in pictures(click thumbnails for full versions)
The Olympic stadium continues to take shape. The lower level of the stadium bowl is now pretty much in place, along with about a quarter of the steel raking needed to support the detachable upper tier seating. Still three clear years to go before the world arrives to watch fit athletes, but it's now perfectly possible to imagine where they're going to sit. Meanwhile the pylons that used to run across the edge of the stadium site have all been dismantled, as promised, leaving a skyscape of twizzling tower cranes. It's damned impressive stuff, which might explain why there were so many ramblers and cyclists staring at it from the Greenway bridge yesterday. Me, I was fascinated by the ever increasing number of health and safety signs erected across the muddy building site around the perimeter. And amused to spot a newly-arrived burger van parked up beside a sign saying "Primary Foul Drainage". And quite sad remembering that there used be several trees here, and now there are none anywhere in sight.
Yesterday was Shop Weekend VIP Day in Oxford Street and Regent Street - an annual excuse to ban all vehicles and thereby cause major tailbacks on all surrounding streets. The perfect event for anyone who wanted to go Christmas shopping in stores considerably more crowded than usual whilst being accosted by face-painting elves and Sally Army trombonists. Which appeared to be hundreds of thousands of people, some of whom actually ended up carrying shopping bags. It was hard to walk far without some minion from sponsors Visa thrusting an advert in your face, and there were rather a lot of Nokia pluggers on the loose too. Most fun, however, was the singing nun scooting up and down the street sat on a mobile piano. This wimpled bloke turned heads wherever she went, singing carols and winsome ditties with a knowing wink, then accelerating off to perturb some unsuspecting audience further down the street. You can hireSister Ruth for your own "mix and mingle" event should you have £630 to spare. If not, I'm sure she'll be back again warbling on wheels in Oxford Street next year.
Have you ever seen a more pretentious sign than this? It's affixed to a wall round the back of 100 New Bridge Street in the City of London, and repeated several times in case you don't get the message straight away. The wall in question is blessed by 23 large mottled stonewaretilepanels, each with different Escher-like patterns designed by potter Rupert Spira. They're rather pretty geometric designs, and well worth protecting, but not something you'd expect a company to get quite this uppity about. I can only imagine that they've had serious trouble in the past with careless bikers leaving their vehicles in close proximity, and have undergone some sort of humour bypass in the process. This inflated sense of self-worth was confirmed when a security guard exited the building, walked round to the rear and asked me why I was taking photographs of his wall. I told him that I'd found the sign particularly amusing, which didn't seem to amuse him and he asked me the same question three more times. I resisted telling him that he was a miserable tosser, and that his company was clearly full of miserable tossers, because I didn't think that would be helpful. He then told me, quite firmly, that the company don't like people taking photographs of their building, which made me wonder why they don't have a patronising sign about that on their wall too. Eventually he let me go, thankfully without insisting I forfeit my memory card or grovel at his feet or sign a written apology. I walked away rattled and disheartened. The wall's in Waithman Street in case you want to avoid the area completely. Or in case you have a motorbike and ever fancy travelling out of your way to park it somewhere really annoying.
The 500-and somethings are two special commuter-friendly people-carriers operating out of Waterloo, and they'll be replaced by souped-up single deckers next June. As for the 38, the ultimate Hackney carriage, that'll be getting double-deckered in November. Alas the new 38s won't be Routemasters, not like they used to be, they'll just be ordinary red accessible boxes on wheels. Still, it's gotta be good hasn't it, getting rid of evilkillerbendybuses? So long as there's sufficient room inside their replacements for everyone to fit on board, that is. Boris has attempted to be reassuring...
The press release kindly includes full details of bus frequencies at different times of the week, which is helpful because it'll help me to check TfL's capacity argument.
Let's see whether the good people of Hackney are going to be able to cram into their 38s in the future, or not. Starting with the morning rush hour.
Route 38, weekday morning rush hour
Bendy buses Dec 2008
Double deckers Nov 2009
Buses per hour
20 bendy buses
28 double deckers
Gap between buses
3 minutes
2 min 10s
Seats per hour
980 seats
1820 seats
Capacity per hour
2980 people
2380 people
Equivalent service
35 double deckers
16 bendy buses
So, in the post-bendy morning peak there'll be more buses more often. Currently there's a three minute gap between buses, and in the future that'll be more like two. Which is excellent... so long as the buses aren't full. Looks promising, because there'll also be a lot more seats available. Each double decker has 16 more seats than each bendy, and that means almost twice as many places to sit down in the new Boris future. Hurrah!
But there is a downside. You can cram huge numbers of people onto a bendy, but you can't get many extras onto a double decker before the gangways clog. Standing on a crowded bendy bus may be really unpleasant, but at least you get to work. And it appears that Boris hasn't quite funded sufficient double deckers to match previous bendy capacity. Net result, this time next year 600 fewer people per hour will be able to ride the 38 from Clapton Pond into town. Boris's replacement double decker service is the equivalent of only 16 bendies per hour, not the existing 20. Rather than delivering 28 double deckers an hour, Boris ought to be promising 35.
Route 38, Sunday afternoon
Bendy buses Dec 2008
Double deckers Nov 2009
Buses per hour
10 bendy buses
12 double deckers
Gap between buses
6 minutes
5 minutes
Seats per hour
490 seats
780 seats
Capacity per hour
1490 people
1020 people
Equivalent service
17½ double deckers
7 bendy buses
On a Sunday afternoon, things are different. The 38 isn't usually packed, often barely half full, and that means the number of seats is more important than the amount of standing room. Good news, the buses will come more frequently, and you're much more likely to find somewhere to sit down. It's a "win win" on a Sunday afternoon, by the looks of it. At least until Monday morning comes round, when Boris's newly de-bendied 38 will leave hundreds of Hackney residents by the roadside. And all at a cost of £3m extra per year. Hmmm. But that's the price of fulfilling an election promise - for some, a worse service.
Every life has its turning-point weeks. The first week of December 1998 was one of my biggest...
I've only ever had four jobs in my life. Ten years ago I'd been in Job 2 for ages and was looking to move on. There were two outstanding contenders - Job 3a and Job 3b. Both were pretty much identical, based in neighbouring counties, promising a decent increase in salary and responsibility. Both would require me to move house and to drive everywhere. Of the two, Job 3a was better suited to me and Job 3b was better suited to my circumstances. Their interviews were on consecutive days. And Job 3a's interviews were first...
Thursday, December 03, 1998
2:50pm Job interview for Job 3a: My presentation goes well, and I answer all the questions they throw at me. It's all very friendly, apart from the go-getting deputy who's been in post for three days and has a slightly evil look in her eye. I think I could be happy enough here. 3:45pm Look people, I have another interview tomorrow for Job 3b. When you've made your decision, could I have a 24 hour extension? Thanks, that's more than kind of you. 6pm A phone call from the smiliest bloke on the panel. Job 3a is mine, if I want it. Hurrah. I'll get back to you tomorrow on that. 7pm Back home, not everybody is pleased that I might take Job 3a. It's made clear to me that I really ought to take Job 3b instead.
Friday, December 04, 1998
1:30pm Job interview for Job 3b: I've reached the shortlist from an earlier day of selection, so I'm feeling fairly positive. My interview goes OK, although I walk out with the usual list of things I wish I'd said. It's all very professional, but not exactly warm. I could cope here. 5pm I'm on a train, with one of those new-fangled mobile phones. I have voicemail. It's Job 3a, and they want an answer. Now. But that's not fair - I haven't heard back from Job 3b yet. I take a deep breath, and tell Job 3a to wait. Ulp. 5:20pm I'm still on a train. It's Job 3a again, this time with the evil go-getting deputy on the phone. She's quite stroppy. I have ten minutes. 5:30pm Job 3b has not yet rung with a decision. I ring around elsewhere for serious lifestyle crisis advice. I am advised to hold fast in the face of unfair pressure. 5:40pm The woman from Job 3a rings back, no doubt frustrated that my phone was engaged earlier. Look, I can't say Yes yet. So I'm told No, time up, goodbye. 5:41pm Bugger! Ah well, there's always Job 3b. Certain people are very impressed that I've chosen Job 3b over Job 3a. 7:15pm Job 3b finally rings back. Sorry, it's a No. Damn! 7:16pm Bugger, I appear to have no new job at all. I could have had Job 3a, but I threw it away. Nobody is impressed. 7:30pm I am advised to ring back Job 3a and lie. I happen to have the mobile number of the smiley bloke on the panel. It's possible that's he's much nicer than the evil she-midget who turned me down earlier. But, but, I don't lie, I really shouldn't do that, that's just so not me...
Life-pivot moment: I ring back the smiley boss from Job 3a and interrupt his Friday evening. I've *cough* just got home. I've *cough* not heard from Job 3b yet. I'm really very disappointed in your organisation's behaviour earlier this evening. Smiley boss is very supportive, but never mind because surely I'll get Job 3b. He asks me to ring back when I've heard.
8:10pm I ring back again. I put on a good act. Oh my God you won't believe this but I didn't get Job 3b. Now I'm jobless and distraught, oh woe is me. Smiley boss is surprised and upset, surely they've made a mistake. He says he'll see what he can do and will ring me back later. 9:20pm Smiley boss rings back later. Believe it or not they can offer me Job 3a after all. I'm not quite sure how or why, but I'm not complaining. Oh hoo-bloody-rah! 9:30pm Everybody is extremely pleased, even those who didn't really want me to get Job 3a in the first place. 11:55pm Phew, that could have gone exceptionally badly, but (somehow) it ended up with me getting the one of the two jobs I actually wanted.
Saturday, December 05, 1998
9am Wake up with a grin. 12 noon Go out and buy my first car.
As it turned out, Job 3a was indeed the better of the two. And without Job 3a I'd never have got Job 4. And without Job 4 I'd never have ended up moving to London, and I'd not be having a whale of a time, and you'd not be reading this. Sometimes a big white lie can change your life. Thanks for the suggestion.
He steps into the middle of the crowded carriage. Other passengers immediately stand aside. "He's not one of us, he's one of them."
He's wearing a blue jacket over a grey fleece, neither of them recently washed. They're functional and warm, no fashion statement here. On his lapel a tiny "White Stripes" badge, the only token nod to commercialism. Below the waist a pair of grubby navy blue leggings, shapeless and slightly baggy. There's a smell, an unmistakable whiff, and it's probably coming from down there. On his feet a pair of black Reeboks, both laceless, tongues flapping, long past their prime. A toe emerges from the tip of the left shoe, poking reluctantly through the plastic. He's out of place. Stand back, leave him be.
The train doors close. He leans heavily on a single metal crutch, cap in hand. Small change jingles somewhere within, and the travelling public trembles. Please no, please don't wave your hat around, please don't start begging. There's no escape, no way out, and the next station's a minute or two away. Thankfully no. He removes a handful of cash from deep within, and places the now-empty baseball cap on his head.
With a wobble he staggers across to the far side of the carriage, requesting that others make way, which they do. And there he stands, oblivious to the materialism displayed all around, counting his wealth oh so oh so carefully. It's all in silver coins, twenties and tens mostly, the odd fifty. And he counts them out in pound-sized piles, before carefully dropping each into what he thinks is a wallet. Looks more like a plastic bag to everyone else, the flimsy sort that supermarkets offer for self-service fruit and veg.
Disaster strikes. A 20p coin tumbles from his grimy fingers and rolls away across the carriage floor. Past feet, past bags, too far to reach, too far to see. Like lightning he rests his crutch to one side and crouches down on his haunches, reflexes like a wild cat. His arm reaches out through a sea of shiny shoes and trousers. Move aside, make way, nothing hard earned must be allowed to escape. And got it. And relax.
Back on his feet, back on his crutch, the counting continues. More coins are pulled from a pocket, chink, and more still from another pocket, chink. There's a fair amount of cash here, more than enough for a cup of tea, probably enough for a kettle. On and on, another five makes another pound, chink chink chink. These coins are his total focus, his entire world, his reason for being. They're the difference between hunger and a next meal, between nothing and something.
Station by station, his wallet fills. And then he's off, shuffling out through the carriage door with the rest of the homebound commuters. They dash up the escalator, heading for home and all its comforts, while he hangs around on the platform, waits, lingers. It's cold out there, no rush. A man can't get far on small change alone.
My Lords and Members of the House of Commons. I am your Queen, and I have ridden here to Parliament this morning in a gold coach to read you a list of tedious forthcoming legislation. Do please appear to look excited.
My Government has pretty much run out of policies, but has scraped the barrel to cobble together a few half-hearted ideas to see them through the next Parliamentary session. My Government's programme is a last ditch attempt to persuade the electorate to vote for them next time, and not necessarily a list of what is good for the country.
My Government will continue to plod on towards the introduction of ID cards, even though they're expensive and don't work and a serious infringement of civil liberties and everybody hates them. My Government will continue to solve the world's economic problems single-handedly with a brave but prudent global financial rescue policy, so it says here.
My Government will waffle on a lot about fairness. My Government will ban pubs and bars from running extra specially cheap drinks promotions, although it'll still be possible to binge drink on value lager from the corner shop. My Government had better not raise duty on sherry, else that's one's Christmas ruined.
My Government will introduce a new Minister for Outrage, someone whose job it is to spot petty annoying things that might get Middle England riled, you know like BBC personalities swearing at sick kittens. My Government will talk a lot about reducing carbon emissions, but won't actually do anything about it because of the cost.
My Government will drag the country even further into debt, on the basis that the Opposition will end up having to pay it off. My Government wants all children to have the best possible start in life, and other meaningless platitudes. That Black Rod's a bit of a looker, isn't he? Nice tights.
My Government will shout across the despatch box at Question Time rah rah rah like a bunch of public schoolboy oiks. My Government will introduce lots of new targets, including a target to increase the number of targets by 50%. My Government know not to increase taxes on horse racing, because one would be very upset.
My Government will continue to bugger about with the National Health Service. My Government are already busy networking with big business bosses to make sure they have executive roles to step into once they lose their seats at the next election. My Government will balls something up spectacularly, because that's what Governments do.
My Government will introduce legislation to allow the police to do whatever they like, but only under special circumstances (i.e. whenever they feel like it). My Government will continue to bandy around words like freedom and equality and security and globalisation because it makes them sound important. I'd better hurry up, this crown's getting bloody heavy.
My Government will send me round the world to meet various foreign heads of state, and I'll have to sit there listening to tedious speeches and attending banquets where they serve up roast creatures in sauce, oh God, why do I let them? Every Government's the same really, they all try hard but they always end up buggering everything.
Still, at the end of their day they're my Government, and I don't have to sign any of their poxy laws if I don't want to. The Duke of Edinburgh and I will be going home now. It's racing from Catterick this afternoon, and we don't want to miss it.
Oh, thank you for coming to see me, I have some bad news to impart. We need to make people redundant, And sadly you're only the start.
We're launching a "major restructure", A "rationalisation of roles", It's time for a "best practice roll-out" And you don't "align with our goals".
It's all due to external pressures - recession and tumbling pound. As projects die left, right and centre, There's not enough work to go round.
Our financial outlook is rocky, I won't hide the mess that we're in, But shareholders must make a profit, So please take this blow on the chin.
It's not that you're lazy, far from it, I know that you've worked hard for years, Your last appraisal was fantastic, But here's where your job disappears.
There's no point prolonging the issue, I'm forced now to give you the sack, So please clear your desk out this instant, Because you'll not be coming back.
Please know that we're sorry to lose you, You'll be greatly missed, I believe. But now, with immediate outcome, I've placed you on gardening leave.
We wish you the best for the future, And hope that it's not sink or swim, But prospects are bleak in recession, And right now your Christmas looks grim.
It's been a quite awful decision, I hate making cutbacks like these, But my job is safe awhile longer. Now do send the next one in please.
The dg Advert calendar Now that December's here, it's time for a geezer's fancy to turn to gift buying. So over the next three and a half weeks I'll be bringing you a daily selection of the capital's finest luxury produce, carefully chosen to impress. If you're seeking unique festive fare perfect for the extra-special recipient in your life, you've come to the right place. My daily dripfeed will be gushing forth regular marketplace recommendations right up until Christmas Eve. And please rest assured that all of my intimate reviews are totally unbiased, wholly unsponsored and completely unprompted. Let the retail countdown begin.
Countesse De La Mer Chocolatier, Notting Hill When credit crunch strikes, a woman's heart turns naturally to chocolate. And where better to indulge than at this elite establishment in fashionable W2? Belinda and her enlightened staff will be delighted to fire up your taste buds with their fiery cocoa passion, each confection hand-flavoured for guaranteed decadence. The limited edition Viennese nougat swirls are to die for, and the Lime Cashew Fondant has no equal this side of heaven. No question, their Black Satin selection boxes are the perfect gift for all your pre-diabetic acquaintances this Christmas. Top buy: individually wrapped dark chocolate organic lavender jellies, £11.50
Abigail's LuxBazaar, Dulwich Village Nothing says "I love you" better than a designer handbag. And where better to indulge than at this bijou fashion emporium in leafy SE21? Browse awhile amongst the stylish accessories and brushed leather, there's sure to be a perfectly-matched bargain here for you. Merchant-in-chief Abigail tells us that the Louis Vuitton Aztec Totebag is flying off the shelves, while she personally recommends the triple-zipped ruby-studded Hollow Alligator clutch. No question, her range of capacious hand-sewn Glitter Pouches will brighten the face of any lady of leisure this Christmas. Top buy: limited edition zebra tartan handbag in fern green or violet, £89.99
Pilates Cafecino, Primrose Hill The perfect gym experience combines aerobic workout with top-notch coffee. And where better to indulge than at this lavish exercise hub in exclusive NW1? Fire up your thigh muscles on the eco-certified powermats, then relax awhile on the leather sofa with a refreshing marshmallow'n'cream latte. "What our customers want," explains instructor-in-chief Suzanne, "is precise body control through flowing movement, followed by an intense percolated caffeine fix." No question, an Espresso Thrust gift package is a sure fire way to keep body and soul in peak form this Christmas. Top buy: annual double-shot Decaf Calisthenics subscription, £299
Costcutter & Off Licence, Plaistow If it's convenience you want, there's none better than the UK's premier corner shop experience. And where better to indulge than at this capacious 24/7 boutique in fashionable E13? Trust Iqbal and his staff to offer bottles of sparkling cider to suit all budgets from £1 downwards, plus a complete range of shrink-wrapped Polish processed meats to delight the palate. Party hosts will adore the range of value mince pies and economy mini-pizzas, while younger visitors always enjoy the additive-packed collection of Haribo by the counter. No question, many of London's ordinary residents will be shopping somewhere remarkably similar this Christmas. Top buy: possibility of escape via lottery ticket £1
London's New Year fireworks are the envy of the world. Nowhere else are taxpayers herded prematurely into a waterside enclosure to stand for hours in the freezing cold waiting for ten minutes of flashy pyrotechnics. Nowhere else do annoyingly tall men in bobble hats stand directly in front of you drinking imitation champagne out of plastic cups and blocking your view of the pretty explosions. Nowhere else do citizens turn to one another at ten past midnight and say "Oh, was that it, I suppose we ought stumble home through this enormous crowd and watch it properly on the telly." You really wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
And there's one other big change this year. I introduced a new byelaw back in June which bans the drinking of alcohol on public transport, and yes, it still applies tonight. We must feel safe in our capital, and that means nanny knows best. I know under Old Ken things were different. I know swilling down cans of lager on Hogmanay tubes used to be commonplace. I know getting blotto on the bus was once an integral part of everybody's New Year's Eve preparations. I know late night trains on December 31st used to resemble pubs on wheels. But cease your beery singing, because it isn't happy hour on public transport tonight.
1) Eltham Palace: Oh my word, the Courtauld's suburban hybrid of Art Deco and the medieval is an utter delight. Do go.
1) Shivering Sands: The four-legged Maunsell Forts, eight miles off the north Kent coast, are best visited by speedboat from Herne Bay. Desolate, startling and wonderfully atmospheric. [photos]
The Woolworths in Norwich used to be huge. You know the one, sandwiched between Stadium Delia and the station, just off the inner ring road. It opened ten or so years ago as "The Big W", Woolworth's attempt to break into out-of-town pile-it-high warehouse shopping. Local people flocked to spend their boomtime cash in this vast cathedral-sized space, and it could take a good half hour to get round from one side to the other. The toy section had everything a child could want, and homewares stretched as far as the eye could see. Even Roys of Wroxham had nothing on this place. Alas, the good times couldn't last.
In particular, toasters and ironing boards. There are still racks and racks of plain blue ironing boards to be snapped up. Nobody wanted them at £8, and even at half price they're hardly flying out of the door. Wait until Friday, however, and you might well get one for under a quid. Not that you need a new ironing board, obviously, but at those prices it would be a shame not to. And toasters too, very ordinary white toasters, very own brand, very Woolworths. Again they're hardly a necessity, but if you have any children who might be heading to university in the next 15 years it'd be criminal not to buy one for them.
I took the opportunity to stock up on a few more of life's essentials at rock bottom prices. A couple of plastic luggage tags for £1.24, a proper metal tape measure for 37p, twenty plastic wallets for £1.18, and six rolls of sticky tape for 49p. Sure it'll be possible to buy similar stuff in the High Street after next week, but no doubt tackier imports and not of equivalent value. I was even persuaded that what I really really need in my kitchen is one of those drawstring bags that holds scrunched up carrier bags, because at 26p it was almost as cheap as not buying one. I felt like a vulture picking the last scraps of fresh meat off a freshly dead carcass (but I tried not to show this in my eyes when I queued up at the till on the way out).
Christmas is a time of disappointment.
Sending out 60 Christmas cards, but only getting 20 back.The low cholesterol diet
Sorry, I'm asleep at the moment.
Here's Matt Dent's grand coinage concept, enlarged to wall-mounted size with a notice underneath saying "Please touch". This tactile model shows precisely how the new bronze and silver coins were carved out from the historic Royal Arms. The 50p at the pointy bottom of the shield, the tiny fivepence crammed into the middle, and the big ten and two in the top corners. It seems this symmetrical arrangement wasn't quite Matt's original plan. The exhibition also contains his first paper draft, with six circular holes cut out to deliberately highlight the most interesting parts of the Arms. But no, much better to fit the coins closer together and to see what random images they contain. Matt moved over to his Mac to tweak 25 slightly different arrangements, again displayed here, before submitting just one to the Royal Mint Advisory Committee. Success.
There are many stages from drawing board to pocket. A large plaster model is created, about a foot across, so that the intricacies of the design can be finalised. Here's the 20p version, featuring the rear end of a lion passant. This is then shrunk down to a real-size die stamp, shiny and perfect in every way, and the coin-to-be is slammed hard between the logo and the latest version of the Queen's head. It's all done with machines, millions of times, somewhere in South Wales, before being shipped out to banks and shops and businesses. And that's how Matt's most original concept went forward to grace the nation's purses and wallets for the foreseeable future. No numerals on the tails face, though, so visiting tourists had better learn our language fast.
Also on show at the exhibition are the designs from the last time our coinage was updated, way back in 1971 for decimalisation. The designer was Christopher Ironside and he had to go through the process once in secret and then again in a public competition. Christopher put forward four different sets of linked designs, each featuring a selection of iconic images, but none of them quite the combination we see today. A futuristic gyroscope on the 2p (er, no thanks). A thistle on the 5p (yes, fine). A sailing ship on the 1p (too old school) and Britannia on a circular 20p (doubly wrong). All the old favourites are there somewhere, though, lovingly sketched on thin paper as designers had to in the 60s before computers made life simple.
At least pre-Christmas Friday morning on Oxford Street isn't too nightmarish. I can wander from shop to shop relatively unhindered without being hemmed in by the bag-carrying hordes. All looks fairly normal - traffic jams, scaffolding, dull Christmas lights, buskers in Santa hats - apart from one thing... the sales! Not every shop has a sale, of course, but in any normal non-recessional year surely there'd be none. So why venture into a full price department store, not when there's a bargain basement chain store just across the road? BHS appears to have given up all hope of selling festive novelties and is flogging the lot off at half price. I'm easily tempted inside a shoe shop where 50% off appears to be the norm. The shop's interior already looks like it's January, with stacks of genuinely bargain cut-price footwear up for grabs, while a few hardline brands lurk at full whack in one corner only. I'm almost tempted, but move on unshod.
Magnificent, isn't it? It embodies everything that was great about the old Routemaster but with a firmly post-retro twist. It looks like it's straight out of a Sixties toy cupboard, which makes it extremely lovable and nostalgic. It has a knobbly roof. It doesn't bend in the middle. And it's red.
• Hurrah! The latest edition of Smoke - a London Peculiar is now available in (London) shops. Smoke's a marvellous literary-ish periodical, all glossy and handbag sized, with atmospheric photographs throughout and a penchant for the quirkier side of the capital. Read snippets here, find stockists here. [some of us have all thirteen, you know]
There's no security guard at the entrance any more, which says a lot about the quality of the goods remaining inside. Shelves of sweets, especially of the foamy sugary Haribo kind, are still particularly well represented. Will nobody buy the 20 boxes of mint green Mingles stacked opposite the checkout? And don't worry, because further inside there's still a plastic rack of multi-coloured pic'n'mix. I suspect these scooped candies are a bit like the ravens at the Tower of London - when they've vanished, all is truly lost.
There's nothing quite like Old Moore's Almanack. It's jam packed with horoscopes, dodgy adverts and superstitious tosh. If you want to know the highs and lows of the Saggitarian year or check your lucky lottery numbers or discover what the stars hold in store for Noel Edmonds, it's the publication for you. And who could resist the bonkers adverts for postal witchcraft, spriritual silver talismans and lucky Cornish piskeys? I like Old Moore especially for the 12 pages of astronomical information in the middle - high tides, phases of the moon, famous anniversaries, that sort of thing. Before the internet came along there was no easy way of finding out this sort of thing, and a quid or two was small price to pay for horological peace of mind. The almanac's been published every year since 1697 (I don't think celebrity astro-profiles featured in the first issue) and I own a copy of every edition since at least 1990. Except for 2009.
Now, what is it that banks are always telling us? Never (repeat NEVER) enter your personal details on a suspicious website. And what am I starting at? A big white screen with a small amateurish frame in the middle, like some web designers idea of cutting edge page layout 2001 style. Distinctly suspect. There's also a completely different web address to the site I was originally on. I appear to have been transported to www.securesuite.co.uk (which, if I was an online crime spammer, is precisely the sort of fake URL I might select). Questionable, most definitely. The text on the screen isn't much more reassuring. "Simply complete the details below to activate this free security service." Precisely what a viral phishing site might say. And then space to enter all my most secret financial information. Call me paranoid, but there is absolutely no way I'm going to sign up to this supposed service mid-transaction. £2.53 unspent. Payment fail.
A Christmas appeal on behalf of the shopkeepers of Britain
On Tuesday evening, while you were travelling home (and I was sitting in the bowels of the London Transport Museum), tube bosses took part in a live online Question Time. Members of the public sent in questions, and top brass answered. Detailed sensible answers in most cases, even when the questions were way off the mark.
"Hello, I wanted to ask why so many tube stations do not have lifts? I dont think its right in this day and age. Every other tube/metro/train station in most countries have them -e.g. in Paris France and in San Francisco, California, USA. It makes it so hard for elderly customers and those who cant manage escalators very well. When can we expect to see lifts or at least more stairs at EVERY station? I hate the escalators -theyre often crowded, and feel dangerous as theyre so steep/big. [Asked by DiVa]The Great Bear was one of those "wouldn't it be a good idea..." ideas, a spark of inspiration, conceived and created in a squat off Tottenham Court Road. Took decision to seek official permission from London Transport, not just rip off their copyright, so took ages to get agreement, turned out to be well worth it, also meant that the fake map was put together by LT's proper lithographers using cutting edge early 90s computer technology, so the finished poster had credibility. The names on each line had a theme, for example footballers on the Jubilee, or Chinese dissidents on the DLR (out east), or saints in alphabetical order on the Piccadilly. As for the interchange stations, there was no deliberate attempt to find a clever name which matched all the lines meeting there, although Gary Lineker is both a footballer and a saint, that was intentional. The map may be static but it continues to evolve, people's perceptions change, for example if famous comedians die, or when Pluto was declassified as a planet. The Great Bear was first exhibited at the Hayward Gallery, nearly didn't make it into the show, the rest is history.
"Is the there any way to focus this one?" "Can you sort the focus out?" "Have you tried the auto focus?" "Sorry about the focus everyone"A lot of Simon's work is graphically based, or three dimensional, or quite possibly both, he's really very hard to pigeonhole.(it's always the same isn't it, you spend ages putting together a presentation, proper multimedia and everything, sweated buckets over it, then the technology let's you down, just fails, or goes fuzzy or malfunctions or something, totally outside your control, have to make the best of a bad thing, it's so annoying)"Can you turn the slideshow off so I can show a DVD" "I don't want to show both simultaneously, it looks awful" "I said turn off the slides, not the DVD" "Mr Projectionist, hello?"One final look at a project he's been asked to do in France, commemorating Wilfred Owen's last resting place, and then off.A section of stadium seating based on typewriter keys, several tweaked periodic tables, a short film of spinning pocket watches (described as "horological porn"), a fabulous film based on in-flight safety demonstrations but with a magical sado-masochistic twist, McCarthyite closing credits, three yacht sails labelled with author's biographical details, annotated cablecars, exploding camouflage grenades, it's an inventive mind run wild.
Bit of a rush at the end, missed out a few planned slides, overran by nearly half an hour, nobody minded, fascinating stuff, should have paid more attention in art lessons.Further events to follow at the LT Museum next year if you're interested.I SPY LONDON
You've no doubt heard of the St John Ambulance, you may even have been put back together by them. But you may not be aware of the Knights of St John, a noble order of medieval crusaders, and the peculiar history that links them to today's armband-wearing first-aiders. A small museum up an arched Clerkenwell sidestreet aims to put that right.
As museums go, this one's woefully overlooked. They claim to get 14000 visitors a year, but I suspect many of these are Dan Brown fans who've got their Knights mixed up. When I turned up I was the only visitor, or at least the only person to stay for more than five minutes. I snooped around the three free ground floor exhibitions while I waited for the afternoon tour to begin. One room uses glass cases full of medals and armour (and other stuff) to attempt to tell the story of the Knights of St John. Another smaller room is devoted, slightly more successfully, to the history of the gatehouse and priory. And a third more modern space forms a museum for the St John Ambulance, focusing on the lives of volunteers worldwide who've devoted so much of their spare time to mopping up and making better.
Eventually I was led off on my solo tour. Had I'd not turned up my guide could have taken the afternoon off and gone home with a Lemsip, but instead she led me up the fairly ordinary stairs to... woo, an extraordinary wood-panelled Chapter Hall. It had stained glass windows, chandeliers, the lot - all convincingly ancient until I was told it was an expensive Victorian fake. Then across into the small gatehouse room perched above the middle of the road. In its time this has been the room in which Shakespeare's plays were licenced, the editorial base for Britain's first magazine, a coffee shop owned by Hogarth's father, and the upper room of a pub called the Jerusalem Tavern. Standing here was wonderfully atmospheric, at least until the revelation that the space is now used for committee meetings which dulled the feeling somewhat. We exited down a marvellous Tudor wooden spiral staircase in the gatehouse tower opposite, and then out into the street.
London in stolen pictures: I was alerted yesterday that one of my Flickr photos had been appropriated by Mail Online, the Daily Mail's news website, and published without due attribution. They'd used my Wembley IKEA photo to illustrate a story about a hit-and-run on the North Circular, and slapped an entirely inappropriate "© Flickr" in the bottom left hand corner. All in direct contravention of the photo's Creative Commons licence. So, having taken advice, I rang up the Mail's Online Pictures Editor and got the photo removed. Result. But, sheesh. Further details, and a snapshot of the offending webpage, over here.
Yesterday was Shop Weekend VIP Day in Oxford Street and Regent Street - an annual excuse to ban all vehicles and thereby cause major tailbacks on all surrounding streets. The perfect event for anyone who wanted to go Christmas shopping in stores considerably more crowded than usual whilst being accosted by face-painting elves and Sally Army trombonists. Which appeared to be hundreds of thousands of people, some of whom actually ended up carrying shopping bags. It was hard to walk far without some minion from sponsors Visa thrusting an advert in your face, and there were rather a lot of Nokia pluggers on the loose too. Most fun, however, was the singing nun scooting up and down the street sat on a mobile piano. This wimpled bloke turned heads wherever she went, singing carols and winsome ditties with a knowing wink, then accelerating off to perturb some unsuspecting audience further down the street. You can hire Sister Ruth for your own "mix and mingle" event should you have £630 to spare. If not, I'm sure she'll be back again warbling on wheels in Oxford Street next year.
Have you ever seen a more pretentious sign than this? It's affixed to a wall round the back of 100 New Bridge Street in the City of London, and repeated several times in case you don't get the message straight away. The wall in question is blessed by 23 large mottled stoneware tile panels, each with different Escher-like patterns designed by potter Rupert Spira. They're rather pretty geometric designs, and well worth protecting, but not something you'd expect a company to get quite this uppity about. I can only imagine that they've had serious trouble in the past with careless bikers leaving their vehicles in close proximity, and have undergone some sort of humour bypass in the process. This inflated sense of self-worth was confirmed when a security guard exited the building, walked round to the rear and asked me why I was taking photographs of his wall. I told him that I'd found the sign particularly amusing, which didn't seem to amuse him and he asked me the same question three more times. I resisted telling him that he was a miserable tosser, and that his company was clearly full of miserable tossers, because I didn't think that would be helpful. He then told me, quite firmly, that the company don't like people taking photographs of their building, which made me wonder why they don't have a patronising sign about that on their wall too. Eventually he let me go, thankfully without insisting I forfeit my memory card or grovel at his feet or sign a written apology. I walked away rattled and disheartened. The wall's in Waithman Street in case you want to avoid the area completely. Or in case you have a motorbike and ever fancy travelling out of your way to park it somewhere really annoying.
Straightening things out
Let's see whether the good people of Hackney are going to be able to cram into their 38s in the future, or not. Starting with the morning rush hour.
