Today's blog is brought to you not from the heart of London, but from a mattress on the floor of my parents' spare room. It's lovely being in Norfolk. It's much quieter than back home, and there's a lot less pollution, and the view from the back window is of a rolling field rather than a brick wall.
The only problem is, though, that there are things in London I'd like to blog about, but can't.
• The Time Out relaunch: They're tweaking London's favourite listings magazine this week. The Big Smoke section at the front - the one with the quirky interesting snippety London bits - has been scrapped, and I'd quite like to see what they're putting in its place. More pages on shopping, maybe, or possibly another celebrity interview. Or it could be that the number of pages in the magazine has been culled to save money. But I don't know. If I was in London I'd have bought a copy by now, but I've had a look inside various newsagents up here and there's not a single Time Out to be seen. I found several copies of Suffolk Norfolk Life, and it was quite easy to locate a Farmers Weekly, but there's no sign of anything listing central London art galleries or cinema programmes in Croydon. So I can't yet decide if I hate the new Time Out and can save £150 a year by never buying it again, or if there's really still nowhere better to squint at a few hints of what might be worth doing at the weekend. One thing I do know, though, is that they've just scrapped the only section that ever asked me to write something for them. I wonder if Suffolk Norfolk Life would be interested instead.
• The new tube map: I hate new tube maps, but only because I fear scouring them to discover what new functionality crimes some so-called designer has committed on the network diagram. A new tube map is due out dated 'September 2009', with a Richard Long design on the front cover, and I'm eager to discover why TfL thinks a new map is needed. No new stations have opened, and none are scheduled to close or open this month. All I can imagine is that somebody thinks the new DLR West India Quay flyunder needs to be explicitly depicted, lest some peaktime eastbound traveller accidentally end up having to walk five minutes extra to get to the office, and that this somehow justifies pulping the thousands of 'March 2009' maps lying around uncollected in tube station ticket halls. But I don't yet know the true reason because the Central line doesn't quite reach this far, so there aren't any maps up here. Indeed, the good people of Norfolk don't seem to believe in having any train or bus maps readily available because most of them drive everywhere. The village I'm staying in only has two buses a day, rather than two buses every minute like I'm used to, so I can't actually catch a train without getting in a car first. Maybe this thought will temper my anger when I finally see the new tube map and probably hate it.
• The 10:10uk project: A major environmental campaign kicked off in London yesterday aimed at reducing the nation's carbon footprint by the end of next year. The idea of the 10:10 project is that we all sign up and pledge to reduce our own carbon emissions by 10%, and then our grandchildren won't all drown beneath a rising tide of iceberg-melt. It's all wonderfully laudable, except that nobody in Britain actually knows what their precise carbon footprint is, let alone being able to eventually calculate whether it's one tenth lower or not. Our nation's maths will always be far weaker than its good intentions. Whatever, the big launch was on the South Bank yesterday afternoon, and if I'd been in London I might have walked there after work to collect my free keyring. I'd also have moaned to the organisers about the free glass of champagne being dished out to the first 1000 signatories, because nothing quite sends the wrong message like an unnecessary free gift imported from abroad and fizzing with with food miles. But I still logged onto the website, where I was presented with the following message: "Stop staring at your computer screen and get yourself down to the Tate Modern on London's South Bank". Erm, dear organisers, I'm not in central London, I'm in Norfolk. If I head down to the Tate Modern I'm going to have to get in a CO2-spewing car, then travel for two hours on trains, and all solely so that I can appear in your big PR-splash photo opportunity. Honestly, we don't all live in bloody London, and this blinkered SE-centric approach to publicity is alienating the rest of the country where most of the carbon-guzzling population actually live. I hope the capital's grandchildren are good at swimming.
Sorry, there's no space to tell you all about my day trip to Thetford, or to post a few paragraphs on how drought is affecting the local sugar beet crop, or to report on the nearby balloon-free balloon festival. Maybe later, when I'm back in London.
