To celebrate 15 years of blogging, I'm launching 15 new blogs. Being unemployed I have loads more spare time than I used to, so it seems only sensible to use that extra capacity to branch out into fresh dimensions. These are the 15 new blogs you need to follow, bookmark, like, subscribe to, or whatever technical necessities your online set-up demands.
Places In Outer London You Will Never Visit
When you've been to all the top sights in central London, the outskirts of the city are always there. They may not have all the big name attractions, and Carshalton may be a heck of a long way from the suburb where you actually live, but never disregard the interesting treasures that lurk in Zones 4, 5 and 6. Time Out never venture this far, obviously, but I'm only to happy to tell you all about the tiny museums, sprawling housing estates and remote bus shelters you're missing out on. Most recent post:The Classical Mansion In Ickenham That's Only Open Once A Year
I See TfL Have Done Something Stupid Again
Keeping tabs on London's premier travel organisation could be a full time job. Whilst much of what they do is marvellous, a substantial amount of sub-optimal actions are undertaken, and this new blog aims to hold these oversights, ineptitudes and crass decisions to account. Also, hiving these posts off into a separate blog means the TfL Press Office will only have to check one feed every morning, rather than having to read through everything I write in case I've slagged off the thoughtless positioning of a Next Train Indicator halfway through a post about Hyde Park. Most recent post:The Dangleway Is Getting a Thunderbirds Makeover
Stuff I Have Seen on Long Walks
I enjoy going for a lengthy stroll, but I have this annoying habit of taking my camera with me and then writing up the whole affair in far too much detail. You will more than likely never follow the same route, and even if you did my travelogue lacks the detail required to act as navigable directions, so what's the point? Expect this new blog to feature long hikes over hills, tedious ambles alongside urban streams, and overuse of the word 'panorama'. Most recent post:I Saw Two Tractors On A Footpath In Ilford
Follow The Geezer
With time on my hands I enjoy getting out and seeing places you might potentially be interested in. That new exhibition in Kensington, that public sculpture in the City, that National Trust property in the suburbs, whatever. I can easily go and see something when it opens and tell you whether it's worth seeing, or at least provide enough information to allow you to make your mind up on your own. I'm never going to be another Ian Visits, but this sub-blog of mine will be the place to go to find out the places to go. Most recent post:Head Down To The National Hat Museum
Yes I'm Taking The Piss Again
Every now and then I publish a post which is a mickey-take, but it takes you a while to notice. Sometimes you even leave a comment thinking my satire is truth, then have to cover your blushes when you realise you've been had. Follow this new blog and you need never be embarrassed again, because everything's a piss-take. Expect a lot of posts about Caramel Bacon Pop-Ups, dysfunctional future scenarios and supermarkets on the tube. Most recent post:The Best Buses To See London's Christmas Lights
I Have Been On A Long Train Journey
One of the best things about London is how easy it is to escape from, and one of the most important things for Londoners to do is escape occasionally to remind themselves what the rest of the country is like. Far-flung Britons don't worship avocados, nor do they live in squalor with whippets, and a lot of the scenery's a heck of a lot better than the flat old Thames Valley. Gain a sense of perspective by getting on a train and embracing our nation's culture and heritage elsewhere. Most recent post:OMG I Looked In An Estate Agent's Window In Hull
Things In Bow That Are Wrong
It's amazing how many things within a short distance of my flat are sub-optimal. There's a Cycle Superhighway whose installation was anything but super, a pedestrian crossing which doesn't function the way I think it should, a Next Train Indicator at my local tube station whose display is essentially a digital tombola... and let's not forget the lengthy organisational farce at TfL's least favourite bus stop. Subscribe to this blog and you can continue to listen to me droning on and on about the tedious minutiae of failed hyperlocal infrastructure. Most recent post:Bus Stop M Update - Still Four Timetables Missing
Navel Gazing
As a blogger I have carte blanche to foist my worldview on my readers, scrutinise my deepest personality foibles and generally mull over how my life is ticking over. There may be eight million other Londoners, but hey everybody, listen to me, and perhaps stroke my ego by leaving a comment or two. Expect to read posts about how many cups of tea I've been drinking, my tendency to react badly to dogs, and the trouble I've been having with my neighbours leaving their recycling outside my front door. Most recent post:Call Me Odd But I Have Never Really Liked Strawberries
The Olympic Park Is Changing
Fifteen years since some politician first suggested it, I am still going on about the changes wrought to a strip of marshland in the Lower Lea Valley by the world's largest sporting event. The athletes may be long gone but apartments are still going up, new school buildings are appearing and several towpaths aren't yet fully reopened. It seems there's always something going on down at QEOP, like the UK's first driverless bus service or a fake harvest festival, so rest assured I'll never stop going on about the place. Most recent post:I Had A Conversation With A Virtual Gnome About The View Tube
We'll Have No Press Releases Here
Even with fifteen new blogs and no job to go to, I still refuse to foist adverts on my readers, or ply them with shallow promotional copy emailed to me by marketeers. So here I'll be showcasing all the very worst examples of PR guff - with all the brand names stripped out, of course - and we can laugh at the rubbish which makes it into the media elsewhere on a daily basis. If a cookery school is holding a Very Lazy Breakfast with a nutritionist, or a pub chain is showcasing a new range of bespoke negronis with a Rooftop Barbecue, rest assured you'll be the very last to know. Most recent post:Martha Sent Me This Crass <Rubber Roof Covering> Infographic
More Anti-Brexit Crap
Occasionally I venture into writing about politics, which is a dangerous thing because it's all too easy to annoy the half of my readership who don't share my viewpoint, even though they're wrong. So my plan is to start this separate channel where all my incredulous head-scratchings about the state of Post-Truth Britain can be aired, but to defuse the anger by calling the blog "More Anti-Brexit Crap", which is the comment my angriest readers leave every time I dare suggest the country's immediate fate might be calamitous insignificance. Most recent post:Sleepwalking Into Bitter Petty-Mindedness
Exactly Anniversary Years Ago
Far too many of my posts begin with the phrase "Exactly X years ago..." because I love an anniversary. So I thought I'd go the whole hog and devote an entire blog to events whose relevance is solely that they occurred a whole number of planetary orbits distant. Expect to read about that time a barrage balloon landed on a field in Orpington, the 135th anniversary of a station platform in Harrow being opened to the public, and basically any event I bloody well like so long as I wait up to 365 days to post about it. Most recent post:167 Years Since Bermondsey's First Lamppost
The London Curmudgeon
I'm 52 now, which is positively ancient for London, hence ill at ease with many of the modern antics those millennials get up to. On this blog I'll get to vent about how Netflix and Rupert Murdoch stole all the best TV, how ludicrous six-inch beards look, how I much hate it every time a website upgrades to a sparse mobile-friendly template, how the only thing left to do in town centres is buy coffee, and how enthusiasm for contactless is going to mean cash disappears from society before I die. How very dare you. Most recent post:It's Getting Much Harder To Buy A Newspaper These Days
All This Is Going To Become Flats
It's a peculiar London paradox that there seem to be flats shooting up everywhere and yet there still aren't enough to go round, and those that are built are still far too expensive for most people to afford. On this blog I'll be visiting places before the wrecking ball arrives, capturing a snapshot of the landscape before construction begins, and repeatedly complaining that it looked nicer before people who aren't me moved in. Most recent post:Imagine A Ten Storey Block By This Canal
Oh Look I Have Written About Public Transport Again
I never go long without blogging about some form of public transport, be that a bus journey or a tube map or a least used station or a tram depot or whatever. By shoehorning all these transport posts into their own separate blog, all the people who like writing comments on transport posts will know exactly where to go to add their twopenn'orth, and the commentary on my other posts will be less likely to deviate into a long discussion about where a bus route used to go. Well, that's the plan anyway. Most recent post:Citymapper's New NightBus Only Costs A Quid
Actually no, of course I'm not going to fracture my blog into fifteen splinters like that. Instead I'm going to continue to mix all fifteen threads together here, on my fifteen year-old blog, like I always do. I like the fact that when you check into diamond geezer each day you never quite know what you're going to get, and when I sit down to write it, often neither do I. I'll continue churning out a pot pourri of posts, a broad smorgasbord of features, in the hope that if I don't get bored then neither will you.
