Three inches of rain in three days has defeated me. I went out for a walk on Friday (and got wet), and I went out for a walk on Saturday (and got wet), but on Sunday I stayed indoors all day for the first time since mid-May. So, in the absence of anything new to tell you, I thought I'd trawl back to 5th October in years past and see if there was anything I didn't tell you about at the time.
Saturday 5th October 2019:Luton
I was actually going to Dunstable (sigh, I miss mundane provincial exploration) and up onto the Downs (sigh, I miss proper hills with proper views), and I blogged aboutboth of those. But to get there I went via Luton, a town I used to know well, and took a brief look around. The bus station's had a considerable spruce up since the 1990s, its bleak expanse of tarmac having been gifted a teardrop-shaped drop-in in one corner. Officially this is the Arriva Luton Travel Centre, but mostly it's a Starbucks with an information desk in one corner, and proved unexpectedly difficult to extract a timetable from. The cut-through to the shopping centre is less grim than it once was, overlooked by a mural stating If You Can Dream It You Must Do It which I consider to be very poor municipal advice. The Mall was busy but less big-branded than when it was an Arndale, with the market still the place where people with even less cash hang out. I walked a brisk loop round George Street and concluded that Luton had changed even more than I had.
Friday 5th October 2018:Audley End/Saffron Walden
We went to Audley End, but I blogged about that at the time, and then we ticked off everything Saffron Walden has to offer, but I blogged about that too. Pretty much all I didn't blog about were the textiles exhibition, the tortoise-carving and the fish fingers & chippy spuds dinner. I have nothing more to give.
Thursday 5th October 2017:180 The Strand
This Brutalist office block is being rebuilt so in 2016 opened itself up as an occasional space for the presentation of modern art. I've blogged about various exhibitions but not this one, which opened today, whose highlight was Ryoji Ikeda's Insta-friendly oscillating digital floor (shoes off please). I also enjoyed the digital waterfall and Arthur Jafa's 'Love is the Message, the Message is Death', but the best bit as always was walking round a gutted building and its grubby backstairwells. Sadly every consecutive exhibition has toured smaller and smaller portions of the interior, and reopening as a creative hub doesn't look like such a great idea now.
Sunday 5th October 2014:Severndroog Castle
Yesterday (that's 2020 yesterday) was the day of the annual Thames Barrier full testclosure. I didn't go because it was raining, but mostly because when I went in 2014 the weather was pitch perfect blue-sky-tastic and I doubt that's beatable. Blogged that, obviously, as well as a trip up to the top of Severndroog Castle afterwards. But what I never got round to mentioning was the walk from the foot of the tower to the cafe in Oxleas Wood. BestMate's Other Half insisted they knew which way to go, based on what their smartphone told them, and started to head off in the general direction of Shooters Hill. I insisted we could be there in half the time if we took the direct route through Jack Wood along something called a 'footpath', which Google Maps didn't recognise because it had assumed we were in a car. Google's skewed view of the world, favouring vehicles and marketable businesses, should never be your travel default.
Saturday 5th October 2013:Northern line south
One thing I've discovered looking back at 5th Octobers past is how often I got two blogposts out of a single day trip. On this occasion I went to admire the architecture of stations on the Northern line (post one) and visited Colliers Wood's ridiculous Bridge To Nowhere (post two). That bridge does now go somewhere, I'm pleased to say, but I've blogged that too so am increasingly unconvinced that this nostalgic trawling of days past is working.
Sunday 5th October 2008:Battersea Park
This was the day the revamped Shepherds Bush station opened, in preparation for Westfield, so I went along early and blogged that. Then I went to Battersea Park to watch a boy I was at school with, now thirty years older, fire fifty coloured flares across the grass and call it art. It made for another blogpost, now replete with dead links, but I've never blogged my extraordinary photo of a billowing greyhound before so here it is a dozen years later.
Friday 5th October 2007:Westminster
This was quite a day at work. When I got the job our team had a contract by default, which was nice, but later it was spun out to competitive tender and we had to fight other companies to retain it. This involved writing a massive document promising the world and, on this particular morning, giving a 40 minute presentation to people we'd previously worked alongside. I got to do six of those minutes, thankfully competently, and adroitly skated over a sourcing issue during the Q&A. Then in the afternoon we threw a leaving party for my Project Support Officer who was off to a more reliable job in Stevenage. I bought her a John Lewis voucher, but was later taken to one side by a female colleague and told it would have been better if I'd picked somewhere that sold shoes instead.
Saturday 5th October 2002:Camden
I hadn't yet been blogging a month, but still managed to recount my shoe shop purchasing exploits and my ghastly hiccuping nightbus ride home from a night's drinking in the West End. Things not mentioned: attending a gig at the Camden Barfly, complimenting the lead singer in the urinals, meeting a Radio 3 producer under the stairs and the inordinate length of time uploading a new album to your portable mp3 player used to take.
Friday 5th October 2001:Guernsey
My parents were just about to celebrate their Ruby Wedding so the whole family flew over to Guernsey to spend a long weekend celebrating there. Alas, even for October, the weather was poor. Later in the weekend we'd revisit the German Underground Hospital, watch the grandchildren trampolining, stand on a causeway in gale force winds, poke limpets and endure the anniversary meal from hell in the hotel conservatory ("sorry the tables are too small and we forgot your drinks and the steak is wrong, now would you mind hurrying up because the Saga party are due in for a quiz at half past eight"). But on the Friday night, after a late flight, there was only time for half a lager in the bar before going to bed.
The only other 5th October I've ever blogged about is the day I started university, a date that's somehow now 37 years in the past. Here's hoping the weather clears up this week and I can get out and tell you something new.
