Sat 1: I went for a ride on a Routemaster bus from Clapham to Peckham as part of the London Bus Museum's Route 37 Running Day. It was good fun watching a cavalcade of red buses running the other way and the faces of excited South Londoners watching them pass. It took me a while to spot that the passenger in the seat opposite was Sir Peter Hendy, taking a day off from being boss of Network Rail to enjoy a ride on an Imber-branded heritage bus.
Sun 2: Today diamond geezer received its 1,111,111th visitor, so thanks if it was you. Feel free to pretend it was if you have no understanding of probability. Mon 3: The new statue on the 4th plinth supposedly "reveals the hidden narratives of underrepresented peoples in the history of the British Empire in Africa and beyond", but only if you read what it's supposed to be about, otherwise it's just two men wearing hats. Tue 4: For those of you still tackling Wordle, an alternative daily challenge might be Wordall. Every day they give you two starting words and you have to enter all the possible words that fit the coloured pattern. Normally there are four words to find and it gets a bit easier the more you guess. I'm dead proud that my average after 170 attempts is 2 minutes 3 seconds, having never failed (yet). Wed 5: Sigh, my copy of Outlook has stopped working because Microsoft have decreed that their program needs to be more secure and my version is too old to cope. I can now only access my email online, and I already miss having a solid bit of ever-ready software rather than having to rely on a website to do everything. Thu 6: You'd think by now I could find my way across Hampstead Heath without needing to check on a map but no, I still got Kenwood to Parliament Hill a bit wrong. I need more practice. Fri 7: I'm delighted Liverpool got Eurovision, that's going to be epic. Now let's see how Ukraine-y they can make it. Sat 8: I'd never spotted this before...
Sun 9: As I reached the bottom of the stairs at Bow Road station an elderly woman looked at me and then looked at her basket on wheels. "Sure," I said, only to discover that her basket was unexpectedly heavy, almost like it contained several bricks. I struggled to lift it and resorted to tugging it up the stairs one step at a time, made harder because I was carrying a large hardback book in my other hand which ruled out various alternative handling options. "Do you need help with that?" asked a passenger who'd just arrived at the scene of the action. "She does," I said, nodding at the elderly lady who by now was halfway up the stairs. "Do you need help with that?" asked a second passenger a short while later, and he was built like a proverbial brick outbuilding so I swallowed my pride and let him carry it. The old lady smiled as we both walked past and collected her haul with gratitude at the top. And just when I was in danger of being hugely impressed, our saviour then pushed through the ticket gates without paying, let his girlfriend through behind him and then lit up a spliff. What I learned today was never to take anything at face value.
Mon 10: My house insurance has gone down by £60 this year, as if my insurers have suddenly discovered a policy they assured me didn't exist the last three times I rang them up. Tue 11: This amazing narrowboat chugged past me on the Grand Union Canal in Greenford. It's called the Boat Of Fame (that's Darren at the helm) and it tours the waterways as an ever-changing art exhibition. Usually it's covered with graffiti and street art but at present it looks like a tube train as part of the Mind The Gap Tour 2022. This feels to me like a project that deserves to be much better known.
Wed 12: If you've seen hundreds of acorns underfoot this month that's because this is a 'mastyear', a year when trees go all out to create extra seeds to ensure animals can't eat all of them. These normally occur every 5-10 years, although the last for acorns was 2020 suggesting the trees might be over-exerting themselves. I can't find a definitive list of previous mast years, though. Thu 13: I remembered to vote in the Bow neighbourhood plan referendum, even though they'd moved the polling station without telling anyone. The only other voter in the room looked at her ballot paper, realised she didn't understand the question she was voting on and asked the tellers if they could provide any information. They couldn't, and I left her there looking baffled, indecisive and confused. Fri 14: Inflationwatch: 500g bag of own-brand pasta - two years ago 53p, one year ago 70p, now 90p. Sat 15: A post I wrote four years ago has suddenly started getting a lot of visits from people searching Google for Jerry H*nr*h*n, and all because I once wrote about his incredibly OTT grave in a Hillingdon cemetery. My Flickr photo has started getting heavy traffic too (and still is a fortnight later), but I can't work out why it's happening given he died in 2011.
n.b. The asterisks are a's, but I daren't use Jerry's full name in case Google starts sending searchers to this post instead.
Sun 16: Dammit, I didn't get away with it after all. And while I was asleep too. Mon 17: The Christmas decorations are up in Oxford Street and Regent Street already. The former are underwhelming and the latter are overfamiliar. Tue 18: As well as dozens of classic sitcom episodes on iPlayer to celebrate the BBC's 100th birthday, they're also repeating the first series of The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy and Cabin Pressure, and I'm thoroughly enjoying listening again again again again. Wed 19: Dear TfL, it's a bit early to be slapping poppies on DLR trains, the official British Legion remembrance launch isn't for another week. Thu 20: I went out for a birthday lunch with Dad, but in the coffee lounge rather than the restaurant because appetites fade when you're in your eighties. During the gap between main course and dessert the Prime Minister resigned, which was especially exciting because we could see her constituency on the other side of the car park. I celebrated her crumble with apple crumble and custard.
Fri 21: No, apparently I did get away with it, and that's a professional opinion. Sat 22: I thought I'd broken the washing machine but in fact I'd accidentally set the child lock, and once I'd downloaded the instruction manual I worked out how to get it working again. Sun 23: I enjoyed the feature length Doctor Who regeneration special, even if the plot was full of ridiculously unlikely coincidences to shoehorn in as many classic characters as possible. It was lovely to see them. And the twist at the end had been kept impressively quiet - well done Russell! Mon 24: I walked away from Bond Street station with two souvenirs, a smart enamel badge dated 2022 and a cheap unbranded biro in the wrong shade of purple. Tue 25: While Liz Truss was handing in her notice at Buckingham Palace I was watching a partial solar eclipse from the street outside her house. Before the last bite of the Sun had disappeared Rishi was back in Downing Street making his inaugural speech. Were I an astrologer I'd be telling you political changeovers don't get any more ominous than that. Wed 26: My post about London's pylons got shared on a technology news website today which gave this blog its third most successful day ever (1st - history trees, 2nd - election votes). Looking at the feedback almost nobody was thrilled by the post, they just all wanted to talk about pylons.
Thu 27: A new road has opened underneath Barking Riverside station while they continue to tweak the immediate neighbourhood into something that doesn't resemble tumbleweed. The station has four ticket machines which seems somewhat unnecessary, especially given that's one more than the new entrances at Bond Street have. Fri 28: I'm not optimistic about Elon Musk buying Twitter, although thus far I haven't seen anything worse than a couple of people tweeting endlessly about how awful it's going to be now Elon Musk's bought Twitter. Sat 29: It really shouldn't be 22°C at the end of October, no matter how pleasant it might feel. A special hello to the overheating idiots in scarves and zipped-up jackets who don't check weather forecasts, only dress by the season. Sun 30: I moved five timepieces back an hour, one from 1983, one from 1991, one from 1993, one from 1997 and one from 2019. The 2003, 2015, 2016 and 2021 devices switched themselves. Mon 31: Sigh, the london.gov.uk webpage has just updated to a new beta design in an attempt to deliver a "clear, clean, accessible and impactful design". In practice this means all things Mayoral are now in much bigger text with more white space, so I can read far less on my laptop screen in one go (e.g. the homepage now consists of three huge words and half a photo). This is not "the most effective and engaging way to feature information, resources and digital services". It is the future though, alas.
