• This weekend sees the Winter Ice festival, which according to the blurb involves "magnificent ice sculptures, masterclass stations, ice graffiti & more". The more is ice carving, which to be fair is a lot more interesting than ice graffiti. I went down on the first evening which was Thursday, only I hadn't read the programme properly and the only events were ice graffiti and a tiny masterclass and it was a total waste of time. I tried again on Friday and found 15 ice sculptures in Jubilee Park, but because I'd arrived early most were still half-wrapped in bubblewrap so you could only tell what they were by reading a name scribbled in marker pen. I tried again on Saturday and they'd all been uncovered (bear, penguins, eagle, polar bear, etc) but they'd also been surrounded by families lingering to take photos of their offspring posing alongside and that wasn't much worth seeing either. Ice carving had occurred elsewhere, with blocks of various sizes turning into animals of various sizes, but all I got to watch was a sculptor on a break downing a lager. I would say don't come because it's not very exciting, but mainly don't come because it finished yesterday.
• They've opened up two more sets of escalators at the Crossrail station, the ones in the centre of the ticket level concourse. Don't use them, carry on using the escalators at either end of the station instead because they take you up and out. The new central escalators lead up to a tiny shopping mall on level -3 and after you've walked through that up to a tiny shopping mall on level -2 and only after that up to ground level, but not somewhere it's helpful to be. On the ascent you can buy designer clothes and get your hair done and pump iron and pay a fortune for a cinema seat, even go into the brand new M&S Food on level -3, but it really is a waste of time. You'd never go down this way, the entrance is too well hidden, so don't come up this way, it's a cynical architectural filter designed to funnel you into a retail flytrap. Always exit Canary Wharf at the end of the station, never in the middle.
• While I was on the Crossrail platform they flashed up a purple advert saying "trains every 3 minutes", but if you read the smallprint underneath that's only between Whitechapel and Paddington, and the advert they ought to be flashing up should say "trains every 8 minutes, sorry", because that's what it is here now.
