Sat 1: In case you don't read the comments, today's post about a walk down the River Quaggy was indeed written by AI. It did a sterling job, if somewhat bland, except it invented the Hither Green Viaduct which totally doesn't exist. I have no idea why ChatGPT created this nugget of misinformation, but you can now find an image of this supposed engineering marvel in Google Image Search. Such are the dangers of 'fake news', which it turns out is much quicker to compose than the real thing. The future is artificial creativity, and the future is coming fast. Sun 2: I've had a tin of cheap salmon in the cupboard for ages and today I finally opened it. As I sat there picking out the bits of skin and bone, especially the circular chunks, it took me right back to the 1970s when tinned salmon was supposedly a treat but actually an ordeal, and also a lot more orange than it is now, and I've vowed never to buy the cheap stuff again. Mon 3: I gave the new Ken Bruce show on Greatest Hits Radio a try. Ken was as affable as ever but the music lacked bite - they set the bar low with Sweet Caroline and the 'riskiest' it got was Manic Monday. Worst of all were the interminable chunks of adverts, most of which assumed I was a car driver and soon got depressingly repetitive. I understand you can pay £48 a year to replace the ads with music, but not better music so I'll stick with £0 a year ad-free radio thanks.
Tue 4: The owner of this house in Kidbrooke has four cars with very different personalised numberplates, but the Jeep is by far the most inyerface. Wed 5: Some social media channels never die, but rekindling a relationship from 2004 is never going to work, not least because neither of you look like they remember you looked like 19 years ago. Thu 6: An exhibition you could go to:'Milk' at the Welcome Collection on Euston Road is very good, managing to mix biology, social history, engineering, marketing, culture, nutrition, class politics, anthropology, motherhood, racial bias, ethics, globalisation, feminism and art. An inspired choice of topic. Runs until 10th September. Fri 7: While the escalators at Cutty Sark are still being repaired, the bleak winding staircase down to the platform is like a seething descent into Hell, especially on a bank holiday, especially when families with pushchairs have failed to make use of the lifts, and I'm not going back until they're fixed. Sat 8: Normally the best costumes at Pudding Mill Lane DLR are Abba-related, but today I shared a platform with twostormtroopers.
Sun 9: Amongst the delights of Easter in Norfolk... waking up to the Calor Gas tank being filled, explaining how the new TV remote control works, roadtesting fresh joints, being sniffed by a German Shepherd, actual roast potatoes and actual custard, scrutinising potential wedding venues on YouTube, finding one of last year's hidden eggs during this year's Easter Egg Hunt, two hours of football, three hours of golf. Mon 10: The rail replacement coach turned out to be a rail replacement double decker, and if I'd known that beforehand I'd have brought different luggage. Tue 11: The best thing about going to the supermarket straight after Easter is that boxes of Creme Eggs are only £1, so more fool those who paid full price beforehand. Wed 12: The Grahame Park estate - brutalist 1970s council - is sequentiallymorphing into what the rest of Colindale now looks like - bland bricky cuboids. It may well be an upgrade in living facilities but my god its a loss in architectural character.
Thu 13: My email inbox, which I can now only access online, has suddenly been replaced by an error page claiming 'ChunkLoadError', and that's how easy it is to become cut off from an essential utility these days. (I don't need any advice thanks, it all came back magically four days later) Fri 14: The Woolwich ferry remains a shadow of its former self, still operating just a one-ferry service and still unable to dock quickly. At best they're managing one return trip every 40 minutes so it's barely worth waiting around for any more. It's hard to say whether the problem is technology, funding, staffing or poor choices when upgrading the system, but it's never a good service, even when it says it is. Sat 15: The director of Three Rivers Museum is rightly proud of their new 'digital kiosk' which allows you to flick through hundreds of properly-scanned photos (one of which I think includes my Dad aged six), but he's right, the maps section is too well hidden. Sun 16: Peripheral Postcodes: I nipped down to London BR8, which lies just south of the Swanley bypass, but I didn't subject you to a write-up because Hockendon is a very small hamlet and I've subjected you to a write-up before.
Mon 17: I'd never walked down Billy Fury Way before, the dubious trackside alleyway which links West Hampstead to Finchley Road and Frognal, but blimey what a lengthy furrow of graffitied isolation. With just the one escape route midway I'd definitely give it a miss after dark, and likely have second thoughts about tackling this half mile again in daylight, although it is convenient and the railway views are sometimes good. Ian's visited and written all about it if you've never chanced it yourself. Tue 18: Last Thursday signal failures caused significant disruption at Waterloo, so today staff are giving out "have a free coffee on us" vouchers by way of apology. Unfortunately the resultant queue at Costa was so long I didn't get to use mine. Wed 19: Today I made my first visit to Neasden Recreation Ground and it's as bleak as it sounds, but being lakeside it doesn't look like you'd expect it to look. Thu 20: Thank you Channel 4, that advert unexpectedly cleared my head by strongly suggesting something I thought might be bad is probably something else. If I'd watched any other channel tonight I'd still be worrying.
Fri 21: I wondered why Cricklewood had seized up and it turned out to be because an upper flat on the Broadway was ablaze. Large crowds had gathered to watch the London Fire Brigade hose it down, and you could still smell the smoke down in Willesden. Sat 22: I thought you only started getting bowel cancer testing kits in the post when you were 60+ but they're now extending the age range by including 54, 56 and 58 year olds. They also send you a letter a fortnight before it arrives so you can get your head round what they're going to ask you to do. Sun 23: I've already told you 30 things that happened today so there are no unblogged things left. Mon 24: I'm A Celebrity's new South African series, featuring past celebs and all pre-recorded, totally lacks the interactive jeopardy that makes the normal autumn run compelling. Tue 25: I went back to Waterloo a few hours before that free drink voucher expired, when queues were non-existent, and walked away with a gratis hot chocolate (as a reward for having suffered no inconvenience whatsoever).
Wed 26:Five brief pub reviews (Belgravia edition)
★★★★☆ The Grenadier: country bolthole for the urban green welly brigade with a noted ceiling, sold me my first £7+ pint
★★★☆☆ The Wilton Arms: perfectly decent (other than the Playboys round the Gents and the odd man in non-ironic braces)
★★★★★ Nags Head: impressively bonkers nostalgia-hole where the barlady makes and breaks the rules, do read the walls
★★★☆☆ The Star Tavern: the right side of well-scrubbed, ooh the Great Train Robbery was planned upstairs in the library
★☆☆☆☆ The Plumbers Arms: tediously Greene King, underlying whiff of disinfectant, living off being Lord Lucan's local
Thu 27: My closest near-death experience this month was finding myself in the middle of a three-way temporary traffic light set-up after dark in pouring rain beneath a failed lamppost, unable to see what was coming from where, and when I finally reached Plaistow station I offered up a little prayer of thanks. Fri 28: An exhibition you could go to: The Centre For British Photography opened in Jermyn Street in January with three floors of mini-exhibitions to explore for free and covering an impressive multiplicity of genres. My favourite was The English At Home in the basement, 150 photos showcasing social change, and my favourite of those was Martin Parr's set depicting the interiors of the houses in June Street, Salford in 1973. Electric fires, patterned wallpaper, patterned carpet, proud families.
Sat 29: The dividing line between Rochester and Chatham slices through an employment agency on the High Street. You don't get morris dancing at the Chatham end and you don't get bouncy chanting adolescent boys mobbing the Rochester end. Sun 30: We have the whole of London to choose from to visit, and @ianvisits and I are at the same southwest London bus station at the same time on the same day. For different reasons.
Let's see how this year's annual counts are going...
• Number of London boroughs visited: all of them (at least eleven times each)
• Number of London postcode areas visited: 237 (which is 98% of the total)
• Number of Z1-3 stations used: all 380-odd (100%)
• Number of Z4-6 stations used: still only 3 (1%)
