Sun 1: My new laptop is on quite the sightseeing tour. Yesterday it was in Shanghai, today it's in Köln and tomorrow it'll be in Stanford le Hope.
Mon 2: At Gipsy Hill station I spotted a cat on the Oyster reader, and quite frankly this is Instagram gold. Tue 3: The Old FordWaste Water Recycling Facility in the Olympic Park, much lauded in 2012 as the UK's largest community wastewater recycling scheme, is being converted into a Park Operations Centre comprising office space, security rooms and equipment storage for QEOP employees. So much for green credentials and long-term sustainability. Wed 4: The Walled Garden at Eastcote Manor is very pleasant and the cafe is a magnet for local pensioners, but I don't think anyone else was there specifically to see the UK's first pair of mini-roundabouts.
Thu 5: The former Showcase Cinema beside the Roding in Beckton (closed 2022) has been reborn as four very large architecturally anonymous warehousing units, and that's another cluster of joy entirely erased. Fri 6: I checked what everyone else in my train carriage was looking at, and it was "phone phone phone window phone phone phone phone phone Richard Osman book phone phone phone phone phone". Sat 7: For Heritage Open Days I went on a tour of Woolwich Works, the converted arts venue in the former Royal Arsenal, and it was a lot bigger than I expected. Our guide Nicholas gave us a properly theatric walkround, inside and out, perhaps tipping the focus more towards events than heritage but definitely eye-opening. Free tours run every Sunday morning if you're interested.
Sun 8: Dad tells me he was very pleased that his knobbly carrot won first prize at the village produce and handicraft show. Mon 9: I'm enjoying Word Grid, a daily game where you have to fill in a 3×3 grid with words fitting certain letter-based criteria, the aim being to pick words picked by as few other people as possible. I like to get all pinks (and maybe some unicorns) every day. Tue 10: Today I received a phone call from Wilmslow, and I'm expecting this to be a unique experience in my life. Wed 11: Mince pies are back in the supermarket at the same price as last year (which was 51% more than the year before). Thu 12: The latest authors in my A-Z library book challenge have been Anthony Quinn (I would read again), Philip Roth (I unintentionally picked his serious musings on mortality) and Zadie Smith (the NW postcode fizzed to life). I'm not sure how Colm Tóibín is going to go.
Fri 13: Three places in Redditch I didn't blog about: 1) Bob & Hazel's Hot & Cold Food Bar (bacon & sausage rolls for £3.80), 2) the Palace Theatre (its dressing rooms were formerly part of Shrimptons Needle Factory), 3) the Headless Cross water towers (one brick, one concrete). Sat 14: Received one of those phone calls that starts "He's absolutely fine but...". I still regret phoning my parents in November 1999 and forgetting to start with "I'm absolutely fine but...". Sun 15: The Open House venue in Cavendish Square may have been a huge disappointment, but on the walk back to the station I passed Melvyn Hayes stepping out of a cab carrying a Morrisons bag, and that made my visit enormously worthwhile. Mon 16: I got away with taking lots and lots of photos of Canary Wharf station, somewhat suspiciously, but it only took one photograph of a skyscraper at Wood Wharf for a security guard to walk over and ask what I was doing and demand to see it. Perhaps I shouldn't have taken it right in front of her.
Tue 17: My upcoming hospital appointment appears in my online patient record with a seriously (seriously) unnerving title. Later I'll discover this is the name of the clinic I'm attending, not a diagnosis, and perhaps they could have made that clearer. Wed 18: Jim Waterson, formerly of the Guardian, formerly of Buzzfeed, has launched a new London-based news Substack called London Centric. It looks it'll be properly in-depth rather than frothy so will help fill a gap in the capital's news bubble post-Standard, but I'm not sure £80 a year puts it within the reach of many. Thu 19: Today I walked the back lanes between Shirley and Addiscombe, and you might be pleased these didn't form the basis of another 'Underwhelming London' post. Fri 20: I finally mucked up my Wordle streak because I failed to boot up my old laptop soon enough before midnight. I still haven't found a way to transfer cookies from my old machine to my new machine. Sat 21: I've been playing Threes on my phone for ten years and today I swiped through my 20,000th game. I still haven't unlocked a 3072 tile, but I did score 29091 points so it wasn't a shabby milestone.
Sun 22: The other Open House event I partook in was TfL's Jubilee Line Treasure Hunt celebrating the 25th anniversary of the line's extension in 1999. You started at Stratford, picked up a 16 page full colour clue sheet and then had to solve clues at seven successive stations. All the answers were in plain sight so a keen eight year-old could have solved it but it was still challenging. A lot of staff time was spent letting participants in and out of ticket gates without swiping, so perhaps it was just as well not many people were taking part. I ended up at Southwark after 90 minutes to claim my prize which turned out to be a silvery JLE25 tote bag. It didn't look like many had been claimed, the box was still almost full. What's more there was another unopened box underneath and that was labelled "21 of 25", so I suspect there are hundreds and hundreds of these bags elsewhere and I hope they find a decent way to distribute them. Mon 23: I had to wait at the self-checkout while the couple in front of me attempted to buy 24 tubs of Celebrations. They were firmly told that the maximum sale was 10, so eventually left with 20 tubs between them. Tue 24: All six episodes of The High Life, the classic camp 1995 Air Scotia comedy, are showing again on BBC Four. Dearie dearie me. Wed 25: One of the signs inside the Royal London Hospital said 'Training in Progress - Please Bare With Us', and I was glad that wasn't the department I was visiting.
Thu 26: Such is the decline of newsprint that the News Box kiosk on the Waterloo & City line platform at Bank no longer sells any printed material, not even fortnightly copies of Private Eye (but it does have a lot of mints, vapes and chocolate). Fri 27: I broke a Pyrex dish and needed a replacement, but from where? I would have gone to Wilko, and was actually heading to Argos, but instead dropped first into John Lewis and was chuffed to discover they had a sale on (20% off until 10th October). The saleslady wrapped my purchase in three sheets of paper and a further sheet of bubblewrap, all secured with five strips of sellotape, and you don't get that kind of service in Lakeland. Sat 28: I thought the DVLA withheld rude or offensive numberplates, but I saw PU55E OL on a Mercedes in Neasden and they certainly slipped up there. Sun 29: I didn't have 'Pass under Tower Bridge on the bridge of a ship' on my bucketlist, but I ticked it off tonight and it was magical.
Mon 30: The Bow Roundabout roadworks were finally due to start today. There is no evidence that anything happened.
