Tue 1: Two new developments in Barking & Dagenham are over-egging transport links in their roadside marketing. Barking Riverside says 'Perfectly connected' when the reality is a half-hourly boat, a train to Barking or non-express buses. Dagenham Green says 'Fantastic connectivity by train, tube or bus' and is admittedly very close to Dagenham Dock station but almost a mile from the nearest tube station. Wed 2: Firstfooting, ideally with a chunk of coal, is normally a January tradition. My 2024 firstfooter arrived this morning and only brought a toolbag. Thu 3: The City Lodge guest house on Bow Road replaced the King's Arms pub in 2009, but only now have they finally added a proper sign outside clearly indicating to punters what the building is. £65 a night, if you're ever desperate. Fri 4: I went up the shot tower in Crane Park where the view from the top floor windows is alas mostly foliage. What I was not expecting was being trapped inside the building until three particularly frisky dogs had stopped barking outside the door.
Sat 5: I went out of my way to see the Liz Truss lettuce plaque that's just been added to the Tesco Express in Walthamstow at Bell Corner, but sadly it'd already been removed. Sun 6: Big Brother is back and I am once again watching every minute, mainly to applaud the producers for their character selection and creative pot-stirring challenges. More positively I'm not blogging about it all the time like I used to in 2004. Mon 7:Reddit London are planning a new AMA series (Ask Me Anythings - 45 minute real-time Q&A sessions). Redditor mralistair kindly suggested I should be asked to take part. Someone else then said "I'm sure if you ask questions he'll pick them up and answer them on his blog (either directly or cryptically, spelling out the answer with postcodes or something)" and I thought hmmm, do I want to do that? My chosen response was thus "NORTH LONDON O, xford DUMFRIES & GALLOWAY". Alas I don't think the chief Redditor has worked it out yet. Tue 8: When I went to the Old Bailey to watch a trial, the first court I went into featured an absent defendant, a jury still in the midst of deliberations and a family who had to keep turning up each day in case their offspring's verdict was finally announced. I was pleased when we were all sent out and I was able to pick another court. Wed 9: I took Mike Batt's new autobiography out of the library and it's fascinating. He deals with the Wombles very quickly and then moves on to an astonishing range of everything else, a lot of which he felt was underappreciated at the time. His life story essentially boils down to repeatedly risking everything for creative reasons and repeatedly going bust, with thankful intermissions of staggering success.
Thu 10: I was gutted not to see the aurora, again, despite going out and looking very hard. I stood with BestMate at a dark point on the Greenway, aurora-meter peaking in hand, but we saw nothing more than the capital's usual low level glow. Fri 11: This week's copy of the Standard splashed the Frieze art festival on the cover, which seems very target audience. But I was gobsmacked by one sentence in the editorial ("Frankly, if Frieze doesn't touch you this week - even in a tangential way - are you even a Londoner?"), which suggests that Dylan Jones's vision for the publication is as a patronising elitist mouthpiece. Sat 12: The Archers now has an official podcast hosted by Emma Freud, and it's both "oh for goodness sake does everything have to have a podcast these days?" and "actually this is quite good". But can they keep it up week after week after week? Sun 13: While walking random Bexley footpaths I found myself outside a station I had never seen from outside before, which surprised me because I thought I'd seen them all by now. I think that's the last one in London but I might be wrong. Mon 14: All the trolley-sized self-service tills were out of action at Tesco this morning, and it proved incredibly difficult to balance all my shopping on a basket-sized one. Tue 15: In the subway at South Kensington I saw an advert for the Art Pass saying "Scientific research shows that regularly looking at art could help you live longer", and I thought that's unproveable bolx. I've subsequently found that research and all it said was "Receptive arts engagement could have a protective association with longevity in older adults", and also "This study was observational and so causality cannot be assumed" so yes, the advert is over-interpretation of a woolly result.
Wed 16: At the Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park, the red-green contrast by the Still Pond is currently the reverse of what it was six months ago. Thu 17: If you're ever in the middle of the Olympic Park around 10am you can tell the college nearby is a fashion college because all the students are arriving in extraordinary get-ups keen to make a visual statement. Fri 18: Buying my train ticket to Norfolk I was peeved to see the price had risen by 35p since the summer, not because fares have gone up but because train operators have decided to trim railcard discounts from 34% to 33.4%. It's not much in the grand scheme of things but it does send a pennypinching screw-you message to passengers. Sat 19: Important tasks undertaken during visit to the parental home in Norfolk: rebooting the smart meter, connecting the new wi-fi extender, adding photos to a Powerpoint presentation, adjusting various group email addresses, helping to finish off the squidgy cucumber. Sun 20: A message from Liz: "Am just beyond impressed at your impact - have just had occasional to look at the Dangleway on Google maps, and Lo and behold, when I keyed in Dangleway, it took me straight there!" Mon 21: Even the day after his 86th birthday, my Dad still climbs to the upper deck of the Park and Ride bus for a better view. Shame it was all steamed up.
Tue 22: I thought you might like a photo of the family tortoise enjoying the autumn sunshine. You can tell when she's ready for hibernation because she starts digging a hole in the lawn. Wed 23: I'm thoroughly enjoying Ludwig, the Cambridge-based puzzle-focused detective drama, and so it seems is the British public because it has stellar viewing figures. (Next week's final episode, though, felt contrived and unconvincing). Thu 24: Next time I do a PR email round-up I'll tell you about the publicist who sent me 380 copies of the same press release, each addressed to a different person in her mailmerge list. You utter muppet, Lorna. Fri 25: BBC News's style guide is in the news today because they've just decreed that Twitter "in most cases should now just be referred to as X". You could easily spend an hour reading the rest of it, from when to use apostrophes to whether or not there's an h in yoghurt. Sat 26: Fanny the Gipsy Hill station cat has a 2025 calendar available to purchase. It's only £15, plus an extra £5 if you can't pick up your copy from The Great Southern pub in December.
Sun 27: I have never walked into as many spiders' webs as I did today round Hainault's hills, woodland and cemeteries. My thanks to the gardener who started up a conversation just to tell me I had white threads all over me. I feel like I'm still brushing them off. Mon 28: This blog had its 10th best ever day today, visitor-wise, and all because a columnist at the Economist noted my report on the queues at the National Gallery. He tweeted a one-word message ("miserable") which got seen 130,000 times, and mischiefmaker Guido Fawkes then added a link from his homepage ("National Gallery Ruined for Everyone by Soup Throwers"). Sometimes it pays to do proper on-the-spot reporting. Tue 29: Poppies on trains are back, indeed all over the DLR and (for the first time this year) on some Dangleway cabins. A special mention to the sticker-slapper who managed to position one off-centre on the front of a Hammersmith & City line train so that last year's Smudge of Remembrance is still plainly visible underneath. Wed 30: Spurred on by Monday's National Gallery reportage, today's Daily Telegraph includes an article called 'Just Stop Oil are spoiling it for everyone - I've been queueing for almost an hour'. They even used a quote from my blog as the final sentence! If you can't get past the paywall here's a partial snapshot. Thu 31: I went back to the National Gallery this morning because you should never assume arrangements are the same one week later, and it turns out the queueing system has changed. Advance booking is no longer available so all walk-up visitors join the same queue. This is much longer than before but moves faster because the number of bag checkers has been increased from three to five. It took me 30 minutes to gain entry, much better than last week's 55 minutes but still a lengthy queueing marathon. Queues for Members and for visitors to the Van Gogh exhibition were now non-existent. The gallery was also noticeably busier. So it's bad but it might be getting better.
