Sat 1:London Estates: Modernist Council Housing 1946–1981 is an absolutely gorgeous book, assuming you like full-colour photos of postwar flats from over 250 estates across London. I don't know how Thaddeus has managed to collect so many straight-on shots lit by the sun, often taken at height and with barely a person to be seen, but the end result is a perfect record of pre-'affordable' housing. Admittedly this slab of a book costs £26.95 but it is comprehensively covetable, plus I've just taken my copy back to the library so you might get lucky there. Sun 2: If you're ever looking for a leftover copy of The Standard, the right-leaning weekly paper which appears in hoppers on Thursday afternoons and is generally whisked away by Friday, there were loads of unread copies outside Grange Hill tube station this morning.
Mon 3: Here's an astonishing sign by the ticket gates at East Croydon station. Please don't tap in with Oyster or contactless between 6:00am and 6:02am, it says, or you'll be charged a maximum fare. The reason given is that "the gates reset at this time". I wonder what's special about East Croydon and how many earlybirds get caught out. It must be particularly annoying if you're trying to catch the 0601 to Cambridge, the 0602 to Caterham or the 0603 to Bedford. Tue 4: Scott Mills has settled into the Radio 2 Breakfast Show like a natural. He's in his second week now and it's cheery chatty stuff with deliberately upbeat tunes, easy to dip into and fit for a family audience. The Easiest Quiz On The Radio is genius. It's not for everyone but audience-wise it ticks all the right boxes. Wed 5: My latest daily word challenge time-sink is called Squaredle. It's a bit like Boggle, hunting for hidden words in a grid. You only need to find the well-known words but it's surprisingly hard. Thu 6: I went to Two Temple Place to see this year's exhibition which is Lives Less Ordinary, a visual celebration of working-class life. There were lots of great old photos and wry arty exhibits sourced from across the country, mostly post-war, which I thoroughly enjoyed. By contrast the audience wandering round were patently not working class, nor had ever been, so I enjoyed the contrast there even more. Until 20th April if you've not been yet.
Fri 7: Oh good, the probability of an asteroid hitting us in 2032 has increased to 2.3%. Given all the Trump stuff this may be just as well. Sat 8: I always read the obituaries in case they include someone I know and today I turned the page and it finally happened. I knew him well, indeed he was one of my very first line managers, and yes I knew that particularly brilliant fact about his later career but I hadn't realised the full depth of the early stuff. I wish we'd spent more Friday lunchtimes down the pub. Sun 9: It got the fewest comments of any post I've written this month, but it'll bring thousands of visitors to the blog via search engines so what do you lot know? Mon 10: I don't know who's editorially in charge of the BBC News At One but they are relentlessly obsessed by interviewing the campaigning relatives of dead people. Every single hour long broadcast seems to include a lengthy segment where someone remembers a loved one and explains why they've started a campaign in their honour or why the law needs to change. Today's programme had three such segments (we need to bring the tech companies to account, I want one of these in every school, what happened to my sister must never happen again), and I've got to the stage now where I fast forward through. This stuff has its place and is often very worthy, but when it appears so relentlessly it's really quite cloying - I'm here to watch the News, not the One Show.
Tue 11: Stickers aimed at people with suicidal feelings have appeared at the end of several DLR platforms. They're nicely designed, especially the cat, but it's perhaps optimistic to hope that everyone in this terrible situation will be able to use a QR code. At least the actual website's named underneath (dlrcares.co.uk... a sadly splendid resource). Wed 12: My new passport arrived today, exactly a week after I applied for it (and just five days after they received my old one). That's fast service, but that's February for you. I've signed it in black biro (and I hate the photo). Thu 13: I paid for my last prescription today because next time it needs renewing I'll be old enough to get it for free. "Do you want the receipt?" asked the pharmacist, and handed it over with a smile when I explained why I did. Fri 14: A nightmare situation... my hand got mucky so I dashed home, only to find my taps running dry so I couldn't wash the muck off. Thankfully they were running again in the morning but that was an uncomfortable night. Sat 15: Today was the last day of the The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe at Honeywood Museum in Carshalton so you're too late to see the diorama in the billiard room, but what a great idea by the Hello Club to use weekly craft sessions for the over 50s to create a communal artwork everyone can feel part of.
Sun 16: The tide was really low in the Thames this morning, so from Fulham railway bridge you could see a huge stripe of riverbed on the Wandsworth side, plus a brave couple going for a promenade along a central sandy ridge. Mon 17: It's London Theatre Week, which of course lasts 14 days, so I've myself booked a £20 seat at an iconic show. More of that next month. Tue 18: You'll remember I told you 'Kennington' was missing from all the tube maps in Elizabeth line trains. Well it's back because all the maps have been reprinted and replaced, and I just wanted to tell TfL yes I had noticed. Wed 19: It's amazing how ineffectual the emergency services are in TV soaps. After the Queen Vic exploded they took ages to arrive, failed to break through a thin door into a pub and then left a casualty with crushed legs to chat with his fiancée rather than treating his critical injuries. Disbelief has rarely been so suspended. Thu 20: I received a message on Flickr from an Algerian astonished to see his father's poetry on a plaque by the Millennium Dome. "This man is my father and I would love to see this place in real life so I am contacting you to know if you remember the spot where the poem was located. I'm visiting London next week and this would be amazing. I heard a lot about my father's writings but never had the chance to really read anything as he was mostly a journalist for Algerian newspapers and those tend to be rare today." I was able to tell him that this was one of eight granite discs depicting poetry from the countries along the Greenwich meridian, and where it was located in a hotel car park, and I hope very very much he found it.
Fri 21: I went to the library hoping to take out Gary Stevenson's bestselling new book, The Trading Game. You've likely seen his shaved head staring out from posters on many a tube platform. Alas I don't think there's a single unreserved copy left in the system. However on my way home I spotted Gary cycling past Mile End station so I'm counting that as a win. Sat 22: My train journey home from Hartlepool was significantly delayed by an 'incident' at Stevenage which had closed the East Coast Main Line since the middle of the afternoon. Thankfully we arrived just as things were reopening, but we were still train number five in the queue and ground to a lengthy halt. I thought I'd be in line for a 50% refund but no, the delay somehow contrived to be only 56 minutes and that doesn't count. Nigh all the inconvenience, none of the reward. Sun 23: You may remember I said that you can apply for a 60+ Oyster card two weeks before your 60th birthday. It turns out this isn't true because I tried and you can't. I rang up the helpline to enquire and was told no, it's actually 10 days before not 14 because they changed it. They also said a lot of people ask about this, so perhaps whoever's in charge of the TfL website could amend it so future 59 year-olds don't have to phone the helpline too. Mon 24: Oh good, the probability of an asteroid hitting us in 2032 has decreased to 0.004%. Apparently its chance of hitting the Moon is still 1.7% though, so watch for fireworks.
Tue 25: I've long been obsessed by May'sConfectionery in Greenford, a throwback sweet shop that's been mothballed for over a decade with jars of bonbons on dusty shelves and faded Cadbury Snack and Freddo Caramel boxes in the window. When I went back in November I noted it had finally been converted to a fresh retail unit and that's now been filled by A.K. Food and Wine, a gleaming minimart specialising in smokables and drinkables. The entire postwar history of the high street could be probably summarised by the before and after, but Mr May would be absolutely appalled that the new lot have written CONFECTIONARY above the window. Wed 26: To update my post on TfL scrapping timetable posters on the outer reaches of the Metropolitan line, I can confirm that stations now have proper up-to-date timetable posters again. They're all dated 13.1.25 at the bottom, the date of the latest timetable change, although they definitely weren't in place three weeks ago. Thu 27: tbc Fri 28: Today is the 50th anniversary of the Moorgate tube crash in which 43 people died. Radio 4 has just broadcast a two-part audio drama about the disaster written by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran (of Birds of a Feather/Goodnight Sweetheart fame). Laurence was sent to Moorgate that day as part of his job as a journalist, only to discover that his father had been in the second carriage and was one of the dead. Unsurprisingly the drama is very well written.
Finally, let's see how my annual counts are going...
• Number of London boroughs visited: all 33 (at least four times each)
• Number of London bus routes ridden: 216 (39%)
• Number of Z1-3 stations used: all (plus I've now added all the tram stops)
• Number of Z4-6 stations used: 0
