Tube watch (7)Ways you can tell that the tube is out of date
• The Victoria line is one of the few lines that isn't Victorian.
• Tube trains don't have a buffet car where you can buy a latté and a muffin.
• You can't get a train home at 1am on a Saturday morning.
• You can't get a mobile phone signal underground (long may it stay that way, please)
• You can't download music onto an Oystercard.
• The tube doesn't go to Hoxton. Yet.
• The London Transport Museum is also below ground, not just restricted to one building in Covent Garden.
• Bob Crow.
Tube quiz (7)This way or that?
Each of the tube journeys listed below is possible on two different tube lines. Which line is faster (that's time, not distance)? (Answers in the comments box, and congratulations to Nico and Chz - 100% each) 1) Notting Hill Gate to Liverpool Street: (a) Central or (b) Circle? 2) Paddington to Embankment: (a) Bakerloo or (b) Circle? 3) Baker Street to Waterloo: (a) Bakerloo or (b) Jubilee? 4) Euston to Stockwell: (a) Northern or (b) Victoria? 5) Finsbury Park to Green Park: (a) Piccadilly or (b) Victoria? 6) Kings Cross St Pancras to Hammersmith: (a) Hammersmith & City or (b) Piccadilly? 7) Kings Cross St Pancras to Uxbridge: (a) Metropolitan or (b) Piccadilly? 8) Westminster to West Ham: (a) District or (b) Jubilee? 9) Bond Street to Stratford: (a) Central or (b) Jubilee? 10) Ealing Broadway to Mile End: (a) Central or (b) District?
Tube geek (7)Growth of the tube network 1860s: 33 new stations, 3 new lines (Metropolitan, District, Hammersmith & City) 1870s: 27 new stations, 2 lines extended (Metropolitan, District) 1880s: 33 new stations, 3 new lines (Circle, East London, Northern), 2 lines extended (Metropolitan, District) 1890s: 24 new stations, 1 new line (Waterloo & City), 1 line extended (Metropolitan) 1900s: 84 new stations, 3 new lines (Central, Bakerloo, Piccadilly), 2 lines extended (Metropolitan, District) 1910s: 26 new stations, 2 lines extended (Bakerloo, Central) 1920s: 19 new stations, 2 lines extended (Metropolitan, Northern) 1930s: 23 new stations, 4 lines extended (Bakerloo, Piccadilly, District, Northern) 1940s: 41 new stations, 2 lines extended (Northern, Central), 1 line cut back (Metropolitan) 1950s: erm, nothing 1960s: 4 new stations, 1 new line (Victoria), 1 line cut back (Metropolitan) 1970s: 5 new stations, 1 new line (Jubilee), 2 lines extended (Victoria, Piccadilly), 1 line cut back (Northern) 1980s: 1 new station, 1 line extended (Piccadilly), 1 line cut back (Bakerloo) 1990s: 7 new stations, 1 line extended (Jubilee), 2 lines cut back (Central, Piccadilly) 2000-2010: 13newstations planned, 3 lines due to be extended (East London, Metropolitan, Piccadilly)
The numbers may be a bit approximate in places because it's not always easy to tell what is a new station and what isn't. But it is clear that the golden age of tube building was exactly 100 years ago at the turn of the 20th century, back when property developers were trying to open up suburbia for London's commuters. Things dropped off somewhat from the 1950s onwards, which you might argue is because governments are more careful with their money than private companies, or maybe they're more cautious, or maybe they're more short-sighted. And maybe, just maybe, expansion is picking up again in the 21st century. Let's hope so.
Tube watch (6)Visiting every tube station
About 20 years ago some friends and I tried visiting all the stations on the Underground. It wasn't a very serious attempt, more a university students' day out, and we were slightly hamstrung by having to start and finish at the tube station nearest to where I lived. Nevertheless we made it to 224 different tube stations, which sounded a pretty good total until we realised we'd missed nearly 50 stations out. It wasn't as easy as it looked. There wasn't a Jubilee line extension to contend with in those days, but we did have to make our way all the way out to Ongar (now deceased) as well as popping down the Holborn spur to Aldwych (ditto). We took a useful shortcut by walking from Ickenham to West Ruislip (I believe if you're taking these things seriously you're supposed to run) but we also discovered that the biggest problem with these attempts is that unplanned delays always conspire to make you miss planned connections. People take things much more seriously these days, and the record for visiting all 275 stations currently stands at 18 hours, 35 minutes, 43 seconds. Well done Geoff! Let him tell you the full story...
Tube quiz (6)Name that station
I asked you to name a tube station which includes the name of... 1) ...a mammal. You found 8: Blackhorse Road, Buckhurst Hill, Colliers Wood, Elephant & Castle, Lambeth North, Oxford Circus, Rickmansworth, Seven Sisters. 2) ...a bird. You found 9: Canary Wharf, Cockfosters, Finchley Road, Finchley Central, East Finchley, West Finchley, Goldhawk Road, Hendon Central, Ravenscourt Park. 3) ...a tree. You found 5: Bayswater, Burnt Oak, Elm Park, Oakwood, Royal Oak. 4) ...a country. You found 3: Canada Water, Holland Park, Swiss Cottage. 5) ...a football team from the Premiership or Championship. You found 10: Arsenal, Gunnersbury, Fulham Broadway, Leicester Square, Liverpool Street, Preston Road, Tottenham Court Road, Tottenham Hale, Watford, West Ham.
Tube geek (6)Station to station
The average distance between stations on the London Underground is almost precisely one mile (1600m). But neighbouring stations are only precisely the same distance apart on Harry Beck's topologically morphed tube map, not in real life. Some stations are so close that the train barely has time to accelerate out of the platform before braking to stop at the next, whereas trains can travel for well over five minutes between certain other 'neighbouring' stations. With the aid of Ian's marvellous map annotated with inter-station mileages (via Annie), here's my list of the stations on the tube that are the closest and the furthest apart:
Closest together (Zone 1) 1=) Leicester Square → Covent Garden (0.16 miles, 260m) 1=) Embankment → Charing Cross (0.16 miles, 260m) 3) Cannon Street → Mansion House (0.19 miles, 305m) 4) Cannon Street → Monument (0.21 miles, 340m) 5) Leicester Square → Tottenham Court Road (0.24 miles, 390m) next 5: Holborn → Chancery Lane, Waterloo → Southwark, Edgware Road → Marylebone, Goodge Street → Warren Street, Embankment → Waterloo. tubegeek comment: That's a very strong showing for Leicester Square station and for the Northern line (Charing Cross branch). In fact from Euston to Waterloo there are seven Northern Line stations in less than two miles, which feels a little excessive. Plus you can see why they close Cannon Street station after 9pm and at weekends, given that it's so close to the two stations on either side (and to Bank too).
Closest together (outside Zone 1) 1) Rotherhithe → Canada Water (0.20 miles, 320m) 2=) Bow Road → Mile End (0.30 miles, 480m) 2=) South Ealing → Northfields (0.30 miles, 480m) 4) Rotherhithe → Wapping (0.32 miles, 510m) 5) Stamford Brook → Turnham Green (0.33 miles, 530m) next 5): Canada Water → Surrey Quays, Earls Court → West Brompton, Holloway Road → Caledonian Road, Finchley Road → West Hampstead, Finchley Road → Swiss Cottage. tubegeek comment: The East London line features strongly here, mainly because they added a new station at Canada Water to allow interchange with the Jubilee line. And look, there's good old Bow Road right up at the top of the list too, which is just as well when they keep closing it for renovation work and you have to walk between the two instead.
Furthest apart 1) Finchley Road → Wembley Park (4.50 miles, 7¼km) 2) Chalfont & Latimer → Chesham (3.95 miles, 6½km) 3) Heathrow Terminal 4 → Heathrow Terminals 1, 2, 3 (2.71 miles, 4½km) 4) Rickmansworth → Chorleywood (2.24 miles, 3½km) 5) Chorleywood → Chalfont & Latimer (2.15 miles, 3½km) next 5: Finchley Road → Baker Street, Moor Park → Rickmansworth, Debden → Theydon Bois, Chalfont & Latimer → Amersham, Moor Park → Croxley. tubegeek comment: No surprise to see the outer limits of the Metropolitan line dominating this top 10 because the Met is more of a suburban railway than an inner city metro. There are five Jubilee line stations between Finchley Road and Wembley Park, however, so some would argue that Chalfont to Chesham should be top of this list instead.
Time once again for diamond geezer to go totally tubular with another week devoted to the London Underground. Prepare for five days of quizzes, facts, commentary and obscure statistics. Last year I looked at average speeds, the busiest stations, the great north/south divide, picking the right carriage and journeys where it was quicker to walk (amongst other things). Who knows how much I'll manage to cram in this year. Mind the doors.
1293: A chain stretches across the road between two wooden posts outside the New Temple at the top of Fleet Street. 1351: A timber gate is now in place, with a central arch, two side arches and a prison above. 1588: Queen Elizabeth I halts at Temple Bar to meet the Lord Mayor on her way to St Paul’s Cathedral for a post-Armada Service of Thanksgiving. 1669: The old Temple Bar is demolished, not because it was damaged during the Great Fire of London (which it wasn't) but because it's a traffic bottleneck. Sir Christopher Wren builds the new Temple Bar (pictured left). Cost £1500. 1746: The last severed head to be dispayed on a spike on top of Temple Bar belongs to Jacobite traitor Francis Towneley. 1878: Temple Bar has become a traffic bottleneck again and so is dismantled. A dragon on a plinth is erected instead, which still stands. 1889: At the request of his wife, Sir Henry Meux buys the stones and reassembles them to form the gateway to his park and mansion house at Theobalds, near Cheshunt. Cost £10000. 1910: Lady Meux dies and the gateway subsequently falls into disrepair, just an old ruin in the woods. Oct 2003 - Oct 2004: Temple Bar is painstakingly dismantled, renovated, transported back to London, and reassembled as part of the new Paternoster Square development north of St Paul's Cathedral. Cost £3000000. (You can read my in-depth report from January here) 10 November 2004 (11:30am): Temple Bar is officially reopened by the Lord Mayor. Shame it's in such a crap location, sandwiched between two tall buildings and totally dominated by modern redevelopment. But it's good to have it back.
X-50
Mass appeal albums for the Christmas market 2004 Yet another greatest hits album: Kylie Minogue (previous GH album 2002), Bee Gees (previous GH album 2002), Olivia Newton-John (previous GH album 2001), Barry Manilow (previous GH album 1999), Tina Turner (previous GH album 1999), Phil Collins (previous GH album 1998), Def Leppard (previous GH album 1995), Wet Wet Wet (previous GH album 1993), Talking Heads (previous GH album 1992), Neil Young (ah, no previous GH album) Are there really enough hits for a greatest hits album?: Robbie Williams (21 hits, 19 tracks), Britney Spears (16 hits, 20 tracks), Travis (16 hits, 18 tracks), Placebo (13 hits, 19 tracks), Shania Twain (11 hits, 21 tracks), Seal (11 hits, 14 tracks), Blue (9 hits, 15 tracks), Groove Armada (8 hits, 14 tracks), the Verve (6 hits, 14 tracks), Wu-Tang Clan (1 hit, 16 tracks), Goldie Looking Chain (1 hit, 13 tracks) Scary modern middle-of-the-road blandness: Delta Goodrem, Joss Stone, Katie Melua, Daniel Bedingfield, Michael Bublé, Il Divo, Brian McFadden, Anaesthesia Anastacia Just a load of old covers: Westlife, Rod Stewart, Beautiful South, Lisa Stansfield Back from the dead: Donny Osmond, Elton John, Leo Sayer, Cliff Richard Fresh and original material: nah, surely not?
Hurrah for the search engine, easily the most useful invention on the planet (with the possible exception of electricity, language, sanitation, the internal combustion engine, democracy, tomato ketchup and about a thousand other things). And hurrah for the multiplicity of search engines. We don't all use Google, you know. I thought I'd take a look into my referral logs to see which search engine was the most popular. Most successful at sending visitors to my blog, that is, which is not quite the same thing. And here's the top 10:
1) Google Image Search (32%): I hate Google Image Search. Not as a user, but as a website owner on the receiving end of its imbecilic referral system. I get far too many visitors to my blog looking for images that aren't actually here, just images that I've linked to at some time in the past. For example, try this search and click on the last image on the second row. I removed my link to that image months ago but Google still keeps directing people here to see "the image in its original context". And still they come, sigh.
2) msn Search (22%): Why is Bill Gates' search engine so popular? It can only be the devious and underhand tactic of incorporating it in 90% of the world's web browsers. Please say you never use it.
3) Google (13%): Rather further down the list than I was expecting, but still clearly the search engine of choice. Simple, clean, functional (and sends lots of visitors my way, thankyou).
4) Yahoo Search (11%): I remember when Yahoo search used to be a huge list of directories and subdirectories. They're still there, if you look hard enough, but it's now much quicker to search without them.
5) Ask Jeeves (5%): Or 'Ask', as it now likes to be known, but that's presumably because a lot of internet users can't spell 'Jeeves'.
6) AOL Search (4%): Dumbed down American rubbish. There's a lot of it about at the moment.
7) Wanadoo Search (2½%): Used to be Freeserve search. Again it looks as if many internet users are more than happy to use the search engine that their service provider provides.
8) BBC Search (2%): This is where your licence fee is going, on minority online services with no connection whatsoever to public service broadcasting. Personally I'm very happy about that.
9) Alltheweb (2%): Never heard of them before, but looks reasonable enough.
10) Lycos (1½%): Not so much a search engine, more an advert-swamped portal. Whatever happened to Lycos the dog?
I'm delighted to see that my blog is the number 1 result for "diamond geezer" in every single one of the above search engines (with the exception of Wanadoo where I'm beaten into second place by a diamond company who must be really pissed off that I beat them into second place on all the others). My favourite search engine, incidentally, is AltaVista which just misses my Top 10 list by landing at number 11. I've been using AltaVista for years, so maybe I just stick with it out of brand loyalty, but I really rate its results so I always search here before I turn to Google. Which search engine do you use?
People love anniversaries. All those fireworks being set off tonight are celebrating an anniversary, as are all those poppies people are wearing, that special National Lottery 10th birthday draw tomorrow night and all that tinsel your local council has dared to drape across the high street. Barely a day goes by without some big long newspaper article recalling the way things used to be, or the scheduling of some TV documentary about some not-so-recent event, or the publication of some lavish account of something that happened a number of years ago ending in zero.
I love anniversaries too. You must have noticed because my blog is fullofthem. I'm not quite sure why I love anniversaries so much but I think it's because they're an excuse to remember, and I love remembering. It can look a little gauche to blog about some seemingly random scrap of nostalgia, but if I link those memories to an anniversary then suddenly my blogpost has an acceptable reason to exist. I nearly devoted yesterday to the 35th anniversary of my first day at school, for example, except that George Bush got in the way of a few twee reminiscences about my initial meeting with the class guineapig. Somehow it doesn't feel right to talk about that anniversary a day late.
The media have the opposite problem. They don't seem able to wait for the exact date of an anniversary any more but instead insist on getting their article, programme or book out in advance, just in case someone else's anniversary tribute beats them to it. The BBC documentary about the Brighton bomb blast, for example, was broadcast a whole four weeks too early, generating a flurry of publicity but ensuring that when the real 20th anniversary came round a month later there was nothing left to say. Then there tomorrow's rather premature '10th birthday' National Lottery draw. A huge marketing blitz is underway and lots of old presenters are being wheeled out for a 'special' lottery TV show tomorrow night, whereas in reality the real anniversary of the first draw is still a fortnight away. Why so early? The Poppy Appeal also seems to start earlier every year (Remembrance Sunday is still more than a week away you know) and, as for Christmas, enough said. Can nobody bear to wait for the correct day more?
Today really is the 399th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. I'm surprised that nobody has yet jumped the gun and decided to celebrate Guy Fawkes' quatercentenary a year early, perhaps with a Simon Schama documentary, a souvenir pullout in the Daily Mail or a collection of commemorative porcelain fireworks. But I bet that somebody out there is already writing a book on the subject ("Stands Treason", perhaps) or filming a six-part BBC2 historical drama about Catholic oppression ("Knives and Fawkes", maybe). It was also the 199th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar a couple of weeks ago (which explains why I saw Trafalgar Square covered in gleaming white seamen the other weekend). All of which suggests that we're in for a gigantic double mega-anniversary fortnight this time next year. Or, sadly, a month or two before this time next year instead...
How to run the next American Presidential Election
(Arnie v Hillary, Tuesday 4th November 2008)
1) Restrict the election to the states where the result really matters. Just Ohio, then. Give everybody in the other 49 states a rest next time round because their votes don't actually count, so there's no point in wasting valuable campaign funds anywhere else.
2) Start campaigning early, like January. Maybe January 2005 just to be certain of a decent run-up. It's never too early to be foisting wildly twisted and hateful infomercials on the viewing public.
3) Find a convenient foreign country to invade about 18 months before the election. Perhaps that nice Mr Tony Blair will agree to US peacekeeping forces being stationed on the streets of Britain, hunting down the nation's evil dentists in a moral crusade to save British teeth from plaque-ridden orthodontic hell.
4) Award huge government grants to all the multinational oil companies in an attempt to boost global warming. Fingers crossed that sea level will rise and all those annoying states along each coast that keep voting Democrat will disappear beneath the waves.
5) Sign up as many over-60 voters as you can. Especially the dead ones because they always can be relied upon to vote the right way. Introduce a new curfew which bans everybody under the age of 30 from leaving the house during the first week of November in a leap year.
6) Set up polling stations not in community halls but in churches. Move election day from Tuesday to Sunday, and restrict opening hours to "during the Healing Hour of Prayer".
7) Install electronic voting machines which automatically vote Republican no matter which button you press and which very conveniently can't be checked afterwards. Maybe even announce the results the day before the election is held.
8) Hold votes on other local resolutions at the same time as the presidential election. For example, ask "should gay people be allowed to molest orphans?" then wait for queues of angry bigots to come flocking to the ballot box. Wire up the 'yes' button to the mains electricity supply, just to be on the safe side.
9) Ignore the actual number of votes cast, just go along with the exit polls conducted by all the TV companies. Particularly those nice people at Fox because they're really very unbiased, and because they'll agree to call California for the Republicans if you ask them nicely enough.
10) Pre-pack the Supreme Court with a few of your best mates, just in case the election turns out to be a draw. In fact you could probably get away with reducing the electorate to zero, announcing a tie and going straight to the top without all the hassle of an election in the first place. Dictatorship anyone?
If it's a quarter past seven on the morning of Wednesday 3rd November then I've been single for exactly five years. (Yes, I know I posted this particular post last year and the year before, but I have updated it a bit, and I intend to keep posting it every year on this date until my situation changes. Not that I care if it doesn't, you understand.) Some might say that we single people are missing out on the joys of coupledom, and maybe we are, but I'm convinced there are equally many positive points to being single:
Single: You get the whole duvet to yourself.
Coupled: You don't need a hot water bottle.
Single: There's half as much ironing to do.
Coupled: There's twice as much ironing to do but somebody else might do it.
Single: You hoover the carpet when you think it needs doing.
Coupled: Someone else hoovers the carpet before you think it needs doing.
Single: You can watch whatever TV channel you like, without arguments.
Coupled: There's someone to talk to about the programme on the TV.
Single: Nobody complains when you burp, belch or fart.
Coupled: Somebody points out when you have ketchup on your chin.
Single: You never come home to a blazing row.
Coupled: You sometimes come home to a cooked meal.
Single: You get to eat the whole ready meal for two yourself.
Coupled: It takes just as long to cook for two as it does for one.
Single: You can always go on holiday somewhere you find interesting.
Coupled: Hotel rooms cost less per person and there's someone to talk to at breakfast.
Single: There are no important birthdays or anniversaries to accidentally forget.
Coupled: Somebody actually remembers your birthday.
Single: You can spend all your money on yourself.
Coupled: There are two salaries coming in and only one set of bills.
Single: You're allowed to flirt with people in the street.
Coupled: You don't need to flirt with people in the street.
Single: You have can still have a riotous social life in your 30s.
Coupled: You can still have a riotous social life in your 60s.
Single: You always get a double seat to yourself on public transport.
Coupled: You can never find a double seat because all the single people are hogging them.
Single: You don't catch every sniffle, cold and flu bug off your partner.
Coupled: When you suffer a major cardiac arrest, somebody actually notices and dials 999.
Single: You have no friends to go out with because they've all partnered off and are staying in.
Coupled: You don't have to go out with those annoying friends you had while you were single.
Single: You know which set of parents you'll be spending Christmas with this year.
Coupled: The family sometimes chooses to spend Christmas at your house.
Single: Being coupled is restrictive, stifling and a sign of personal weakness.
Coupled: Being single is unnatural, lonely and a sign of personal failure.
Single: The bathroom is always free.
Coupled: The bedroom is always full.
Single: You can lie in bed in the morning for as long as you like.
Coupled: There's a very good reason for lying in bed in the morning.
Single: Nobody sees what you look like first thing in the morning.
Coupled: Somebody loves you despite what they see first thing in the morning.
Single: You never discover from the timestamp on a petrol receipt that your partner wasn't tucked up in bed one night as claimed but was in fact out shagging someone else.
Not that I'm in any way bitter, you understand...
The problem with living in a democracy is that everybody has a vote, even people that disagree with you.
The problem with living in a democracy is that sometimes more people disagree with you than agree with you.
The problem with living in a democracy is that when more people disagree with you than agree with you, somebody you disagree with gets elected.
The problem with living in a democracy is that when somebody you disagree with gets elected you can't really argue against it because you're in the minority and this is how a democracy works.
The problem with living in a democracy is that sometimes a complete pillock gets elected to high office because more people disagree with you than agree with you and there ain't a damned thing you can do about it.
The great thing about living in a democracy is that there are actually elections in the first place, and so eventually somebody you agree with will get elected. Assuming the world survives that long.
How much would all your daily skincare products cost to replace?
under £25
£25-£49
£50-£99
£100-£200
over £200
Males
75%
18%
2%
3%
2%
Females
43%
22%
30%
4%
0%
Total
67%
19%
10%
4%
1%
Well that surprised me. Thanks to all my 84 readers who responded. Two thirds of you (mostly male) require less than £25 to assemble your daily skincare requirements. Only about a quarter of you (mostly female) spend between £25 and £100. And just 5% of you shell out more than £100, a total I reckon could be reached in four bottles flat were you to frequent the smellies department at the front of most department stores (which it appears that most of you don't). Women spend noticeably more than men overall, which is perhaps to be expected, although interestingly the only person to spend over £200 was male.
There was me thinking that a large number of you might have a bottle or two of expensive facial slap tucked away in that bathroom cabinet of yours, but it turns out that most of you spend even less money on getting ready in the morning than I do. I thought that value bubble bath and value soap would mark me out as a skincare skinflint, whereas it turns out that my single bottle of Molton Brown bath goo makes me some sort of self-indulgent pampered hedonist. Most of you, it seems, get by on just soap, deodorant and shower gel (and a few of you on even less than that), which makes me wonder how certain skincare companies ever manage to stay in business.
Who is buying the world's smellies? Not bloggers, that's for certain. Most of us appear to be able to mix cleanliness with value, and we're also expert at making our few existing luxuries last for years. My black pepper body wash may be relatively expensive, for example, but it's costing me as little as 1½p a day to splash it on all over. I shall ponder on all these unexpected findings later this morning as I wallow in my daily bath. Who'd have thought that just a tiny little squirt could be such a rare and unexpected extravagance.
In the summer of 2002 I bought some Molton Brown squirty stuff to use in my bathroom. It's called black pepper body wash (even though it's brown), it smells great and I splash some over myself every morning before I get out of the bath. It's not normally like me to buy something described in marketing-speak as a "spicy infusion", neither do I care that this "gel formulation" is supposed to be "detoxifying", but in this case I just loved the smell. Yesterday my first bottle of black pepper body wash finally gave its last daily squirt, which means that this morning I shall be starting on bottle number two. I'm a little ashamed that, despite daily usage, I've managed to eke out 300ml of brown liquid to last as long as 2½ years. Am I really a bathroom skinflint? To uncover the truth I've taken a look around my bathroom and assembled all the bottles and stuff that I use regularly every morning, just to see how low-cost I really am. And here's the daily dg grooming selection:
There are just six skin products that I use every morning.
• Body Shop Ice Blue shampoo: I can make 250ml of this nice blue goo last a year.
• Tesco 'Cool marine' foam bath: This just screams 'chemical' and 'cheap', doesn't it? I prefer to think 'functional' and 'value'.
• Tesco 'Magnolia' bath soap: None of this squirty modern soap for me. A bar is much more useful, and costs much less.
• Garnier Nutralia 'Shower & Care': Ghastly name, but it's plain and it's ordinary and it works.
• Molton Brown 're-charge black pepper body wash': At £13 this is more expensive than everything else in the photo put together.
• Lynx 'Touch' anti-perspirant stick: I swear the marketing people at Lynx rename all their deodorant fragrances every two years.
• Not present: conditioner, aftershave, fragrance, cleanser, moisturiser, exfoliator, lotion, cream, make-up, concealer, powder, talc, essential oils, hair gel, herbal bath essence, fake tan and that expensive stuff that supposedly shrinks wrinkles and makes you look 10 years younger. Total cost: just under £25.
I may be clean but I fear I may be abnormal. My daily grooming collection has cost me virtually nothing. I bet yours has cost more. I'd like to know just how atypically cheap I am so I'm inviting you to participate in a special survey. How much would all your daily skincare products cost to replace? Approximately will do. Ignore toothpaste and other items of 'oral care', ignore medicines and tablets, and ignore things that you only slap on occasionally. But be honest - some of those bottles clogging up your bathroom are really quite expensive, aren't they? Any toiletrioholics out there?
Have you ever wanted to be a wine expert? Let me share a few vintage tips with you.
• There are two different types of wine - red and not red.
• There are two different types of wine bottle - those you can drip candlewax down to make a nice lamp and those you can't.
• Wine is made from grapes. Red grapes make red wine, green grapes make green wine and fizzy grapes make champagne.
• Rosé wine is made by mixing red and white wine together in equal measures.
• Wines either come from France or they don't. The best French wines come from the former location.
• Some wines are older than others. Very old wines are called vint-aged.
• Some of the most highly regarded wines are Liebfraumilch, Blue Nun, Black Tower and anything from China.
• Connoisseurs always patronise their local wine merchant.
• The best wines are to be found exclusively in restaurants. These wines are not the same plonk you can buy in Tesco for a fiver but are in fact exclusive classics well worth every penny of £40.
• White wine should always be chilled, but red wine should be removed from the fridge at least three hours before drinking.
• Always allow your wine to breathe by pouring it into the glasses before your guests arrive.
• Screwtop bottles are best because there is no risk of embarrassing yourself in front of an audience whilst attempting to use a corkscrew.
• Small pieces of cork floating around in a bottle of wine increase the flavour.
• When serving wine, only leave the price label on the bottle if the wine cost more than £5.99.
• Always sniff your wine before you drink it. This is called aromatherapy.
• Remember to describe the smell of a wine using at least three of the following adjectives:
• When tasting wine always swill the liquid around in your mouth, gargle and spit - rather like you would with mouthwash.
• The taste of a wine is called the 'palette'. This is the same palette that artists use only different.
• Always compare the taste of a wine to something else which isn't wine, eg
• Always drink your best bottle of wine first because by the time you get to the second you'll be too drunk to fully appreciate how good it is.
Update 1: I've finally made it back to my local sorting office to collect that mystery letter, just 240 hours after my postman first tried to deliver it. How I enjoyed making a second half-hour scenic round trip through the less idyllic parts of Bow. How relieved I was to discover that the sorting office was actually open this time. How thrilling to rip open the envelope to discover a new debit card for the bank account I never ever use a debit card for. How worthless the whole drawn-out escapade has been. And how revolutionary it would be if the Royal Mail could finally work out a way of delivering secure mail that suited us and not them. Until then my willingness to use Amazon, eBay or any other online retail service remains virtually zero.
Update 2: There are still no trolleys outside my local Tesco. Maybe they're all away at some trolley convention somewhere because they're certainly not being pushed round the store. There was one trolley in the trolley park down the side of the store but it was the wrong size and on the wrong side of the road so I couldn't be bothered. Instead I've decided to do all my shopping using a basket from now on, which will save me about £15 a week and no doubt seriously damage Tesco's corporate profits at the same time. Now all I need to do is reduce my weekly shop to 10 items or less and I can get through the queues at the checkouts in less than ten minutes too.
Update 3: No progress on the tea-at-work saga yet. Various additional excuses for our kettlelessness have been bandied about, including 'it would make the kitchen untidy' and 'there are no washing up facilities'. Our office kitchen area is indeed the most useless office kitchen area on the planet. It may boast a tiny fridge, two sinks and a worktop but apparently it isn't a kitchen, it's an office stores area. Open the cupboards where you'd expect to find crockery, glasses and cleaning materials and you'll find post-its, hole punches and padded envelopes instead. Soap and paper towel dispensers have been added as an afterthought, evidently purchased from the Cheap'n'Nasty supplies catalogue. The single mixer tap has been plumbed in nearer to the sink on the left than the sink on the right, with the consequence that the sink on the right is merely ornamental. Try swivelling the mixer tap round to the right and the ensuing stream of water misses the second sink by a good couple of inches, creating large puddles across the worktop. At least the kitchen area remains tidy, but that's only because barely anybody uses it. Meanwhile I make sure I have a nice cup of tea before I go to work in the morning and another when I get home in the evening, because there's no prospect of a nice cup of tea inbetween.
2 + 2 = 5: Some people put two and two together and make five. Present them with some facts and they'll immediately read far too much into them. These people don't just jump to conclusions, they leap right over them and land somewhere in the middle of misjudgement. A few scraps of gossip quickly become half-baked certainty, and allegations can be based on nothing more than unfounded rumour. These people can be very hard to argue with because they know they're right and no amount of persuasion will change their mind. There is no grey in their world, just black and white. 2 + 2 = 10: Five years ago my ex used to put two and two together and make ten. No flight of fancy was too improbable, no wild accusation too unlikely. Never mind the truth, I could always be blamed for something I hadn't actually done (and frequently was). Not that I'd worked out why, because I was in the next category.
2 + 2 = 3: Some people put two and two together and make three. Show them the bleeding obvious and they'll somehow miss the point. They're the last to spot that someone in the office is pregnant, or that those two colleagues who keep arriving at work one minute apart are actually an item. They never get a nagging gut feeling, neither would they recognise a hunch even if it came with a big red flashing light attached. There is no black and white in their world, just grey. 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 2 + 2 = 0: Five years ago I couldn't put two and two together at all. I was in a failing relationship at the time, and all the clues were there but I just couldn't (or wouldn't) see the wider picture. They say love is blind. More blinkered, perhaps.
2 + 2 = 4: Some people put two and two together and make four. They possess something commonly known as 'common sense', and they use it well. Faced by a mass of incoherent evidence they can pull together disparate threads and reach a sensible conclusion. Intuition guides these people through life, and rarely do they put their foot in it. There is no black and white or grey in their world, just colour. Lucky bastards. 2 + 2 = 4.00000000: Five years ago this evening, in a blinding and unprecedented moment of clarity, I made precisely four. The trick was to add the right two twos together so that at last all the clues meant something. I made one inspired phone call, came to one inescapable conclusion, and moved on. I've never looked back since.
2 + 2 = ?: I'm much better at putting two and two together now than I used to be. I still miss a lot of things that everyone else spots, but now I spot some things that some other people miss. For me two plus two now equals about 3.7 (near enough). How about you?
Watching the National Television Awards on Tuesday night (as one does when giving one's brain the night off) I was jolted by a sudden frightening glimpse into the future. David Jason was unable to collect his annual 'Most Loved Actor In The World Ever' Award because he was "out on a night shoot" for a new ITV drama set somewhere in the north of England. It turns out that Mr Jason has been typecast again, this time as "a career criminal trying to convince a first-time-offender to join him in his next big scam". And the name of his new series? Diamond Geezer. I find this to be particularly disturbing news. Sometime next year my blog's brand image will be shattered, possibly even hijacked, by some cosy series featuring ITV's biggest banker. I shall be on the receiving end of hundreds of misdirected Google hits, and my chances of establishing myself as a British media icon will be seriously diminished. I wonder if I'll be able to sue for loss of intellectual property rights (conveniently ignoring the fact that the phrase 'diamond geezer' was hardlyfresh when I appropriated it myself).
But why stop at 'Diamond Geezer'? Surely other blog titles could easily inspire hit television series of their own. Maybe the rest of you would do well to cash in now before someone else in the media steals your online identity. I've worked my way down my blogroll and picked out the ten sites that I think have the greatest TV spinoff potential...
Scaryduck: Farm-based children's cartoon series in which Mad Max Mallard rules the roost with his regime of intimidation, eliminating the local pondlife.
Blue Witch: Ann Widdecombe follows in Michael Palin's footsteps to the North Pole, but then stays there.
Big n Juicy: EastEnders spinoff sees Peggy Mitchell employed on Martin Fowler's fruit & veg stall. Fun and hilarity ensues as actress Babs Windsor thrusts her melons on the people of Walford.
Dummies For Destruction: A new late night version of Mastermind in which John Humphries invites the losing contestant to sit in a special electric chair at the end of the show.
Troubled Diva: Pop Idol with a twist. Simon Cowell slags everyone off as normal but the contestants then lie down on Ant and Dec's "Soul Couch" for immediate therapy.
Casino Avenue: Carol Vorderman invites whole streets to stake their savings on the spin of a roulette wheel, then gives their houses a full makeover using the proceeds.
Random Acts Of Reality: Dermot O'Leary surprises former Big Brother contestants by following their sad post-eviction lives on hidden cameras.
Over Your Head: A condescending version of a Question of Sport in which Sue Barker asks particularly stupid sportsmen particularly easy questions.
Wherever You Are: Judith Chalmers encourages you not to go on holiday but instead to make the most of your local park, library and other municipal facilities.
Hackney Lookout: New cop drama starring David Jason as a career criminal with a heart of gold - a real diamond geezer.
dg's UK Eclipse Guide Next TotalLunar Eclipse: tomorrow morning (starts 2:14am BST, total from 3:23am to 4:45am, ends 5:54am) (so you'll be asleep, won't you?) Next Total Lunar Eclipse after that: Saturday 3rd March 2007 from 10:43pm to 11:58pm (so don't say I didn't warn you) Next PartialSolar Eclipse: Monday 3rd October 2005 (just over half obscured in London at 10am) Next Total Solar Eclipse: Saturday 23rd September 2090 (so you'll be dead, won't you?)
John Peel's Festive 50s(number 1, number 2) 1976 Stairway To Heaven (Led Zeppelin), Layla (Derek & the Dominoes) 1977<seismic shift in British music> 1978 Anarchy in the UK (Sex Pistols), Complete Control (Clash) 1979 Anarchy In The UK (Sex Pistols), Teenage Kicks(Undertones) 1980 Anarchy in the UK (Sex Pistols), Atmosphere (Joy Division) 1981 Atmosphere (Joy Division), Anarchy in the UK (Sex Pistols) 1982 Temptation (New Order), Shipbuilding (Robert Wyatt) 1983 Blue Monday (New Order), This Charming Man (Smiths) 1984 How Soon Is Now (Smiths), Pearly Dewdrops Drop (Cocteau Twins) 1985 Never Understand (Jesus and Mary Chain), Just Like Honey (Jesus and Mary Chain) 1986 There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (Smiths), Kiss (Age of Chance) 1987 Birthday (Sugarcubes), Australians In Europe (The Fall) 1988 Destroy The Heart (House of Love), Nobody's Twisting Your Arm (Wedding Present) 1989 Can't Be Sure (Sundays), Kennedy (Wedding Present) 1990 Bill Is Dead (The Fall), Soon (My Bloody Valentine) 1991 Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana), Dress (PJ Harvey) 1992 Geek Love (Bang Bang Machine), Sheela-Na-Gig (PJ Harvey) 1993 Enough Is Enough (Chumbawamba & Credit To The Nation), Swim (Madder Rose) 1994 I Want You (Inspiral Carpets), Hey Student (The Fall) 1995 Common People (Pulp), Sorted for E's & Wizz (Pulp) 1996 Come Out 2 Nite (Kenickie), First Big Weekend (Arab Strap) 1997 Brimful Of Asha (Cornershop), New Paths To Helicon (Mogwai) 1998 Pull The Wires From The Wall (Delgados), Xmas Steps (Mogwai) 1999 Cognoscenti Vs Intelligentsia (Cuban Boys), The Hymn For The Cigarettes (Hefner) 2000 Twist The Knife (Neko Case & Her Boyfriends), Good Fortune (PJ Harvey) 2001 Chinese Whispers (Melys), Hotel Yorba (White Stripes) 2002 Girls Are The New Boys (Saloon), Quick, Before It Melts (Cinerama) 2003 Don't Touch That Dial (Cinerama), Theme From Sparta FC (The Fall) 2004<irreplaceable loss to British music>
Hypothesis: The tea out of the vending machine at my workplace is proper tea.
Apparatus: One vending machine, one tongue, one sink, one carefully-positioned waste bin.
Control experiment: Press '90' on drinks machine to dispense small plastic cup of hot water. Cup takes 9 seconds to be filled. Water is steaming very slightly. Cup is very warm but can be carried. Finger can be dipped in liquid without scalding. Estimated temperature: not boiling.
Conclusion: Machine vended tea is not made from boiling water.
Experiment: Press '52' on drinks machine to dispense small plastic cup of liquid resembling tea (white, no sugar). Wait expectantly while machine buzzes and whirrs. Cup takes 27 seconds to be filled. Tea is not steaming. Colour of tea most closely resembles "Autumn Fern" on Dulux pH colour chart. Sip liquid. Grimace. Time between sip and emptying remainder of contents down sink: 3 seconds. Throw empty cup in bin.
Results: Time taken to dispense liquids as follows - hot water 9 seconds; black tea no sugar 23 seconds; white tea no sugar 27 seconds. Machine therefore takes 4 seconds to fill cup with milk powder, 14 seconds to 'freshly brew' tea and 9 seconds to fill cup with water.
Additional hypothesis: 14 seconds is long enough to 'freshly brew' tea.
Additional experiment: Dispense cup of not-quite-hot water (90). Add teabag pilfered from meeting room. Stir water vigorously with long thin plastic stirry thing for precisely 14 seconds. Remove teabag. Tea is not brown. Colour of tea most closely resembles "Muddy Puddle" on Dulux pH colour chart. Time between observation and emptying remainder of contents down sink: 1 second. Throw empty cup in bin.
Additional conclusion: Reject additional hypothesis. 14 seconds is not long enough to 'freshly brew' tea.
Conclusion: Reject hypothesis. The tea out of the vending machine at my workplace is crap.
Thank you for all your comments and support yesterday as I struggled to come to terms with workplace tealessness. And for all your suggestions... • Dave and Mat suggested moving to a new organisation where they take tea drinking seriously. Sadly I think I was asked to leave one of those a couple of months ago.
• Jag suggested bringing a thermos of tea to work, while Lyle reckoned that a flask such as this might do the trick. However I fear for the health and safety of other commuters on the Central line were I to try wielding a lethal object of this size through the rush hour crowds.
• Ross and Chz suggested using almost-boiling water from the vending machine to brew fresh tea using a teabag. Which would be fine except that the water from our machine isn't almost-boiling. And, even if it were, there'd still be no fresh milk available. We do have a small fridge where we could store fresh milk but it's shared between more than 100 people and it's already full of plastic tubs of salad. Fridge politics - now there's a whole new area to despair about.
• Gordon very nearly suggested that I should defect to the dark side and drink coffee instead. Heresy, Gordon, heresy.
• Quink suggested filling our teapot with hot water from the machine in the canteen. Unfortunately the canteen is a multi-floor lift journey away, and the carriage of containers full of hot liquids around the building is also banned under 'Health and Safety' rules.
• Katherine and Em² suggested challenging all these supposed 'Health and Safety' rules on the basis that they might not actually exist. Hmmm, maybe I'll come back to you later on that one...
One of the best things about the office where I used to work is that we had a kettle. I'm not sure if we were meant to have a kettle because nobody else in the building had one, but we were just a small team in a space of our own so we got away with it. We put someone in charge of buying teabags and every now and then, when supplies were low, we'd all give her a quid and she'd pop out to the local Sainsburys Local to buy some more. Regularly throughout each day we'd sort of take it in turns to go into the kitchen area, stick the kettle on and make everyone a cuppa. We did it properly, with a big teapot and fresh milk and everything, and almost every cup used to taste great [9½/10]. Just enough to get us through the next two hours until somebody decided to brew up another pot. And then we moved.
We're not allowed a kettle any more. Apparently the use of a kettle would breach Health and Safety regulations, no doubt because boiling water is involved. Goodness knows how I've managed to use a kettle at home to make myself thousands of cups of tea over the years without fatally scalding myself, but it seems that at work I'm not even allowed to try. Fortunately my workplace has made alternative arrangements for the production of tea. Unfortunately, they suck. Here's how.
Tea from the machine A large black vending machine has been positioned in the new kitchen area on our floor at work. There's a giant illuminated picture of a pot of frothy coffee on the front, which alas is not a good sign for us tea connoisseurs. The machine can dispense about six different types of coffee (including a nasty hot chocolate/cappuccino hybrid), as well as some tooth-rotting lemon drink and a thin pasty liquid supposedly called 'hot vegetable soup', but there's only one type of tea. This tea is described as 'freshly brewed', although goodness knows how it can possibly be fresh when it gets pumped out of the nozzle in ten seconds flat. The dispensed drink is very similar to that described by Arthur Dent as "a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea". It's weak, it's thin, it's insipid and it's desperately unsatisfying. So unsatisfying in fact that I've never once risked drinking a cup. This devil's brew may be free but it's worth no more than [1/10].
Tea from the canteen We now have a canteen at work, which is great. It serves fry-ups for breakfast and big meaty meals for lunch, as well as the juice and rabbit food that some of my colleagues seem to prefer. Even better it's heavily subsidised so I'm saving money over buying sandwiches and not having to cook again when I get home. Unfortunately the canteen also attempts to sell tea. They've put a pile of paper cups by the till, along with a collection of teabags and a hot water dispenser which you then combine to form a brown liquid with a light greasy scum on the surface. I am not tempted, especially not at 40p a cup for an inferior version of a drink that I used to get virtually for nothing. It makes me wonder whether the supposed 'Health & Safety' ban on kettles isn't really to protect the fleecing rights of the canteen franchisers. Alas, I refuse point blank to fork out £500 a year for this scum. [3/10]
Tea in a meeting What could brighten a lengthy meeting better than some surly youth arriving with the drinks trolley? Try not to think how much your departmental budget is being charged for a pot of coffee, a flask of tepid water and a plate of biscuits, just smile because it's better than the stuff out of the machines. Only just, though. Most of the teabags they provide are trendy herbal rubbish (a finely grated flower petal in an expensive packet) but there are always also a couple of ordinary teabags on strings. Drop the teabag of your choice into the far-from boiling water, watch as the brown colour fails to budge more than a millimetre from the bag, stir the liquid vigorously in an attempt to improve the brew and sob in despair as the string breaks and you have to squelch the teabag out of the cup unaided. But it is a china cup, and the tea is almost warm, so I have to score this [4/10].
Tea substitute Imagine a cup of tea without the heat, without the milk and without the tea. That's all I drink at work now. It's a crying shame.
Reasons to be cheerless, part 1: During the week somebody sent me a letter by Special Delivery and I have absolutely no idea what it was except that it probably wasn't anything really important because I'm not expecting anything and when they tried delivering it on Wednesday I was at work so they stuck a message through my letterbox telling me that they were going to hold my letter hostage at the local Royal Mail sorting office until I could get round there to collect it which is difficult when the place closes at 3pm every day although it used to shut at 7pm until they adjusted the opening hours earlier this year "to improve customer service" which is rubbish so instead I had to wait until yesterday to go round except I arrived at ten past twelve and it turned out that the sorting office now shuts at noon on Saturdays and there was a postal worker waiting at the bus stop outside and he said I should arrange to get my letter redelivered and I told him that I had this alternative commitment called 'work' so I wouldn't actually be in if anyone came round again and he said that they could always deliver my letter to another address but only one within my local E3 postcode which is just as useless because I don't know anybody round here who's unemployed and doesn't go to work and he said that for a fee of 50p they could send it to my local Post Office instead except that my local Post Office shuts before I get home from work too which is no better so the upshot is that I won't be able to go back and collect my letter until next Saturday and even then it probably won't be worth the effort so I hope that next time I'm sent a Special Delivery letter my criminally negligent postman will do what he did last time and post it illegally without waiting for a signature because it'll save me a half hour detour to the sorting office.
Reasons to be cheerless, part 2: After my abortive Royal Mail trip I went round to buy a week's supply of food at my local supermarket which is the Tesco in Bow that used to be where the Big Brother producers did the housemates' weekly shopping and there's a trolley park out the front on the main road which always used to be full of trolleys but which recently has been getting emptier and emptier until today there were no trolleys left in it at all so I had to use a basket instead which meant I only bought half as much as I was planning to buy which is probably a good thing because I can easily live without half the stuff I normally buy except that by the time I reached the fruit and vegetable section I didn't have enough room left in my basket for anything else so I'll probably get scurvy or something because I doubt there'll ever be any trolleys sitting outside the supermarket ever again goodness knows why Tesco can't shuffle a few trolleys round from the car park on the other side of the store instead maybe they're afraid that local yobs will steal them all but the net result is that people aren't spending as much in their store as they could be the idiots.
Reasons to be cheerless, part 3: I've had a nightmare week at work so I was really looking forward to having a Saturday off except that it rained almost all day and all I did was go to the sorting office and Tesco and nothing else so Sunday had better be more interesting or else I may be forced to blog about something as tedious as the Royal Mail and supermarkets again.
This weekend should have been the final weekend of renovation work at Bow Road station. Back in March when this whole redevelopment debacle began they promised us that our station would be fully reopened again by October 26th. Oh how I looked forward to admiring the gleaming new surfaces and restored Victorian architecture. Oh how I longed for a platform indicator that actually told you when the next train was due, not just where it was going. And oh how I dreamed of being able to use the station again after 10pm, rather than having to walk home late at night from the next station down the line. But no, all my aspirations have been dashed (or at least put on hold) because the brave new Bow Road station is not yet ready. Not by a long way.
It's not yet clear when the work will be finished. I'm indebted to a local correspondent for pointing out that nobody at Bow Road appears to be sure either. He's sent me photographs of four different posters at the station which give four different completion dates (and look, they're all in dg-approved colours!). The tube website until recently offered a different date ("until 26 October") until they updated the site to give yet another ("until the end of February 2005"). Some sort of campaign of public misinformation seems to be underway, raising our hopes just to dash them again when the due date arrives and the work is no nearer to completion. Further official details are now apparent, however:
The first of these extended weekend closures merely resulted in some cable ducting being attached to the stairwells and a line of fluorescent tubes being bolted to the ceiling. The second seems to have been devoted to replacing the lighting in the ticket hall and draping a mass of black cables along the passageways and through a wall. It looks like a colony of giant snakes have taken up residence in the rafters, dangling down and weaving in and out of the ironwork. This is no sensitive Victorian reconstruction, this is infrastructure installation on the cheap. The station actually looks more unattractive than it did before redevelopment began and, because it's now much better illuminated, this just makes the ugly modern intrusions even more obvious.
The rebirth of Bow Road station should be complete in four months time, so they tell us. I remain to be convinced that the end result will justify months of inactivity and inconvenience to long-suffering passengers. Or indeed that this mismanaged fund-squandering fiasco of a project will ever reach a satisfactory conclusion. Watch this space.
Disney quiz: Here are clues to the names of 20 feature-length Disney cartoons (and not too much of the modern rubbish either). How many can you identify? (Answers in the comments box)
Marking the meridian: Down the line (a point and click guide)
North Pole Arctic Ocean, Norwegian Sea, North Sea E Yorks:Tunstall (the most northerly landfall on the meridian, although the monument here recently slipped down the cliff), Sand-le-Mere caravan park , Holderness peninsiula, Patrington (there's an inscribed stone here beneath a metal sign), Sunk Island Sands, the mouth of the River Humber. NE Lincs: Cleethorpes (marked by a signpost on the MarineEmbankment between the boating lake and the sand dunes at Humberston). Lincs:Fulstow, Brackenborough Hall, Louth (right through the middle of this market town, with twoplaques in Eastgate), Woody's Top Youth Hostel, Snipe Dales nature reserve (with Meridian stone), East Kirkby aerodrome (and aviation museum, with monument), the eastern outskirts of Boston, the mouth of the River Welland, Holbeach (marked by a millstone beside the road to Spalding). Cambs: the Fens, Flood's Ferry Road, Somersham (with a pavement marker in the High Street), Swavesey (marked in the middle of the village), Great Eversden, Meldreth. Herts: the Royston bypass, Hamels Park golf course, Noah's Ark Farm (Ware), Hoddesdon. Essex:Lee Valley Park, Waltham Abbey, the M25 (the only UK motorway on the meridian), GilwellPark campsite (home of outdoor Scouting). London (north of Greenwich): Pole Hill, Waltham Forest, Stratford, the Dome, Greenwich (but I've written about those already). Greenwich Observatory London (south of Greenwich):Greenwich Park (bisecting the putting green, dividing the rose garden, then straight through the dining room, crimson parlour and gallery of the Ranger's House), Blackheath, Our Lady of Lourdes Primary School (Lewisham), the northern end of Hither Green railway station (site of the meridian's only train crash on 12th March 2001), Catford (through St Andrew'sChurch), Shortlands, West Wickham (with Meridian stone on the common), New Addington. Surrey: the M25 (again), Oxted (commuter village), Lingfield Park racecourse (almost). W Sussex East Grinstead (there are variousstonemarkers at East Court, and the town's coat of arms features a vertical white line representing the meridian) E Sussex:SheffieldPark (on the Bluebell railway, plaque on station wall), Chailey (meridianstone erected 1953), Lewes (another directhit on a town centre), Peacehaven (theMeridianMonument looks out over the English Channel). France: (except the French don't believe in our meridian, so I can't be bothered to tell you where it goes). Spain: from the Pyrenees south to (just outside) Benidorm, then into the Mediterranean. Africa:Algeria, the Sahara, Mali (straight through Gao on the the river Niger), Burkina Faso (through the northern town of Dori), Togo (just a tiny sliver in the northwest corner), Ghana (through Lake Volta, reaching the coast at Tema). The Atlantic Ocean:the Equator, more than 5000 miles of ocean. Antarctica: Queen Maud Land South Pole
Tube watch (7) Ways you can tell that the tube is out of date
Time once again for diamond geezer to go totally tubular with another week devoted to the London Underground. Prepare for five days of quizzes, facts, commentary and obscure statistics. Last year I looked at average speeds, the busiest stations, the great north/south divide, picking the right carriage and journeys where it was quicker to walk (amongst other things). Who knows how much I'll manage to cram in this year. Mind the doors.
1293: A chain stretches across the road between two wooden posts outside the New Temple at the top of Fleet Street.
X-50
There are just six skin products that I use every morning.
dg's UK Eclipse Guide
Bow Road update (half time report?)
It's not yet clear when the work will be finished. I'm indebted to a local correspondent for pointing out that nobody at Bow Road appears to be sure either. He's sent me photographs of four different posters at the station which give four different completion dates (and look, they're all in dg-approved colours!). The tube website until recently offered a different date ("until 26 October") until they updated the site to give yet another ("until the end of February 2005"). Some sort of campaign of public misinformation seems to be underway, raising our hopes just to dash them again when the due date arrives and the work is no nearer to completion. Further official details are now apparent, however:
District line General Manager, Bob Thorogood said "When this work is complete, passengers will be able to enjoy a modernised ticket hall and platforms and the new communications room will help us to make the service more efficient. We are extending the weekend closure to ensure that Metronet Rail SSL are able to complete the work by February 2005."The first of these extended weekend closures merely resulted in some cable ducting being attached to the stairwells and a line of fluorescent tubes being bolted to the ceiling. The second seems to have been devoted to replacing the lighting in the ticket hall and draping a mass of black cables along the passageways and through a wall. It looks like a colony of giant snakes have taken up residence in the rafters, dangling down and weaving in and out of the ironwork. This is no sensitive Victorian reconstruction, this is infrastructure installation on the cheap. The station actually looks more unattractive than it did before redevelopment began and, because it's now much better illuminated, this just makes the ugly modern intrusions even more obvious.Disney quiz: Here are clues to the names of 20 feature-length Disney cartoons (and not too much of the modern rubbish either). How many can you identify? (Answers in the comments box)
