Ah, Ealing, Queen of the Suburbs. This broad swathe of pleasant commuterland lies at the very heart of West London. It's the third most populous borough in the capital (I have yet to visit the top two). It's home to a broad mix of nationalities and cultures. It's strung out along the A40 Western Avenue and the Uxbridge Road. And it's not somewhere I'd previously spent a lot of time. I may have been missing out. Let's start today in Ealing itself, formely fields, now a major metropolitan centre.
Somewhere historic: Pitzhanger Manor-House Sir John Soane left his architectural mark on London. He designed the Bank of England (since redeveloped), the House of Lords (since burnt down), various churches and the Dulwich Picture Gallery, amongst others. He's best remembered, perhaps, for the house in Lincolns Inn Fields that now houses an eclectic museum in his name. But there's a less well known outpost of his Neo-Classical empire, out in Ealing, just south of the Broadway. It's easily overlooked. Shoppers pass by through Walpole Park, straight past the front door, without a second look. Staff inside the villa have a series of blue boards labelled "Open today, Free entry" with which they attempt to lure the public within. I'm not sure it works as frequently as they'd hope. But blimey, what a great little manor thisis. Because nobody shows off quite so much as an architect designing their own home.
Soane snapped up Pitzhanger in 1800, aiming to transform it into a country retreat where he could impress clients. He succeeded. The facade is bold and striking, with four classical columns topped off by appropriately goddesslike statues. The entrance hall is narrow but unexpectedly tall, with decorative marble and plasterwork above. And... ah, hello, no I've never been here before, and yes I would like an audio wand tour, is it only a pound, that's a bargain, thankyou. The breakfast room is amazing, just a small wood-panelled chamber but with the most fantastically over-the-top ceiling . Clouds swirl around within a central elliptical disc, surrounded by snaking geometric lines and the occasional cherub. The room nextdoor has a ceiling depicting leafy trelliswork, positioned above a compass-style rug and sandwiched between an infinite panorama of twin reflecting mirrors. Very playful, very ornate, very Soane.
Downstairs, in the oldest wing of the house, is a rather larger pair of rooms linked by three tall archways. The walls of the Eating Room are duckegg blue, there's very little furniture bar a mahogany table and some statues, and again the ceiling tugs at your eyes screaming "admire me". 100 years ago this became the reading room of Ealing Library, and it's now available for hire for weddings, civil partnerships and other ostentatious events. There are further rooms to explore, both up and down the central marble staircase, each with their own lengthy audio wand description. Really, you get your money's worth from this one. By the time you leave the house you'll know all there is to know about Soane, and particularly his troubled relationship with his two sons. John hoped Pitzhanger would inspire them both to become architects, but he was sorely and heartbreakingly disappointed. However, it might just inspire you.
See also: the arty PM Gallery nextdoor, free and with a modern nod to the community. See also: the walled rose garden, once Sir John's vegetable patch. Don't see also: the house's collection of Martinware (it's a special type of pottery), part of which was nicked by thieves earlier in the year, so the remainder is now off-limits. by train/tube: Ealing Broadway by bus: 207, 65, 83
Somewhere famous: Ealing Studios The Ealing name is synonymous with comedy. Not your modern sitcom or your Shakespearean knockabout, but a series of British film classics knocked out in the 1940s and 1950s which may well have had you/your parents/your grandparents rolling in the aisles. I can't say they've ever had that effect on me. Passport to Pimlico, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Whisky Galore (and that was just 1949), they're an acquired taste these days. But they were all produced in a back lot off Ealing Green, courtesy of film producer Michael Balcon. He tapped into a postwar feelgood vibe, brightening up the austerity years with such classics as The Lavender Hill Mob and The Ladykillers. The BBC took over the studios in 1955, producing dramas (such as Colditz) rather than comedies. And more recently Ealing's been bought up by a consortium intent on restoring the town's good name in the film business. The latest St Trinian's movie came from here, as well as bits of Notting Hill and Shaun of the Dead. But also Ant'n'Dec's Alien Autopsy, so Ealing's reputation still has a long way to go.
The original White House office building looks its age these days, and gives no hint (bar a blue plaque) that 4 acres of cinematic powerhouse lies behind. But take a short walk up the street and there, beside some rather dull modern offices, is the hotchpotch of buildings and workshops that make up the current studios. You get a semi-decent view through the railings - a chimney, a bland 50s block, a car park, and the door leading to miniature wizards The Model Unit. Somewhere in the near distance is the big stepped hangar where most of the filming happens. But you won't get far because security already have their beady eye on you, so there'll be no gatecrashing the soundstage thankyou very much. Just believe that somewhere in there is an understated plaque, pinned up by Michael Balcon just before he left, which commemorates the site's quintessential Ealing-ness: "Here during a quarter of a century many films were made projecting Britain and the British character." by train/tube: Ealing Broadway by bus: 65
Random borough (18): Time yet again for me to take another random trip to one of London's 33boroughs. As I write I have no idea which one of the 16 remaining borough names will be revealed when I unfold the slip of paper I'm about to pick from my legendary (and as-yet unseen) "special jamjar". I could pick any of London's other boroughs - inner or outer, urban or suburban, small or large, Boris or Ken, fascinating or dull. I just know it won't be Merton, Islington, Enfield, Sutton, Lewisham, Southwark, Kensington & Chelsea, Hackney, Hillingdon, the City, Bromley, Lambeth, Tower Hamlets, Haringey, Hounslow, Brent or Redbridge because they're the seventeen (dark grey) boroughs I've picked out already.
I'm now embarking upon the second half of my haphazard capital odyssey. There's a fair chunk of East London still to visit, and a few stragglers in southwest London, and a ring of untouched boroughs surrounding Brent, but that's all. Which of these leftovers will be my destination for the day? Will I be treated to the cultural highlights of somewhere central and important, like Westminster or Camden? Or will I be dispatched somewhere rather more peripheral and off-radar, like Harrow or Havering? And will I need to make use of my TfL tube closures leaflet? Watch this space.
Once I've researched my randomly-chosen borough online then I'll head off and visit some of its most interesting places (assuming it has any). As usual I hope to visit somewhere famous, somewhere historic, somewhere pretty, somewhere retail, somewhere sporty and somewhere random. I might even take lots of photographs while I'm at it, if the borough's photogenic enough. Then after I've made my grand tour I'll come back tomorrow and tell you all about it. Let's see where I'm going this time...
diet update: I thought you might be interested to hear how my low-cholesterol-ness is getting on. It's now four months since my doctor told me I really ought to de-clog my arteries. Back in the middle of March I embarked upon a puritanical low-fat diet, cutting out excess stodge and living off only permitted foodstuffs. No crisps, no pie, no pizza, but plenty of oily fish and un-sauced chicken. I had two months to try to reduce my cholesterol levels before a follow-up blood test, and the Creme Eggs stayed in the cupboard all that time. It was grim, but look, it worked.
mid-March
X stone 7
mid-April
X stone
mid-May
(X-1) stone 7
By mid-May I'd lost a whole stone (note to American readers, that's fourteen pounds) (note to continental readers, that's six and a half kilograms) (note to innumerate readers, that's about the same as chopping off my arm). Not only that but my cholesterol was down by a third, my doctor was happy and he felt no need to prescribe me anything. Result. I'd also dropped an entire waist size, which meant I was able to slip into pairs of jeans I'd not worn since 2004. And some of these were still almost in fashion.
mid-May
(X-1) stone 7
mid-June
(X-1) stone 5
mid-July
(X-1) stone 4
But today I'm far more impressed by my minor weight loss over the last two months. Because a crash diet is easy, but a change of lifestyle is much harder. I'm still behaving myself by heating up porridge for breakfast and dining on salmon twice a week, but now I sometimes have a pizza inbetween. I've gone back to eating chocolate, in moderation, and ice cream, occasionally, and roast dinners, sometimes. I'm no longer the boring sod in restaurants who stops eating after the starter, or who turns down a biscuit with a cuppa, or who lives in a state of complete cheeselessness. I'm living again, but that stone I lost has stayed off, and my weight appears to have stabilised well beneath what it used to be. It's not a bad life really. Now, if I'm staying down here, I wonder if it's time for some new trousers?
The latest edition of Smoke magazine is now available for purchase. Hurrah! The irregular London fanzine has now reached issue 12, and the latest glossy offering features the usual mix of "words and images inspired by the city". All hail editor-in-chief Matt and his eclectic selection of contributors. Look, the cover even manages to make Peckham appear glamorous. Ah yes, there's still something reassuringly Zone 2+ about Smoke.
Most of the articles have an articulate literary bent, more descriptive than factual, and there's usually an arty angle to the images and illustrations. In this issue you can read about the Bethnal Green ski slope, see more of London's campest statues, explore the backstreets of Mornington Crescent and ride the Bus Of The Month along the Embankment. There seem to be more articles than usual about relationships, be it flirting on the tube to Edgware, going out with a road campaigning squatter from Leyton, or (in a quite delightful piece) nestling on the shoulder of a regular commuter on the 0725 to Waterloo. Perhaps these snippets here will give you a better idea. And then you can fork out £2.90 (stockists here, mail order here) for your own copy, because you're not borrowing mine.
And if you're the sort of person who prefers some decent reading material to a disposable freesheet, you might also be interested in this weekend's London Magtastic. This is a mini-festival devoted to the distribution of cheap/free independent publications, and you'll find it at Hays Galleriaon Saturday. Participating periodicals include penny dreadful One-Eye Grey, the fictional Litro, Northern line inspired The Other Side, and various othercapitalcentricfanzines. And Smoke, of course. And very definitely not the London Lite.
There are some things you don't expect to find on a village recreation ground. Like the planet Jupiter, for example. But head down to Otford in the Kent Commuter belt, just north of Sevenoaks, and there it is, red spot and all. And Venus. And Neptune. And all the other planets in the solar system, scattered around the village as part of an enormous scale model. Only in Britain, eh?
BestMate and I were wandering through Otford last week, like you do, admiring its quaint backwateriness. We strolled round the duckpond that doubles up as a rather frenetic roundabout. We looked behind the very old church and failed to find an unsignposted Bishop's Palace. We observed an unusually high concentration of small boutiques which sold hats, blouses and accessories to genteel Kentish women. We walked past the millennium mosaic, and the Heritage Centre (which was closed) and various other culturalextras that elevate this village well above the rural norm. And then I led him into the playing field and showed him the delights of the universe. He was almost impressed.
First stop Jupiter, which was located not just beyond the asteroid belt but just in front of a tall hedge. Our solar system's largest planet was represented by a squat white pillar, topped by a metal disc on which was etched a two dimensional representation of the gas giant. Otford's Jupiter wasn't big, just 3cm across, but this is a scale model and there's a lot to cram in. We then walked another 100 metres or so past a football pitch to reach the pillar representing the Earth - a journey more like half a million kilometres in real life. On this disc was a tiny pinprick representing the Moon, less than a millimetre in diameter and orbiting at a distance of 9 centimetres. Don't worry, I looked all this information up on the website afterwards, I didn't take a ruler with me.
I apologised to BestMate for dragging him across a playing field so that I could view the Inner Planets. "Honest," I said, "I just want to take a few photographs and then we can leave." He shrugged with well-practised resignation. But there was an unexpected setback to my plans. The Otford solar system had two other visitors that day, one teenage male and one teenage female, and they had no intention of clearing out of orbit. Indeed, after a few cometary flypasts they came to a sudden halt near Mercury, settled down on the grass and started snogging. No chance of a decent photo while these two heavenly bodies were eclipsing the view.
"Sorry," I said to BestMate, "but I really am going to walk over there to look at the Sun, no matter how socially gauche it is." We strode purposefully towards the shiny football-sized dome representing our nearest star, attempting to ignore all the groping and cavorting taking place in the heliosphere. *cough* Suitably embarrassed we continued on our grand tour, first to Mercury ("don't look, they're still at it") and then to Venus ("it's shameless, like they haven't noticed us at all"). Typical, I'll probably only ever explore this solar system once, but my single opportunity for photographical evidence was being ruined by an unscripted alien invasion.
We paused to read the information board at the far end of the rec. We learnt that the model had been constructed to a scale of 1:five billion. We learnt that the positions of the planets around the village matched their astral alignment at midnight on 1st January 2000. We laughed at the suggestion that "dabbing a pillar top with a soft tissue is said to bring good luck". We checked that Venus and Mars were still cuddling (and they were). And we could have read lots of statistics about the planets, but nearby amorous activity was becoming rather cringeworthy at this point so we headed off into the relative privacy of deep space. If only space travel were this easy.
We didn't have a map with us, so we never found Uranus up the road or Neptune at the far end of the village or Pluto out in the middle of a distant field. I doubt that many visitors ever reach the outer reaches of the Otford solar system. But there is one further part of the model that's seen by far more people, far far away. It's a bronze globe about three centimetres across, resting on a platform in the GriffithObservatory in Los Angeles, representing Proxima Centauri. This red dwarf is the closest star to the Sun, but even at this scale they've still had to position it as many as 5400 miles from Otford's solar centre. Because space is big - really big. And, thanks to the good people of Otford, it's possible to believe how vastly, hugely mind-bogglingly big it is.
English Heritage have just released an updated list of the country's most important endangered architectural assets. They reckon that the best way to protect these neglected special buildings and structures is first to identify them, and then hopefully preservation and conservation will follow. Sounds like a good idea to me. And there are thousands and thousands of at-risk sites on their list. Watermills, tower blocks, drinking fountains, lychgates, town halls, bandstands, brick walls, viaducts, battlefields... everything's on here. There are several impressively detailed regional pdfs, each downloadable from the Heritage at Risk website, on which you can discover whether there are any threatened gems near you. Go on, you might be surprised.
I was surprised, because apparently there are six threatened heritage sites within a five minute walk of my front door. I live, apparently, at the heart of an at-risk cluster. So last night I grabbed my camera and went out for a (short) walk to investigate. Here's what I found. You can click on the thumbnails if you fancy seeing a full-sized photo (although why you'd want to I don't know, I mean, one of them is a bollard for heaven's sake, a bollard!). I bet that the place where you live isn't this endangered...
Two bollards, Bow Road Two 19th century bollards which formed a group along with St Mary's Church, its gates and railings and the statue of WE Gladstone. One of the bollards has been removed. Honestly? This black featureless bollard that I walk past every day is a Grade II listed building? I'm amazed. I've barely given it a second look before, and even now that I have I can't quite see what makes it special. The metal post is covered in what looks like thick black paint, so there are no obvious inscriptions or emblems anywhere on its surface. And yet, look, there's the circular scar in the pavement opposite where its twin bollard used to stand. Presumably this was ripped out when a pelican crossing was installed immediately beside it, because pushchair access is more important than heritage. Blimey, the things English Heritage keep their eyes on! Load of bollards.
8-12 Stroudley Walk(including Rose and Crown public house) Late 18th, early 19th century, three storeys, stock brick with shop on ground floor. Late 18th, early 19th century inn, of three storeys with parapet and stucco band. The roof is not visible. Forms an important local focal point. Now vacant and boarded up. Not so long ago the Rose and Crown was a rather shabby pub packed with E3's less salubrious drinkers. And now it's a boarded-up shell, somehow retaining an unshattered 'Taylor Walker' glass lantern above the front door. Local alcoholics have been forced to move on, and have since taken up camp outside the betting shop beneath the post-war arched colonnade, where they slouch their lives away while their devil dogs roam the bleak concrete piazza. It's lovely round where I live. Two sozzled characters were particularly intrigued as to why I might be taking photographs of their erstwhile boozer and insisted on staring at me as they necked cheap lager hidden within a rolled-up newspaper. Thankfully they walked out of shot without confronting me and nicking my camera. The 200-year-old shop nextdoor is faring slightly better than the pub, now home to a subcontinental emporium selling vegetables, phonecards and assorted plastic essentials. But it'll take more than an architectural makeover to breathe new life back into this impoverished retail backwater.
How Memorial Gateway, Bromley High Street Circa 1893. Gabled stone gothic arch with double buttresses at each side. Formerly an entrance to St Mary's Churchyard. Suffering from stonework decay. There used to be a Saxon church beyond this elegant gateway, one so famous that even Chaucerwrote about it, but no more. A German bomb scored a direct hit during the war, and what ruins remained were demolished in the 1960s to make way for the Blackwall Tunnel Approach Road. Now all that remains is an overgrown corner of the churchyard - perfect for glue-sniffing, arson and depositing canine excrement. Somehow this arched memorial to a much-loved Victorian vicar has survived the architectural carnage, but only just. It's now a depressingly downbeat gateway that nobody wants to use - overlooked, ignored and most definitely out of time. Here's hoping that an appearance on the Heritage At Risk register will safeguard it, and thousands of sites like it, for future generations.
6.45 Bedside radio switches on. 7.00 It's Mike Read with the Radio 1 breakfast show. 7.10 Crawl out of bed and stumble into the bathroom. 7.30 Breakfast in the kitchen. Mmm, Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. 8.05 Hop in car and Mum gives me a lift to school. 8.20 Arrive at school, just like normal. But not normal. It's the last day of term. It's the day after A Level study leave. It's the last day of the very last term. Last day at school.
8.25 Hello classmates. Hello class victim. We all insult the class victim. Sometimes I feel ashamed that we all insulted the class victim. I mean, this was the sixth form for heavens sake, and you'd think we'd have matured past that. Other times I'm mighty glad that somebody else was there to be class victim instead of me.
8.35 Enter form teacher. Form teacher outlines today's non-bog-standard timetable. 8.50 Go visit teacher of A-level-subject-one and drop off a pile of textbooks. I considered taking this subject at uni, but no, this was where I handed the entire subject in. 9.00 Cross school to visit teacher of A-level-subject-two and drop off another pile of textbooks. Another subject hits the buffers. 9.10 Return to form room, home of A-level-subject-three, which is suddenly my unique specialism.
9.20 It being the last day of term, somebody has of course brought in a board game. [Note to younger readers: board games were made of cardboard, didn't plug in, didn't flash, didn't move, didn't keep score for you, and didn't cost £49.99. You'd have enjoyed them] Our favourite board game at the time was called CosmicEncounter. It was a bit strategy, a bit sci-fi, a bit geeky. But hell, we were geeky sixth formers so we never noticed that we should have been talking about football and breasts instead. [Note to younger readers: you can play Cosmic Encounter online today without the embarrassment of handling cardboard.]
9.50 The headmaster pops into the classroom to say goodbye. He shakes everyone's hand. I don't think he's ever done that before, but suddenly we're all men. 9.55 We get back to our board game. All that knowledge still to be had, all that free education waiting to be digested, and we spent our last morning shuffling bits of cardboard and pretending to be aliens. Still, I won the game, so it wasn't all wasted.
11.25 Our second game is rudely interrupted by the end of term. That's the last thing my classmates and I will ever do together. Unfinished. 11.30 All the Upper Sixth leavers head down to the garden for a bit of a 'do', and a drink. Some of us aren't even 18 yet, it's all very exciting. I bet schools don't hand out alcoholic drinks to their pupils today, even half an hour before they kick them out. 11.31 I sit down on the grass next to the young man who'd been my best friend at school for the first few years, back when we were still uniformed. We haven't chatted much in the Sixth Form, he went arts and I went sciences. We chat a bit now. We'll only ever chat three more times. Life moves on.
11.35 Time for farewells and prizegiving. Two boys I've been at school with since the age of 5 win the science prize. Two boys who were my second and third best friends win music and languages. One boy who was born in the same maternity ward as me wins the 'creep' prize for service to the school. The only boy who still sends me a Christmas card wins the history prize. None of my friends wins a sports prize. And I still have the Dr Who hardback that my ten pound book token paid for. The headmaster would have been so disappointed. 12.00 School's out, forever. 12.01 Walk home, swinging a nigh-empty bag, in the blazing July sunshine. This must be what freedom feels like.
12.30 Mum is holding a big fat envelope from my university-to-be. Life's rollercoaster continues. But weren't the last 29 minutes great?
And then there are the days when you have far too many ideas for blogposts, but none of them seem interesting enough for a wider audience, so you stop writing after 100 words and move on to the next...
• I went to see more of the London Festival of Architecture at the weekend. You're not surprised, are you? Events were centred round the back of the British Museum in Montague Place, where a black raised walkway had been installed along the street. And what could visitors see from up there? A slightly elevated view of a backstreet containing a stage, a bar, and a bit of grass on the road. I endeavoured to be impressed, but I failed. The wooden Swoosh Pavilion in Bedford Square was more interesting, but there was nothing here to hold my attention for long...
• There may not be homeboys partying down Campbell Road, but Bow is celebrating its first number one hit single. The very local Dylan Mills (aka Dizzee Rascal) has topped the charts with his patently misspelt "Dance Wiv Me", on downloads only. Catchy little number, innit? The underlying beats come not from an 80s sample, as is so often the case these days, but from Scottish tunesmith Calvin Harris (so that's a first number one hit single for Dumfries too). Don't be put off by the tacky video packed with bling-bedecked babes, just enjoy the pulsing synth and DR's verbal dexterity...
• I wish I hadn't tidied up my flat over the weekend. I shuffled various piles of paper out of the way before my family came to visit, and now I can't quite remember which documents were the important ones. I'm sure I had a standing order somewhere, and an RSVP invitation, and a useful brochure, and a scribbled down web address, and a utility bill, and probably more. They used to be lying around on the top of various separate piles and now, in my hurry, they've all been shuffled into a single heap of mixed importance. Must untidy soon...
• I know you don't really care, but yes I now have two new bus routes passing my door – the 425 and 488. Both services are presently being shunned by the majority of the travelling public. Maybe these non-passengers are creatures of habit, maybe they can’t read the information posters at bus stops, or maybe the new buses just don’t go where they want to go. I suspect the latter. I've already seen elderly shoppers sitting patiently in the bus shelter outside Bromley-by-Bow Tesco waiting for an old S2 that'll never come. I do hope they got their shopping home eventually...
• Yesterday afternoon I was lured along to the re:fresh Festival taking place along the Regent's Canal in Islington. Very few, it seems, were tempted alongside me. The towpath was mostly empty, bar the usual joggers, dog walkers and drunkards. Stewards guided nobody at all towards overlooked attractions. Policemen watched out for non-existent crowd disturbance. The London Sinfonietta performed to an audience of barely anyone. A handful of hardy souls sheltered from blustery downpours inside a not-quite-interesting watertower. Organisers might blame the rain, but I blame the peripheral location. Have local developers Argent over-estimated the potential of their planned regeneration hub?
• I've broken the plastic door handle on my fridge. I tried supergluing it back together and leaving it to set, but no luck. The door seal is extremely strong, which would normally be a good thing, but one tug and it's snapped again. The freezer bit is fine, but the fridge door is buggered. So now I'm stuck having to open the edge of the fridge with my fingertips every time I want a cup of tea. Maybe I need to hint to my landlord to go and get me a new fridge. Or maybe I just need stronger glue...
Yesterday I had visitors. My brother and two nephews came down from Norfolk, by coach, to spend the day in London. Fortunately the weather forecast was mostly wrong and, after an initial drizzling, we were barely dampened all day. First stop was a Thames-side attraction I'd never visited before - most enjoyable, and which I'll tell you about another day. Second stop the ImperialWarMuseum, with lots of murderous weaponry to explore and plenty of interest to see. And third stop the Dome.
Well, that was the plan anyway. But London had other ideas. Because attempting to get around the capital by public transport at weekends can be a nightmare. From Lambeth to North Greenwich is less than five miles as the crow flies - should be easy enough, you'd think. Indeed five miles in Norfolk is a doddle of a journey, by car obviously, and would probably take no more than ten minutes. But SE1 to SE10, armed only with a travelcard, is quite another matter. We failed, utterly, lengthily, miserably.
So there we were outside the Imperial War Museum on Lambeth Road, attempting to work out an appropriate route to the Dome. Jubilee line, obviously, from nearby Waterloo or Southwark all the way to our destination. Except there was planned engineering work on the line and services were suspended between Green Park and North Greenwich, so that was out. Replacement bus services were operating... but only to Canada Water, and not from nearby, so no use there either. FAIL
Alternative tube route, then. Lambeth North to Embankment, then a slow chug east to West Ham, then Jubilee to North Greenwich. Except that this meandering journey heads in the wrong direction at least twice and looked like it would take forever. And anyway, my 9-year-old nephew had had enough of walking the streets by this time and wasn't keen on even a mild trudge back to the nearest station. FAIL
Bus, then. Only two routes run immediately past the museum, neither of which appeared to go anywhere useful. A careful look at the spider map at the bus stop revealed further routes, but again no obvious North Greenwich connection. I've since discovered there was a bus to the Dome running a few streets away, at Elephant and Castle, but at the time the Lambeth North spider map revealed nothing of the 188 so we completely overlooked it. If only TfL still produced proper street maps at bus stops, but no, we get the condensed summary for thick people. FAIL
River, then. A ride along the Thames to the Dome ticks lots of tourist boxes, and was a definite favourite with my visitors. So we took the bus to Bankside and walked down the pier to await the next eastbound service. Waiting passengers clustered around the boarding ramp, making no attempt at a queue (neither were there any railings to encourage us to line up, nor any employees on the pier to keep order). When the packed Thames Clipper finally arrived it was ten passengers off and ten passengers on, so only the most forceful managed to get on board. We didn't. The next boat would be just as full, we thought, and there were no clues how long we'd have to wait because the pier's electronic indicator was reporting fictional arrivals. At the weekend these catamaran services are an unpredictable unreliable raffle. FAILSo, despite protestations, we decided to walk to the nearest tube station. Across the Millennium Bridge to St Paul's, a bit of a trek but a mighty scenic route all the same. But when we finally arrived we discovered the gates to the station firmly locked. Bugger. I'd checked the weekend engineering update on the TfL website before setting out but I'd missed the small print that St Paul's station was closed due to refurbishment works. We should have gone to Mansion House in the first place but, of course, on the tube map that's not geographically obvious. FAIL
At this point we completely changed our plans and headed instead into the West End for food. By bus from St Paul's to the Strand, what could possibly go wrong? But one stop from success our 23 suddenly veered right to avoid a closed street and eventually dumped us more than half a mile from where we wanted to be. No advance warning to disgruntled passengers, just an automated "This bus is on diversion" after it was too late. FAIL
We'd spent two hours traipsing around London getting absolutely nowhere, beset by engineering disaster, inadequate information and organisational mismanagement. Because sometimes, especially at weekends, London's transport is unutterably incompetent. And when you're only in town for a weekend, it's a shame to have it unnecessarily wasted.
Did you ever wonder how and why some of London's buses are numbered with letters? On the day that the S2 disappears, here's an answer. Three months ago David Brake forwarded me an email from Peter Osborn, who runs Red-RF.com, giving detailed information about the genesis of lettered bus routes. I reproduce this below, with thanks (and it now appears on Red-RF.com in the London Transport route numbering section).
The infamous Bus Reshaping Plan of 1968 made major upheavals to long-standing patterns of service and introduced areas of 'flat-fare' operation (now that all London bus journeys cost the same, it is easy to forget that crews used to have to cope with complex fare charts for each route). These were numbered with a letter prefix based on the area, thus starting with the W series and moving on to include Peckham, Ealing and so on.
The idea behind Reshaping was to replace parts of the bus network with a 'hub & spoke' arrangement, shortening trunk routes and providing high-capacity local links. At the same time, many suburban routes were converted to one-man operated buses. The high-capacity routes were 'flat-fare' - i.e. the same price for any distance, and used automatic fare machines on buses designed to carry large numbers of standing passengers. The Plan was a response to increasing staff problems and financial constraints at London Transport.
Implementation started in September 1968 in the Wood Green area (W routes W1 to W6 initially) and at Walthamstow (linked with the opening of the Victoria Line), where only one new service was flat-fare, the W21. The Wood Green area stretched from Crouch End to Edmonton, and encompasses today's routes W1 to W10. The Walthamstow area covers today's W11 to W19.
Reshaping, as first tried, was a disaster. Too much changed too quickly, the buses were too long for some of the roads and were unreliable, as was the fare equipment. And passengers didn't like standing. But the staffing and cost reasons behind all this were irrefutable, and then Ken Livingstone came along with Fare's Fair, so over time the old variable fares died out, first by fixed-fare zones then London-wide. One-man (later one-person) operation became inevitable, although some would argue the jury is still out on the efficiency of OPO on high-frequency trunk routes.
So the area schemes continued to be rolled out. Ealing (E routes), Peckham (P routes, even though P1, P2 and later P4 didn't go to Peckham), Morden (M routes) and Harrow (H routes) appeared by 1969. But the rot had set in - the Harrow scheme was a shadow of the original proposal and Woolwich and Romford schemes never got off the ground. A limited Croydon scheme (C routes, later abandoned) went ahead in 1970 and some Stratford (S) routes in 1971. Later schemes were the Bexley area (B routes), Docklands (D routes), Hounslow (H20 upwards), Kingston (K routes) Orpington (R routes for 'Roundabout', the group name) and Uxbridge (U routes).
Later examples of prefix route numbers tended to be local, rather tortuous routes, introduced to get buses into streets not previously served. This trend started with the minibus services in 1973 - see this link for more detail (it explains the C11) - and continued with the likes of Sutton services (S routes, including S3 which was previous used at Stratford) and Richmond routes (R68 etc). There are still oddities, like G1, presumably named after St Georges Hospital for which it's a local service, and the PR and RV routes which I mention at the end of the article on my site.
Thanks Peter. He recommends LOTS as the source of real information on the subject. I've now had a go at summarising London's current lettered buses in the table below.
Back in the mid 18th century, every first Friday in July, much of east London decamped to the Essex countryside for a drunken knees-up. They headed to Fairlop, near Hainault, to feast and be merry under a great tree - the Fairlop Oak. Its branches were said to cast a midday shadow 300 feet in circumference, covering roughly an acre of land, and a seething mass of booths and stalls were laid out beneath its mighty span. This was Fairlop Fair, and over the decades it grew from a simple annual picnic into a tumultuous alcoholic riot. I'm not going to tell you the fair's full fascinating story, because you can readaboutthat elsewhere. But it all began with a man buying bacon and beans for his friends.
The Fairlop Oak no longer stands. It was an extremely old tree even in the 1700s, and gradual decay set in as further years passed by. Huge branches broke free, the hollow trunk was burnt out by irresponsible picknickers, and gales in 1820 brought the remaining wood toppling to the ground. The fair continued nearby but it was never quite the same, and events dribbled to a close at the turn of the 20th century.
Visit the site of Fairlop Fair today, just off Forest Road in the borough of Redbridge, and you'll find a very different place of entertainment. A flooded landfill site has become a centre for watersports, on which brave boarders sail and in which silent anglers dangle. The water's edge is surrounded by a very suburban golf course, and the Fairlop Waters bar and restaurant serves up beer and spicy food to keen clubbers. Peer through the large glass windows and you can see the golf widows beached on the bright red sofas, waiting patiently for their beloveds to return from a lengthy 18-hole round. And not just on the first Friday in July, but every day of the week. Alas the tin hut hosting Al's Adventure House has closed down due to lack of investment, and visiting children no longer run beneath the waving alligator to enjoy two hours of playtime fun. No longer is this a debauched hotbed of annual East End revelry, more a conservative sport and steakhouse hideaway.
But the past hasn't been completely forgotten. Walk west instead of east from Fairlop station and you'll reach the roundabout at Fulwell Cross. The most impressive sight here is the copper blancmange library, but look instead to the grass circle at the heart of the fiveways junction. Here, in 1951, a replacement Fairlop Oak was planted to commemmorate the festival of Britain. A plaque on the wall of the local oak-themed Wetherspoons remembers the old tree as well as the new. This replacement Quercus robur has grown quite a bit in the last 50 years, and now stands proudandtall amidst the traffic at the top of Barkingside High Road. I doubt very much that any East End revellers will journey to Fairlop today and cross to the central reservation to merrymake beneath its branches. But do raise a First Friday glass tonight for London's drunken heritage, for the right to party, and for Fairlop Fair.
Bus S2: Clapton - Stratford Location: London east Length of journey: 6 miles, 40 minutes
It's not the loveliest bus journey in the world. Clapton's Murder Mile, Hackney Wick and the Blackwall Tunnel Approach Road. You won't find London's rich and well-to-do riding this overcrowded backstreet route. But it has its moments. A Tudor National Trust townhouse, the birthplace of plastic, and a sulphurous trade union crucible - this bus passes them all. It's the S2, and it dies tomorrow.
For me, the S2 has three particularly interesting features. Firstly it's one of London's lettered bus services, the sole remaining outpost of Stratford's dwindled 'S' empire. More of that shortly, if you're patient. Secondly it's one of those buses that goes on a big loopy detour to eventually get back to somewhere it's already been. In this case that's a diversion to Bromley-by-Bow station and the nearby Tesco, much to the annoyance of any through travellers who get to spend seven unnecessary minutes of their life on an arterial road (or considerably longer if the traffic's bad). And thirdly the S2 is one of my local buses, a unique link to the heart of Hackney, in which I therefore have a personal interest. Especially now its days are numbered. Two.
From Saturday, TfL are instigating a major reorganisation of buses in the Bow area. They describe their new plans as "improved bus services", although I'm not wholly convinced. They even describe their changes as "enhancements". Yes, that's not a good sign, is it? Here are the plans.
Of all the buses I might have hoped they'd switch, alas, the bendy buses on route 25 aren't included and will continue to blunder along Bow Road unaltered. But they'll now have competition from a brand new route, the 425, giving a more pleasant alternative to articulated transportation. Although only from Stratford as far as Mile End station. Then the 425 turns right and follows route 277 north through Victoria Park and on to Clapton. The full journey from Stratford to Clapton is less than three miles as the crow flies, but the 425 travels twice as far. And TfL are scheduling this mysterious dog-leg route, which goes nowhere new, with a full double decker allocation. Only time will tell if passenger numbers justify their optimism.
And then there's the 276. This Newham to Stoke Newington service used to run through what is now the Olympic Park construction site. Obviously that journey would now be an unacceptable security risk, so for the last year the bus has been diverted up the A12 via Fish Island. But not for much longer. From Saturday it'll be re-diverted, even further from its original route, following the current S2 through Bow. This may not be good news for long distance travellers, but it gives me yet another way to get to southeast Hackney. I used to have only one direct route to Homerton Hospital, and imminently I'll have three. I just can't imagine needing the choice.
And finally, what of the demise of the S2? Overnight tomorrow it'll lose its letter and be reborn in decapitated form under a new route number, 488. That's almost as high as regular London bus numbers go, signifying an unimportant afterthought of a service. This instant irrelevance is what happens when you cut off the last mile and a half of the bus route, the bit that went to Stratford, the bit that made the journey useful. Southbound buses will now terminate in Bromley-by-Bow, a place that few Hackney residents feel a burning desire to visit. The 488 will be a runty little bus, running less frequently than the S2, carrying fewer people, to nowhere special. And it's got the elderly shoppers of E3 up in arms.
Roman Road's only decent supermarket closed down a couple of years ago, and nearby residents were forced to seek their weekly groceries elsewhere. Never mind, said local councillors, because there's a bus to the Tesco superstore in Bromley-by-Bow and you can go there instead. The S2 is therefore a lifeline to older shoppers, shuffling onto the bus with their single carrier bag and alighting immediately outside the supermarket's front door. Even better, returning S2s leave from exactly the same bus stop beside the trolley park. That loop round Bromley-by-Bow which so annoys Stratford-bound travellers is actually a godsend for shoppers who can't walk far. And the truncated 488 throws that benefit away. It'll terminate one stop past Tesco, then return afresh in the opposite direction on the other side of the A12 dual carriageway. Departing shoppers will have to cross a slip road, negotiate a series of shallow steps (or take a lengthy detour), walk down a forbidding underpass, ascend the ramp on the other side and then... damn, the nearest stop's still a considerable walk away up a completely different street. I can do Tesco to bus stop in four minutes, without bags, but I doubt I'll be quite so capable in 40 years time.
Which, if you're still reading, brings me to my main point. Back in November, TfL's Stakeholder Engagement department launched a major consultation to see what local residents thought of their proposed bus changes in the E3 area. You probably saw the consultation document on the TfL website, on the heavily-frequented "Bus route consultations" webpage. Oh you didn't? I doubt that many local residents noticed it either. There were no posters at bus stops, and nothing dropped through the letterbox of residents living along the route. Library users might have spotted a leaflet, and apparently there were some in hospitals too, but it was all terribly hit and miss. For non-inquisitive non-internet-enabled stakeholders, bugger all. No surprise, then, that elderly Tesco shoppers noticed nothing amiss until seven months later by which time the changes were imminent. Too late. And this is especially ironic given the content of the original consultation document...
Why make these changes?
The average age of the population is increasing, and more people are finding it difficult to walk some distance to get a bus. Even for younger people a long walk can be difficult with children or heavy shopping.
Oops. Meanwhile the Bus Stop Route Number Updater has already been out removing all trace of the S2 from the East End's bus stops. Alien numbers have appeared for buses that don't yet quite exist, because this is a change that cannot be reversed. And the results of the consultation have also been just been released, less than a week before the new services begin, with TfL finally admitting that their proposals aren't perfect...
"During the consultation period a number of people noted that route 488 would not provide a suitable replacement to route S2 going to Bromley-By-Bow Tesco. Route 488 will still serve Bromley-By-Bow Tesco's. Passengers will now need to use the underpass in order to access the northbound service. We are continuing to investigate how Bromley-By-Bow Tesco and surrounding areas could be better served in future."
In fact, TfL's proposals haven't changed a bit since the consultation was launched. All the changes they proposed in November are going ahead - same buses, same routes, same roads. Even though they've uncovered problems, even though they're creating difficulties that weren't there before, they're still pressing forward. Nobody's pausing to reflect, or amend, or come up with something better. The entire consultation exercise appears to have been a box-ticking sham to confirm what TfL were already planning to do anyway. Pity. So from Saturday, if you see any struggling stakeholders trying to lug their shopping underneath the A12, please give them a hand. And do say sorry.
» Sir John Soane's Museum: Candlelit evening opening (first Tuesday) (WC2) » First Thursdays: After hours opening at East London's galleries and museums (E1-ish) » Lates: Central London culture, every first Friday evening. (WC1-ish)
There are many museums and attractions in and around London. Too many, in fact, for them all to receive a decent number of visitors every day. So some are only open occasionally. I'm trying to knock together a calendar of attractions that only open once a month. Can you help?
You're spoilt for choice this weekend. The majority of these monthly museums open on the first Saturday or first Sunday of the month. The second ****day of the month is less popular, and beyond that one-off openings are almost non-existent. Nobody thinks about "third Saturdays" or "fourth Sundays", so attractions tend not to open on these highly forgettable dates.
But I reckon I've missed quite a few once-a-months off my list. Please, if you know any more, let me know. [permalink]
Please note: » Museums and attractions only, not events. So, for example, I can't accept the Critical Mass bike ride (last Friday of the month), and I can't accept monthly club nights, or monthly meetings, or monthly walks, etc. » Regular events only. So I can't accept City Hall being open on the first weekend of the month, because it isn't always (but it is this month). » I am willing to accept places that occasionally open on other days, so long as there's a definite main once-a-month opening. » And I'll accept attractions just outside London, sort of inner Home Counties, but no further. No Brighton, no Birmingham, no Belfast. » There must be a few weekday once-offs, surely? Any Second Tuesdays or Fourth Fridays? » You might find some ideas here. I bet these searchengines won't be much help. Or you might just know of somewhere anyway. » Be patient and I'll start adding your suggestions this evening. Come on, because if we miss that one-off opening, it's a long wait until the next.
Last night, on my way home from work, I alighted prematurely from my Central Line train to take a look at the Liverpool Street screens. Perfect, I'd stepped off immediately underneath one of the two huge clunky overhead projectors, currently switched off while the train was in the platform. But as the last carriage sped out of the station, the lens whirred into action and an instant advert appeared on the opposite side of the track. A giant-sized grinning moron stared out from the curved wall, and moved. He juggled berries, he pointed to bottles of fruit smoothie and he attempted to appeal to all the lowest common denominator passengers on the platform. There was nothing else to watch (all the other posters had been removed) so we watched him.
Next up an advert for Sky Plus. Thankfully we didn't get Ross Kemp extolling the system's simplicity in his posh voice - these adverts are silent. What we got instead was a floating set-top box accompanied by a semi-audible announcement about severe delays. Next up a plug for a popular West End Show - very careful targeting of passing tourists, this. And then the smoothie idiot again. Same product, different 20 seconds of gurning. And then Sky again (same advert) and then another West End Show. You'd not notice the repetition if you were only waiting for a minute or two, but I'd hit a five minute gap between trains. Everything twice, at least. OK, bored now.
As the platform slowly filled with would-be travellers, I watched to see what their reaction would be. It was striking. The moving images on the opposite wall drew people's attention inexorably, completely, utterly. No human eye could resist the flickering hard sell, not when the alternative was staring at the platform. But there was one way to escape. Everybody holding a newspaper appeared to be immune. As each mini marketing masterpiece played out before them, they ignored it and continued to read their freesheet. It's official, Amy Winehouse gossip is more interesting than an animated Avenue Q advert. But hey, be it movie or newsprint, the advertisers had us either way.
At last, as the next train rumbled into the platform, the adverts switched off and previous reality was restored. Newly arriving passengers exiting from their carriages knew nothing of the drama that had been playing out on the wall behind them, they just rushed towards the escalators and home. I stayed to watch the next episode, even though I'd seen it all before. This time there was only the opportunity for a single plug for Spamalot before the following train intervened. These days, it seems, no moment of dwell time is too short to be exploited.
Two stations further down the line I had to wait in a crowd for a further five minutes on a bog-standard unmodernised platform. No dynamic commercials here, just people to watch and the occasional mouse scuttling around on the tracks. We coped with the ad-free nothingness, with ease. Sometimes it's good to be alone with your thoughts, and not burdened with someone else's. One day, I fear, all deep level tube stations may become sponsored cinemas. I just pray they find something more interesting to show us.
Sir John Soane left his architectural mark on London. He designed the Bank of England (since redeveloped), the House of Lords (since burnt down), various churches and the Dulwich Picture Gallery, amongst others. He's best remembered, perhaps, for the house in Lincolns Inn Fields that now houses an eclectic museum in his name. But there's a less well known outpost of his Neo-Classical empire, out in Ealing, just south of the Broadway. It's easily overlooked. Shoppers pass by through Walpole Park, straight past the front door, without a second look. Staff inside the villa have a series of blue boards labelled "Open today, Free entry" with which they attempt to lure the public within. I'm not sure it works as frequently as they'd hope. But blimey, what a great little manor this is. Because nobody shows off quite so much as an architect designing their own home.
Downstairs, in the oldest wing of the house, is a rather larger pair of rooms linked by three tall archways. The walls of the Eating Room are duckegg blue, there's very little furniture bar a mahogany table and some statues, and again the ceiling tugs at your eyes screaming "admire me". 100 years ago this became the reading room of Ealing Library, and it's now available for hire for weddings, civil partnerships and other ostentatious events. There are further rooms to explore, both up and down the central marble staircase, each with their own lengthy audio wand description. Really, you get your money's worth from this one. By the time you leave the house you'll know all there is to know about Soane, and particularly his troubled relationship with his two sons. John hoped Pitzhanger would inspire them both to become architects, but he was sorely and heartbreakingly disappointed. However, it might just inspire you.
The Ealing name is synonymous with comedy. Not your modern sitcom or your Shakespearean knockabout, but a series of British film classics knocked out in the 1940s and 1950s which may well have had you/your parents/your grandparents rolling in the aisles. I can't say they've ever had that effect on me. Passport to Pimlico, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Whisky Galore (and that was just 1949), they're an acquired taste these days. But they were all produced in a back lot off Ealing Green, courtesy of film producer Michael Balcon. He tapped into a postwar feelgood vibe, brightening up the austerity years with such classics as The Lavender Hill Mob and The Ladykillers. The BBC took over the studios in 1955, producing dramas (such as Colditz) rather than comedies. And more recently Ealing's been bought up by a consortium intent on restoring the town's good name in the film business. The latest St Trinian's movie came from here, as well as bits of Notting Hill and Shaun of the Dead. But also Ant'n'Dec's Alien Autopsy, so Ealing's reputation still has a long way to go.
Random borough (18): Time yet again for me to take another random trip to one of London's 33 boroughs. As I write I have no idea which one of the 16 remaining borough names will be revealed when I unfold the slip of paper I'm about to pick from my legendary (and as-yet unseen) "special jamjar". I could pick any of London's other boroughs - inner or outer, urban or suburban, small or large, Boris or Ken, fascinating or dull. I just know it won't be Merton, Islington, Enfield, Sutton, Lewisham, Southwark, Kensington & Chelsea, Hackney, Hillingdon, the City, Bromley, Lambeth, Tower Hamlets, Haringey, Hounslow, Brent or Redbridge because they're the seventeen (dark grey) boroughs I've picked out already.
The latest edition of Smoke magazine is now available for purchase. Hurrah! The irregular London fanzine has now reached issue 12, and the latest glossy offering features the usual mix of "words and images inspired by the city". All hail editor-in-chief Matt and his eclectic selection of contributors. Look, the cover even manages to make Peckham appear glamorous. Ah yes, there's still something reassuringly Zone 2+ about Smoke.
There are some things you don't expect to find on a village recreation ground. Like the planet Jupiter, for example. But head down to Otford in the Kent Commuter belt, just north of Sevenoaks, and there it is, red spot and all. And Venus. And Neptune. And all the other planets in the solar system, scattered around the village as part of an enormous scale model. Only in Britain, eh?
First stop Jupiter, which was located not just beyond the asteroid belt but just in front of a tall hedge. Our solar system's largest planet was represented by a squat white pillar, topped by a metal disc on which was etched a two dimensional representation of the gas giant. Otford's Jupiter wasn't big, just 3cm across, but this is a scale model and there's a lot to cram in. We then walked another 100 metres or so past a football pitch to reach the pillar representing the Earth - a journey more like half a million kilometres in real life. On this disc was a tiny pinprick representing the Moon, less than a millimetre in diameter and orbiting at a distance of 9 centimetres. Don't worry, I looked all this information up on the website afterwards, I didn't take a ruler with me.
"Sorry," I said to BestMate, "but I really am going to walk over there to look at the Sun, no matter how socially gauche it is." We strode purposefully towards the shiny football-sized dome representing our nearest star, attempting to ignore all the groping and cavorting taking place in the heliosphere. *cough* Suitably embarrassed we continued on our grand tour, first to Mercury ("don't look, they're still at it") and then to Venus ("it's shameless, like they haven't noticed us at all"). Typical, I'll probably only ever explore this solar system once, but my single opportunity for photographical evidence was being ruined by an unscripted alien invasion.
Early 18th century property. Stock brick with red brick dressings. Modern shop on forecourt. Interior includes panelled rooms and good staircase. Inappropriate window frames added to facade. Paint applied to brick facade.
Late 17th century stock brick with red brick dressings. Neo-Georgian shopfront. Unauthorised works to shopfront and alterations including changes to dormer windows.
Two 19th century bollards which formed a group along with St Mary's Church, its gates and railings and the statue of WE Gladstone. One of the bollards has been removed.
Late 18th, early 19th century, three storeys, stock brick with shop on ground floor.
Circa 1893. Gabled stone gothic arch with double buttresses at each side. Formerly an entrance to St Mary's Churchyard. Suffering from stonework decay.
6.45 Bedside radio switches on.
So there we were outside the Imperial War Museum on Lambeth Road, attempting to work out an appropriate route to the Dome. Jubilee line, obviously, from nearby Waterloo or Southwark all the way to our destination. Except there was planned engineering work on the line and services were suspended between Green Park and North Greenwich, so that was out. Replacement bus services were operating... but only to Canada Water, and not from nearby, so no use there either. FAIL Alternative tube route, then. Lambeth North to Embankment, then a slow chug east to West Ham, then Jubilee to North Greenwich. Except that this meandering journey heads in the wrong direction at least twice and looked like it would take forever. And anyway, my 9-year-old nephew had had enough of walking the streets by this time and wasn't keen on even a mild trudge back to the nearest station. FAIL Bus, then. Only two routes run immediately past the museum, neither of which appeared to go anywhere useful. A careful look at the spider map at the bus stop revealed further routes, but again no obvious North Greenwich connection. I've since discovered there was a bus to the Dome running a few streets away, at Elephant and Castle, but at the time the Lambeth North spider map revealed nothing of the 188 so we completely overlooked it. If only TfL still produced proper street maps at bus stops, but no, we get the condensed summary for thick people. FAIL River, then. A ride along the Thames to the Dome ticks lots of tourist boxes, and was a definite favourite with my visitors. So we took the bus to Bankside and walked down the pier to await the next eastbound service. Waiting passengers clustered around the boarding ramp, making no attempt at a queue (neither were there any railings to encourage us to line up, nor any employees on the pier to keep order). When the packed Thames Clipper finally arrived it was ten passengers off and ten passengers on, so only the most forceful managed to get on board. We didn't. The next boat would be just as full, we thought, and there were no clues how long we'd have to wait because the pier's electronic indicator was reporting fictional arrivals. At the weekend these catamaran services are an unpredictable unreliable raffle. FAIL
So, despite protestations, we decided to walk to the nearest tube station. Across the Millennium Bridge to St Paul's, a bit of a trek but a mighty scenic route all the same. But when we finally arrived we discovered the gates to the station firmly locked. Bugger. I'd checked the weekend engineering update on the TfL website before setting out but I'd missed the small print that St Paul's station was closed due to refurbishment works. We should have gone to Mansion House in the first place but, of course, on the tube map that's not geographically obvious. FAIL At this point we completely changed our plans and headed instead into the West End for food. By bus from St Paul's to the Strand, what could possibly go wrong? But one stop from success our 23 suddenly veered right to avoid a closed street and eventually dumped us more than half a mile from where we wanted to be. No advance warning to disgruntled passengers, just an automated "This bus is on diversion" after it was too late. FAIL We'd spent two hours traipsing around London getting absolutely nowhere, beset by engineering disaster, inadequate information and organisational mismanagement. Because sometimes, especially at weekends, London's transport is unutterably incompetent. And when you're only in town for a weekend, it's a shame to have it unnecessarily wasted.
The infamous Bus Reshaping Plan of 1968 made major upheavals to long-standing patterns of service and introduced areas of 'flat-fare' operation (now that all London bus journeys cost the same, it is easy to forget that crews used to have to cope with complex fare charts for each route). These were numbered with a letter prefix based on the area, thus starting with the W series and moving on to include Peckham, Ealing and so on.
Back in the mid 18th century, every first Friday in July, much of east London decamped to the Essex countryside for a drunken knees-up. They headed to Fairlop, near Hainault, to feast and be merry under a great tree - the Fairlop Oak. Its branches were said to cast a midday shadow 300 feet in circumference, covering roughly an acre of land, and a seething mass of booths and stalls were laid out beneath its mighty span. This was Fairlop Fair, and over the decades it grew from a simple annual picnic into a tumultuous alcoholic riot. I'm not going to tell you the fair's full fascinating story, because you can read about that elsewhere. But it all began with a man buying bacon and beans for his friends.
Mr. Day, a shipbuilder, wishing to have a day's outing in the forest with his friends and employees, fitted up a vessel on wheels, fully rigged, in which he conveyed his picnic party to Hainault Forest, on the outskirts of which, some distance from Ilford, stood the famous Fairlop Oak. The holiday became an annual custom, and gradually changed its character from the simple gathering of a master and his men into regular saturnalia; during which, each year, from the first Friday in July, over the ensuing Saturday and Sunday, riot and debauchery reigned supreme in the glades of the forest and the eastern districts of London.The Fairlop Oak no longer stands. It was an extremely old tree even in the 1700s, and gradual decay set in as further years passed by. Huge branches broke free, the hollow trunk was burnt out by irresponsible picknickers, and gales in 1820 brought the remaining wood toppling to the ground. The fair continued nearby but it was never quite the same, and events dribbled to a close at the turn of the 20th century.Visit the site of Fairlop Fair today, just off Forest Road in the borough of Redbridge, and you'll find a very different place of entertainment. A flooded landfill site has become a centre for watersports, on which brave boarders sail and in which silent anglers dangle. The water's edge is surrounded by a very suburban golf course, and the Fairlop Waters bar and restaurant serves up beer and spicy food to keen clubbers. Peer through the large glass windows and you can see the golf widows beached on the bright red sofas, waiting patiently for their beloveds to return from a lengthy 18-hole round. And not just on the first Friday in July, but every day of the week. Alas the tin hut hosting Al's Adventure House has closed down due to lack of investment, and visiting children no longer run beneath the waving alligator to enjoy two hours of playtime fun. No longer is this a debauched hotbed of annual East End revelry, more a conservative sport and steakhouse hideaway.
But the past hasn't been completely forgotten. Walk west instead of east from Fairlop station and you'll reach the roundabout at Fulwell Cross. The most impressive sight here is the copper blancmange library, but look instead to the grass circle at the heart of the fiveways junction. Here, in 1951, a replacement Fairlop Oak was planted to commemmorate the festival of Britain. A plaque on the wall of the local oak-themed Wetherspoons remembers the old tree as well as the new. This replacement Quercus robur has grown quite a bit in the last 50 years, and now stands proud and tall amidst the traffic at the top of Barkingside High Road. I doubt very much that any East End revellers will journey to Fairlop today and cross to the central reservation to merrymake beneath its branches. But do raise a First Friday glass tonight for London's drunken heritage, for the right to party, and for Fairlop Fair.
So we'll dance round the tree, and merry we will be,(hic)Bus S2: Clapton - Stratford
For me, the S2 has three particularly interesting features. Firstly it's one of London's lettered bus services, the sole remaining outpost of Stratford's dwindled 'S' empire. More of that shortly, if you're patient. Secondly it's one of those buses that goes on a big loopy detour to eventually get back to somewhere it's already been. In this case that's a diversion to Bromley-by-Bow station and the nearby Tesco, much to the annoyance of any through travellers who get to spend seven unnecessary minutes of their life on an arterial road (or considerably longer if the traffic's bad). And thirdly the S2 is one of my local buses, a unique link to the heart of Hackney, in which I therefore have a personal interest. Especially now its days are numbered. Two.
Of all the buses I might have hoped they'd switch, alas, the bendy buses on route 25 aren't included and will continue to blunder along Bow Road unaltered. But they'll now have competition from a brand new route, the 425, giving a more pleasant alternative to articulated transportation. Although only from Stratford as far as Mile End station. Then the 425 turns right and follows route 277 north through Victoria Park and on to Clapton. The full journey from Stratford to Clapton is less than three miles as the crow flies, but the 425 travels twice as far. And TfL are scheduling this mysterious dog-leg route, which goes nowhere new, with a full double decker allocation. Only time will tell if passenger numbers justify their optimism.
And then there's the 276. This Newham to Stoke Newington service used to run through what is now the Olympic Park construction site. Obviously that journey would now be an unacceptable security risk, so for the last year the bus has been diverted up the A12 via Fish Island. But not for much longer. From Saturday it'll be re-diverted, even further from its original route, following the current S2 through Bow. This may not be good news for long distance travellers, but it gives me yet another way to get to southeast Hackney. I used to have only one direct route to Homerton Hospital, and imminently I'll have three. I just can't imagine needing the choice.
And finally, what of the demise of the S2? Overnight tomorrow it'll lose its letter and be reborn in decapitated form under a new route number, 488. That's almost as high as regular London bus numbers go, signifying an unimportant afterthought of a service. This instant irrelevance is what happens when you cut off the last mile and a half of the bus route, the bit that went to Stratford, the bit that made the journey useful. Southbound buses will now terminate in Bromley-by-Bow, a place that few Hackney residents feel a burning desire to visit. The 488 will be a runty little bus, running less frequently than the S2, carrying fewer people, to nowhere special. And it's got the elderly shoppers of E3 up in arms.
Which, if you're still reading, brings me to my main point. Back in November, TfL's Stakeholder Engagement department launched a major consultation to see what local residents thought of their proposed bus changes in the E3 area. You probably saw the consultation document on the TfL website, on the heavily-frequented "Bus route consultations" webpage. Oh you didn't? I doubt that many local residents noticed it either. There were no posters at bus stops, and nothing dropped through the letterbox of residents living along the route. Library users might have spotted a leaflet, and apparently there were some in hospitals too, but it was all terribly hit and miss. For non-inquisitive non-internet-enabled stakeholders, bugger all. No surprise, then, that elderly Tesco shoppers noticed nothing amiss until seven months later by which time the changes were imminent. Too late. And this is especially ironic given the content of the original consultation document...
Oops. Meanwhile the Bus Stop Route Number Updater has already been out removing all trace of the S2 from the East End's bus stops. Alien numbers have appeared for buses that don't yet quite exist, because this is a change that cannot be reversed. And the results of the consultation have also been just been released, less than a week before the new services begin, with TfL finally admitting that their proposals aren't perfect...
Last night, on my way home from work, I alighted prematurely from my Central Line train to take a look at the Liverpool Street screens. Perfect, I'd stepped off immediately underneath one of the two huge clunky overhead projectors, currently switched off while the train was in the platform. But as the last carriage sped out of the station, the lens whirred into action and an instant advert appeared on the opposite side of the track. A giant-sized grinning moron stared out from the curved wall, and moved. He juggled berries, he pointed to bottles of fruit smoothie and he attempted to appeal to all the lowest common denominator passengers on the platform. There was nothing else to watch (all the other posters had been removed) so we watched him.
As the platform slowly filled with would-be travellers, I watched to see what their reaction would be. It was striking. The moving images on the opposite wall drew people's attention inexorably, completely, utterly. No human eye could resist the flickering hard sell, not when the alternative was staring at the platform. But there was one way to escape. Everybody holding a newspaper appeared to be immune. As each mini marketing masterpiece played out before them, they ignored it and continued to read their freesheet. It's official, Amy Winehouse gossip is more interesting than an animated Avenue Q advert. But hey, be it movie or newsprint, the advertisers had us either way.
