Are you travelling to the Olympics? And, if so, are you aware of the planet-destroying emissions that your journey will create? Just by visiting the Olympics you'll be making an additional trip to normal, there and back, belching carbon into the atmosphere and hastening the end of civilisation as we know it. How can you possibly live with this on your conscience?
So let's hear it for BP, the Tier One Olympic Sustainability Partner, who've put together a foolproof scheme to offset your Games-related carbon emissions? You travel to the Olympic Park, or Weymouth, or wherever, and they make sure a tree is planted in Chile, or Norway, or somewhere, or something similar. And it's free! Remember to tick the right box on the application form, and they won't even spam your inbox with BP-related marketing emails.
Even better, you'll be a record breaker. BP's intention is to beat the record for "the most number of people who participate to offset carbon emissions associated with travel to and from a global sporting event". There's a complex mouthful. And what do you know, they achieved this record as soon as the first person signed up, because previously the record didn't exist. When you sign up with BP, all you're doing is boosting the numbers to give future Games a bigger target to beat. And thus far that's 8152, or a mere 0.1% of the potential spectator audience, so there's some considerable way to go.
Except how does BP's Olympic carbon offset scheme work? You'd expect them to have prepared some detailed process which analyses where you live, where your Olympic events are and how you intend to travel to them. Not so. Instead there are only a few simple stages. First you enter your name, or sign in via Facebook. If you're not British you state which country you're coming from. Then you tick a box to say you really are going to the Olympics, and how many people are in your party. And that's it, so it's all a bit rubbish really.
BP commissioned a report to calculate the average emissions for someone travelling to the Games from each of 40 countries around the world. From Germany that's half a tonne, while from the USA it's nearly five. But for the United Kingdom, the designated average emission is only 21kg. And BP apply this average of 21kg no matter where in the UK you live, or how you travel, or how many times you visit.
For example, I don't know about you, but I have tickets to the women's basketball in the Olympic Park. I'll be walking there from home, because it's only about a mile, plus additional distance brought about by necessary security detours. My trip to the women's basketball therefore requires no carbon offset whatsoever, but BP insist on assuming I'll cause 21kg-worth of atmospheric damage. Equally I might pop down to Weymouth later to watch some sailing, taking the train down from Waterloo. Except that'll apparently emit 26kg of carbon, which is more than BP's average allows, but stuff that, because this isn't about accuracy.
According to BP's Carbon Neutral calculator, this is how far 21kg of carbon gets you: • 220 mile return trip by coach (eg Middlesbrough to London) • 100 mile return trip by rail (eg Birmingham to London) • Stanmore to Stratford and back five times (Jubilee line) • 38 mile return trip by car (eg Aylesbury to Stratford) • Heathrow to London City Airport by air (were that possible)
Even if that's not the journey you're making, BP assumes that it is. And then it offsets your carbon.
And to offset 21kg of carbon costs precisely 11p. If all 8 million spectators signed up at these rates, BP would have to pay nearly £900,000. As it is, with only 8152 spectators signed up since September, their bill is nearer £900.
As the Official Carbon Offset Partner to the London 2012 Games, BP are making all the right noises about their planet-saving credentials. But in reality this is token gesture marketing, piggybacking the Olympics in an attempt to appear corporately caring. And if you're not going to the Games then smile, because you've already saved the planet, and you just saved BP elevenpence.
Seaside postcard: Gosport Great name for a town. Gosport sounds vibrant and physical, like some well-meaning Government campaign to get schoolkids to exercise more. Alas no. This is a naval backwater on the western edge of Portsmouth Harbour, playing perpetual second fiddle to its sister city acros the water. There are two Gosports - one the aspirational marina community along the waterside (think yachts, and apartments to match), the other a less uplifting residential hinterland. The contrast between Portsmouth's Gunwharf Quays mall and Gosport's High Street is stark - less than a mile apart across the harbour, but one gets designer labels while the other gets the charity shops. Nipping between the two is the Gosport Ferry, a regular and efficient hop across the water with fine views of HMS Warrior and the Spinnaker Tower on the way. And there are at least two reasons to take the trip across...
Gosport presents... Royal Navy Submarine Museum As weapons of destruction go, submarines have a particularly alluring fascination. Maybe it's their ability to lurk underwater, maybe it's that little periscope that pokes up above the water, or maybe it's the unimaginably cramped conditions that sailors enured during months of underwater voyaging. So the existence of a national submarine museum should be of interest, especially a museum which allows visitors to go aboard two proper submarines. To gain entrance head towards the mouth of the harbour, adjacent to the Royal Navy's submariners' training school, in the shadow of the 100m tower where they practice emergency evacuation ascents. I found the place surprisingly busy for a Saturday, and not just because a coachload of teenage naval cadets had turned up for a day out (plus packed lunch).
The museum's star attraction is HMS Alliance, a full-size Navy submarine which saw decades of services following World War Two. Wait for your timed tour, then join a former submariner for a 45 minute guided squeeze from aft to stern. Yes, it is ridiculously cramped inside - essentially one long narrow passageway along which dozens of men lived, worked, ate and slept. The main torpedo storage bay, for example, doubled up as main entrance, escape hatch, food store, chapel, even cinema with the aid of a white sheet across the bulwark. To get from the tiny sleeping cabins to the fairly primitive toilets meant walking through the main control room, sometimes in darkness. There were no showers on board, to save water, so the entire crew stank to high heaven by the end of their deployment. You'd think the galley impractically small, but the chef had only these few surfaces to prepare food for everyone on board. All the metal on board is brass, to avoid giving away the craft's position via magnetic interference. Our guide gave illuminating commentary throughout, although this might not be the case for much longer. There's apparently a row brewing regarding how much these guides are paid - currently minimal, whereas the trustees would prefer nothing at all. The museum needs every penny it can get - urgent repairs to HMS Alliance will cost millions, for example - but it would be a shame to sacrifice human excellence to save money.
The second submarine to explore is very special. It's HMS Holland, the Royal Navy's first submarine, and dates back as far to 1901. It looks precisely as Jules Verne might have imagined the Nautilus in 20000 Leagues Under The Sea - a cross between a bulging fish and a metal zeppelin. So fragile is the Holland that it has to be stored in a special ionised room... which I had all to myself on my visit, which was fantastic, especially when poking around inside the belly of the beast.
And there's plenty more to see in the main building, certainly your money's worth, so long as you're the sort to find an in-depth look at the history and science of submarine warfare fascinating. I'm not sure the naval cadets fully appreciated the tail end of their day-trip, they'd clearly been here too long and were wandering aimlessly or pressing buttons on the displays to stay engaged. But allocate a couple of hours and you'll be entertained, and enlightened, and probably very relieved you were never conscripted to the inky depths for several constricted weeks.
Gosport presents... Explosion! Its proper name is the Museum of Naval Firepower, but Explosion! sounds so much cooler. If you didn't know what the place was you then might be baffled by the brown sign in the High Street pointing towards Explosion!, like there was some security incident up the road or something. Instead a 20 minute walk up Weevil Lane awaits, past barracks converted to private housing, then across a long footbridge over a harbour inlet. This headland's a bit out of the way, I thought, but I guess that's precisely why the navy chose to build a Armaments Depot here on Priddy's Hard in the first place. Relative isolation also explained why the museum was terribly quiet, that and being the middle of winter which isn't exactly peak season for heritage tourism. The ladies on the desk took my money, watched intently to see whether I'd enter the museum or the cafe first, then went back to chatting when it became evident no fresh-brewed tea nor sandwiches were required.
This old naval facility's been a museum for over a decade now, ever since the council stepped in to ensure an important chunk of local history wasn't lost. The first section tells the story of the people who used to work here, in an industry that's been ever-so health-and-safety conscious for a couple of centuries. Complete changes of clothes, plus special slippers so as not to create a deadly spark, all of this was critical when packing gunpowder into shells. I was looking forward to the immersive audio visual presentation in the Grand Magazine (an impressive large vaulted brick hall) but it had broken down, and the only sight to see was a woman attempting to hire out the space for weddings.
The remainder of the exhibition focused on naval munitions through the ages, which I had thought might be dull, but was delivered with a Reithian flair. A cabinet of guns to satisfy the most ardent shoot-em-upper. A roomful of hanging mines, like some twisted challenge from the Crystal Maze. A large collection of heavy calibre guns, plus as much of the associated physics as you care to take. A selection of torpedoes, which are an older invention than you might think. A room of atomic missiles, thankfully decommissioned, as a jolting reminder of how far aerial weaponry has developed since the measly cannonball. And all with interactive audio-visual press button screens, because it's the 21st century now.
And finally the cafe. The menu was up, the tables were ready, the view across the harbour was enticing, but the room was entirely empty. There wasn't even a nice lady behind the counter to stare at me expectantly in case I'd like a hot chocolate and/or a pastry. An hour round Explosion! and I'd been the only visitor they'd had, which was great for me, but must have been mindblowingly tedious for the staff of a top class visitor attraction. Two Gosport museums, one rammed, one dead... and deserving better.
DICKENS 200 Gads Hill Place, Higham, Kent (1857-1870)
Charles Dickens was nine years old when he first noticed the big house at the top of the hill on the Gravesend Road. "A mansion of dull red brick," as he would later describe it, "with a weathercock surmounted cupola on the roof, and a bell hanging in it." It's in a very literary location - the precise setting of Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1 Act 2 scene 2 - which must also have appealed to the young wordsmith. Charles loved the house, and would often walk the five miles from his home in Chatham to the top of Gads Hill to stare at it. "If you were to be very persevering and were to work hard," said his father, "you might some day come to live in it." And lo, beyond Dickens' greatest expectations, this came to pass.
The house went on the market when Charles was 44. By now he was a successful author so could easily afford the asking price of £1790, and the entire family moved in the following summer. One of the first visitors was Hans Christian Andersen, who was supposed to come for two weeks but stayed for five (which didn't go down well). Charles opened up his gardens for village cricket, as you do when you're a gregarious communal fellow, and never regretted his switch to rural life.
Gads Hill Place is no longer in the Dickens family. Charles' eldest son suffered ill-health and had to sell up, and the mansion is now in the possession of a boarding school. It's "the top-performing public school in England", according to the sign outside facing the main road, and one wonders whether English Literature is their speciality. Peer through the hedge, preferably out of term time, and a fairly non-descript frontage appears. The front garden has a broad gravel drive, some semi-smart grass and a small sundial/birdtable near the front door. The ground floor windows hint at education beyond - that's either a store cupboard of equipment or a rather messy classroom. But the fact that this might once have been home to one of Britain's greatest novelists, that's a hidden secret, unless you can read the words on the small plaque on the front wall, which only pupils (and their parents, dropping off) ever pass. [photo]
They're building a new school now, with an incongruous crane looming over the surrounding fields and a metal skeleton appearing out the back. The plan is then to turn Gads Hill Place into a Dickens Visitor Centre, although they've already missed the bicentenary. The location's a bit out of the way to attract tourists, I'd have thought, which is probably one of the reasons Charles loved Gads Hill in the first place. Fields roll down from the back garden towards the North Downs and the Medway - all fine walking country through which Dickens loved to stride. The M2 wasn't there at the time however, scything through the ridge in the distance, so it's not quite such fine walking country any more.
At Christmas 1864, Charles received a most unusual gift - a full-size two-storey Swiss chalet. He had it assembled on the opposite side of the Rochester High Road, and then built a brick tunnel beneath the road to link his house to his new writing studio. A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations were both written in the chalet, as was most of The Mystery of Edwin Drood - the book that Dickens never completed. Alas his end came swiftly and unexpectedly, cut down by a stroke at the age of 58 and dying on the green couch in his Gads Hill study the following day. He was buried not in Higham churchyard, as he'd requested, but in Westminster Abbey because the nation thought it knew best.
His home village of Higham is a bit non-nondescript today - more a commuter outpost, infilled late-20C-style. Some residents have a view of the Thames estuary, some of the church on the hill, but most stare at the bungalow opposite, or a neighbour's leylandii. The station's still there, from which Charles's coffin departed on that summer's day in 1870, but these days most people leave by car. A pub on the old coaching road remembers Sir John Falstaff (see Henry IV. Part I. Act ii. Sc ii), while further down the hill are a couple of Dickensian-named cul-de-sacs. And the dualled foot-tunnel opposite Gads Hill Place is still there, dipping deeply and darkly beneath the road - a most unusual domestic feature unless you know the reason why it's there.
And Dickens' chalet has been relocated to the centre of Rochester, a few miles across the valley. It hides just off the main street, round the back of Eastgate House, where it'll stand either until it crumbles or until someone raises enough cash to restore it [photo]. Meantime the High Street relishes its Dickensian connections, with such retail delights as "Sweet Expectations", the candy shop, and the "A Taste of Two Cities" Indian/Bangladeshi restaurant. Rochester's a lovely town to visit, as the small boy and elder gent who once walked its streets would concur.
When I think I deserve particularly well of myself, and have earned the right to enjoy a little treat, I stroll from Covent-garden into the City of London, after business-hours there, on a Saturday, or—better yet—on a Sunday, and roam about its deserted nooks and corners. It is necessary to the full enjoyment of these journeys that they should be made in summer-time, for then the retired spots that I love to haunt, are at their idlest and dullest. A gentle fall of rain is not objectionable, and a warm mist sets off my favourite retreats to decided advantage.
Among these, City Churchyards hold a high place. Such strange churchyards hide in the City of London; churchyards sometimes so entirely detached from churches, always so pressed upon by houses; so small, so rank, so silent, so forgotten, except by the few people who ever look down into them from their smoky windows. As I stand peeping in through the iron gates and rails, I can peel the rusty metal off, like bark from an old tree. The illegible tombstones are all lop-sided, the grave-mounds lost their shape in the rains of a hundred years ago, the Lombardy Poplar or Plane-Tree that was once a drysalter’s daughter and several common-councilmen, has withered like those worthies, and its departed leaves are dust beneath it. Contagion of slow ruin overhangs the place. The discoloured tiled roofs of the environing buildings stand so awry, that they can hardly be proof against any stress of weather. Old crazy stacks of chimneys seem to look down as they overhang, dubiously calculating how far they will have to fall. In an angle of the walls, what was once the tool-house of the grave-digger rots away, encrusted with toadstools. Pipes and spouts for carrying off the rain from the encompassing gables, broken or feloniously cut for old lead long ago, now let the rain drip and splash as it list, upon the weedy earth. Sometimes there is a rusty pump somewhere near, and, as I look in at the rails and meditate, I hear it working under an unknown hand with a creaking protest: as though the departed in the churchyard urged, ‘Let us lie here in peace; don’t suck us up and drink us!’
One of my best beloved churchyards, I call the churchyard of Saint Ghastly Grim; touching what men in general call it, I have no information. It lies at the heart of the City, and the Blackwall Railway shrieks at it daily. It is a small small churchyard, with a ferocious, strong, spiked iron gate, like a jail. This gate is ornamented with skulls and cross-bones, larger than the life, wrought in stone; but it likewise came into the mind of Saint Ghastly Grim, that to stick iron spikes a-top of the stone skulls, as though they were impaled, would be a pleasant device. Therefore the skulls grin aloft horribly, thrust through and through with iron spears. Hence, there is attraction of repulsion for me in Saint Ghastly Grim, and, having often contemplated it in the daylight and the dark, I once felt drawn towards it in a thunderstorm at midnight.
You do not come upon these churchyards violently; there are shapes of transition in the neighbourhood. An antiquated news shop, or barber’s shop, apparently bereft of customers in the earlier days of George the Third, would warn me to look out for one, if any discoveries in this respect were left for me to make. A very quiet court, in combination with an unaccountable dyer’s and scourer’s, would prepare me for a churchyard. An exceedingly retiring public-house, with a bagatelle-board shadily visible in a sawdusty parlour shaped like an omnibus, and with a shelf of punch-bowls in the bar, would apprise me that I stood near consecrated ground. A ‘Dairy,’ exhibiting in its modest window one very little milk-can and three eggs, would suggest to me the certainty of finding the poultry hard by, pecking at my forefathers. I first inferred the vicinity of Saint Ghastly Grim, from a certain air of extra repose and gloom pervading a vast stack of warehouses.
From the hush of these places, it is congenial to pass into the hushed resorts of business. Down the lanes I like to see the carts and waggons huddled together in repose, the cranes idle, and the warehouses shut. Pausing in the alleys behind the closed Banks of mighty Lombard-street, it gives one as good as a rich feeling to think of the broad counters with a rim along the edge, made for telling money out on, the scales for weighing precious metals, the ponderous ledgers, and, above all, the bright copper shovels for shovelling gold. About College-hill, Mark-lane, and so on towards the Tower, and Dockward, the deserted wine-merchants’ cellars are fine subjects for consideration; but the deserted money-cellars of the Bankers, and their plate-cellars, and their jewel-cellars, what subterranean regions of the Wonderful Lamp are these!
And here is Garraway’s, bolted and shuttered hard and fast! It is possible to imagine the man who cuts the sandwiches, on his back in a hayfield; it is possible to imagine his desk, like the desk of a clerk at church, without him; but imagination is unable to pursue the men who wait at Garraway’s all the week for the men who never come. When they are forcibly put out of Garraway’s on Saturday night—which they must be, for they never would go out of their own accord—where do they vanish until Monday morning? On the first Sunday that I ever strayed here, I expected to find them hovering about these lanes, like restless ghosts, and trying to peep into Garraway’s through chinks in the shutters, if not endeavouring to turn the lock of the door with false keys, picks, and screw-drivers. But the wonder is, that they go clean away! There is an old monastery-crypt under Garraway’s (I have been in it among the port wine), and perhaps Garraway’s, taking pity on the mouldy men who wait in its public-room all their lives, gives them cool house-room down there over Sundays; but the catacombs of Paris would not be large enough to hold the rest of the missing. This characteristic of London City greatly helps its being the quaint place it is in the weekly pause of business, and greatly helps my Sunday sensation in it of being the Last Man.
DICKENS 200 Dickens and London, Museum of London (2012)
It's the big name exhibition in town, for one of the biggest names in literary London. A blockbuster roomful at the Museum of London, raking in the punters at eight quid a time, come to enjoy a collection of Dickensian memorabilia. Best plan in advance.
Come at the weekend and you might have to wait. Even if you do get a timed ticket, be warned that the maximum number of timed tickets sold in a particular slot is rather high, so it can get very crowded inside. I decided weekday afternoon was the best bet, and was still surprised by the numbers. A post-retirement audience mostly, I'd guess Radio 4-friendly, making the most of their City matinee. And yes, we enjoyed.
As a man who made his name through words, several of Dickens texts are on display here. Some are pen portraits of famous characters, printed out, and nothing you couldn't see on the internet. But some are very special, including four draft manuscripts on which Charles wrote some of his most famous works, complete with crossings out, scribbles and amendments. Alongside each is the final published work, for example the fog-bound opening paragraphs of Bleak House or the finished half of the Mystery of Edwin Drood. It seems amazing that anybody ever managed to translate his butchered scrawl into typeset print, or maybe it's too easy to forget how recently cut and paste has transformed the author's craft.
At the far end of the gallery is the desk on which Dickens used to write. This is normally hidden away in a private collection, but the Museum has wheedled it out and placed it on display for us all. Then there's an actual quill pen used by Dickens and, well, not actually as much Dickensiana as you might be expecting from a big name exhibition. The entire contents of Charles's house may have been scattered to the four winds after he died, but there's a limited amount of actual genuine "as used by"s to go round. Instead the Museum of London makes the most of its own broad collection by illustrating the era of society in which Dickens lived. The world of theatre which he loved so much (including a playbill featuring his mistress Ellen). The world of the poorhouse (whose social injustice inspired many a campaigning chapter). Panoramic pictures of the River Thames (on whose banks the young Charles once worked in a blacking factory). It's evocative stuff, and conjures up the atmosphere of Dickensian London brilliantly, but it's not the concentrated collection of writerly artefacts you might be expecting.
After a final mini-gallery exploring life and death, a modern film plays in a room near the exit. Don't miss it out - I added half as much again to the length of my visit by popping in to watch. The film's called The Houseless Shadow, and was inspired by an essay entitled Night Walks which Dickens wrote during a week-long period of insomnia. His words accompany shots of overnight 21st century London, as its City streets empty and the river flows unwatched. The twenty minute feature is entirely in the right spirit for the man, and for the exhibition, and a highly original artistic touch. You have until 10th June to pay a visit, by which time surely the crowds will have died down. This coming week, however, expect Dickens' popularity to remain undimmed.
DICKENS 200 A Tale Of One City, Portsmouth Museum (2012)
And while you're in Portsmouth, assuming you are, do pop into the City Museum. It's the big school-like building near the University, where their just-opened Dickens exhibition takes up about half of the ground floor. It reminded me a bit of the Museum of London's exhibition, in that it's mostly a collection of local Victoriana with a few genuine Dickensian artefacts thrown in. Here the special curios are a manuscript of Nicholas Nickleby (pictured), and the cut glass inkwell that was on Charles' desk the day he died. Every museum's got its own bit of that death scene, it seems. And at the other end of the building, as a bonus treat, you'll find a two-room display celebrating the life and works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He wasn't born in Portsmouth but moved here when starting as a GP, and it was during his decade-long practice that he wrote the very first Sherlock Holmes story. With a pair of greats like these, Portsmouth is a city punching above its literary weight.
DICKENS 200 1 Mile End Terrace, Portsmouth, Hants (1812)
Two hundred years ago today, not that anybody noticed at the time, one of the greatest authors of all time was born. CharlesDickens wasn't born in London, because that'd be presumptuous, nor in Kent, because that's only where he ended up. Instead he was born in Portsmouth, in a fairly ordinary terraced house near the Dockyard. John Dickens worked there as a clerk with the Navy, and it was here in Mile End Terrace that the first two of his children were born. The family didn't stay long, indeed Charles was only three months old when they moved up the road to somewhere better. But many years later, when he was considerably more successful, Charles came back to Portsmouth in an attempt to find the house where he'd spent his earliest weeks. He didn't succeed, he'd not come armed with sufficient memories or documentation. But after his death the people of Portsmouth realised they had a tourist attraction in their midst, and sought out the correct building, and turned it into amuseum. And it's still going, which is damned impressive for a tiny 111-year-old concern up a sidestreet, but that's a sign of the measure of the great man.
Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum[photo] Location: 393 Old Commercial Road, Portsmouth PO1 4QL [map] Open: 10am - 5:30pm (closed Monday) Admission: £4 (but free today) Website:www.charlesdickensbirthplace.co.uk Time to set aside: about half an hour
It's fortunate that the citizens of Portsmouth preserved Dickens' birthplace when they did. The family lived on one of the main roads out of town, just north of what's now the main shopping centre, and approaching the site today things don't look very promising. A broad dual carriageway has replaced the former coaching road, which within a quarter of a mile mutates into a modern motorway to speed traffic out of town. Most of Old Commercial Road has long since vanished beneath four lanes of tarmac, or a line of scarily austere modern brick tenement blocks. But council planners have retained one small length of Georgian Portsmouth, diverting the A3 in a gentle curve around the rear of Dickens' back garden. They've preserved a desirable spot, complete with cobbles and the remains of old tramlines, made slightly incongruous by the number of council estate folk using the road as a cut-through to the deprived streets beyond. John Dickens paid rent of £35 a year, but it costs rather more to live in Mile End Terrace today, hence the houses neighbouring number 1 are beautifully maintained with ornamental front gardens. [photo]
Entrance to the museum is via the steps down to the basement, so don't try entering through the front door, you'll only look stupid. The first room is the kitchen, which is now the shop, and here you'll be welcomed by the staff. This room is also home to the only piece of furniture to have survived since Dickens' day. You'd expect every last piece to have been lost, because nobody in 1812 realised how important the newborn baby would turn out to be. But the sturdy wooden dresser was built into the floor, so it was going nowhere, and now it makes a useful surface for a display of books, trinkets and other Dickens-related gifts. A fine and decent selection, you'll be pleased to hear.
Upstairs, which is the ground floor of this compact triple-decker terrace, two rooms. They're a parlour and a dining room - as I said, absolutely nothing's original, but each is decked out with the furniture and the fashions of the day. It's all very nicely done, and very recently refurbished to add (amongst other things) proper period wallpaper. All the accompanying information is appropriately vague (for example crockery "of the kind that the Dickens might have used"), but the overall effect successfully brings to life how things might have been for a naval clerk and his young family. The grandfather clock in the hallway adds a timely touch, while a rear passage leads out (through a locked door) to the cricket-square-sized back garden.
Ascend the twisting wooden stairs once again to reach the house's special floor. At the front, the bedroom in which Charles took his first breath. History doesn't recall how smoothly the delivery went, but had there been complications we might never have become acquainted with Mr Micawber, Oliver Twist and all. A wooden crib on the floor is the only physical hint of authorial birth - again it's not the original, so don't gaze upon it with great expectations. Instead head to the memorabilia room at the back of the house, where there's a piece of furniture you'd think has no place whatsoever being here. It's a green couch, indeed it's the green couch on which Charles Dickens died. He passed away after suffering a stroke in Kent - described as "apoplexy" on the official death certificate on the wall above - and his housekeeper later bequeathed the couch to Portsmouth because they were the only place at the time with a Dickens museum. It quietly freaked me out, stepping from the bedroom in which Dickens was born to the actual couch on which he died, his opening and closing chapters, in adjacent rooms.
There's an attic too, again two rooms, in which the Dickens family servant(s) would have lived. These have so far been left empty, bar a single table of period documentation and a pair of Charles's Kentish bookcases. Look out of the back window, above the tiny garden, and there's a Morrisons and a hire shop, and the sprawling Naval Dockyard, and in the foreground that very modern dual carriageway. But look out of the front window and there's the Old Commercial Road, preserved almost as it was 200 years ago when a tiny baby made his voice heard for the very first time. We hear it still today.
I've been meaning to run this series of posts on diamond geezer for some years now. The Queen's Diamond Jubilee has given me the perfect excuse. A report on all the London streets named DiamondSomething. Happy sixtieth, today, Your Majesty.
Diamond TerraceGreenwich, SE10 On the residential slopes above non-tourist Greenwich, a warren of Victoriana covers the hillside. There are some most desirable properties up here, from spacious townhouses to narrow two-up two-downs, all in an ace location that's ever-so estate agent-friendly. We're homing in on one street, if you can call it a street, and that's Diamond Terrace. From Hyde Vale it looks like a private driveway, maybe two, ascending the hill into wooded seclusion. From Point Hill, beside one of the larger stucco lodgings, it looks like a back alley to someone's garage. And so it is, but further along it opens out to form a one-sided semi-private lane, running for a couple of hundred yards along a contour. You wouldn't walk along this unmade road by mistake - indeed the residents would probably rather you didn't walk along here at all. They live in blessed isolation in a motley collection of houses, most with marvellous views (at this leafless time of year) across the immediate skyline. One of London's protected views runs from The Point - at the top of the hill - across to St Paul's and Central London. Both are harder to see from Diamond Terrace because a row of chimneypots gets in the way, but the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf are clearly visible from up here, and the Greenwich Clock Tower too. If you're not familiar with the area, you may be surprised how steeply the slopes of SE10 rise up. The street parallel to Diamond Terrace is at least three storeys down, or a similar differential up, depending. You'd pay a panoramic premium to live here, as some of the assorted dwellings make evident. First past the garages are a brief collection of semi-detacheds, with gardens mostly paved, one with a stone cat acting as sentinel by the recycling bins. Then a couple of four-storey Georgian blocks, originally family homes, whose current owners protect their parking spaces with passive aggressive traffic cones. A little grander with a wrought iron balcony for the next pair, very Dickensian, very tastefully done. And finally, alas, I didn't venture right down to the end of the cul-de-sac for fear of looking intensely suspicious, but anywhere with its own heritage streetlamps has be top council tax band, surely. This was the only Diamond-themed street I visited with a lock-up offering Motor Services for classic cars, and also the only place where a faux fur shawl had been dumped in a hedge below the official nameplate. Diamond Terrace could have been snobbishly awful, but I found this back lane individual, withdrawn and understated. Just don't go looking for it on Google Streetview because it isn't there. The camera-van probably never found either of the minor entrances, or else the residents blockaded themselves in to keep this woody enclave a well-kept secret. [streetmap][street name][street photo]
Diamond WayDeptford, SE8 Less than a mile away, on the other side of the River Ravensbourne, lies a very different Diamond. You'll find it in the heart of Deptford, just off the High Street, but don't let that prejudge your expectations. This isn't a row of crumbling terraced houses round the corner from a row of pound shops, nor part of a hinterland of postwar council flats. Indeed Diamond Way isn't a residential street at all, not unless you include dead bodies, because this is the alleyway through the graveyard of St Paul's Church. What a fantastic (and unexpected) church this is - Italianate Baroque, which is rare enough, built of Portland Stone with a circular tower beneath a circular steeple. It looks quite European, surely Roman Catholic, but its origins are wholly C of E. Three hundred years ago this was one of twelve churches commissioned to serve London's growing population, the most famous of which are the Hawksmoors in Shoreditch, Limehouse, nearby Greenwich et al. The architect here in Deptford was Thomas Archer, also responsible for Birmingham Cathedral and bits of Chatsworth House. In 1969 St Paul's entered the custodianship of a new parish priest, the outgoing Father DavidDiamond. He built up the congregation, repositioned St Paul's at the heart of the local community, even instigated the Deptford Festival, until his untimely death in 1992. In grateful remembrance parishioners named the path along the northern edge of the church Diamond Way. It doesn't really need a name, to be honest, it's merely a cut-through from the High Street to Church Street, and the only street sign is semi-hidden behind railings and a lamppost at the western end. Close by (and facing the bookies opposite) is a red-painted cross, plus crucified Christ, as a reminder of why the church is here. And beyond are numerous stone memorials, gravestones and the like, looking precisely as weatherbeaten as you'd expect after nearly three centuries, and surround by newly laid turf (because pedestrians don't necessarily stick to the paths). It would be so easy to walk along the High Street and never notice this green oasis, indeed not to spot that this part of town has more to offer than non-chain shops and a bustling market. But the church John Betjeman described as the "Pearl in the Heart of Deptford" still thrives, and remembers, along Diamond Way. [streetmap][street name][street photo]
Diamond StreetCamberwell/Peckham, SE15 This is the closest Diamond-named street to the centre of London. That doesn't mean you'll ever have been, indeed it's likely you've never even been close by. We're south of Burgess Park on the North Peckham estate, along Southampton Way, in the middle of one of those large swathes of the capital where people merely live. Had the Cross River Tram ever been built then services would have glided past the end of Diamond Street, either at one end or the other depending which southeast option had been built. Instead this road lives out a meagre existence in relative anonymity - a ragbag of modern flats and houses - and no more than two minutes walk from end to end. I had high hopes for some feature of interest as I approached, with a tall narrow segmented tower block rising in the general area, but no, that was on the adjacent SouthamptonWayEstate. Diamond Street was merely a brief link road, with the majority of flats along its length opening out onto some adjacent more important thoroughfare. One especially modern block, screened behind grey railings, is only five years old (I know this because satellite images on Yahoo Maps still show it as currently under construction). Nobody's bothered to add a balcony to these flats, not even a small one, because you just wouldn't. There are some proper terraced houses on one side of the road, numbers 2-26, although in fairly utilitarian brick. Most have a lacklustre attempt at a self-supporting porch, and a nasty black patch above the front door where either water or smoke has been leaking for years. All the so-called gardens are hardstanding for cars and wheelie bins, and while there is a patch of grass verge across the road, somebody's dumped a mattress on it plus the packaging in which the replacement was delivered. There are plenty of laybys for cars, just as in Diamond Street's Stonebridge namesake, and also a couple of pairs of speed humps (which a passing fire engine has to take inappropriately slowly). As I pass the flats at the top end of the road, I spy a pair of pink marigolds at work in the ground floor window. On reaching Chandler Way I turn and look back at Diamond Street, and sigh, and wonder how I'll ever be able to write 400 words about it when I get home. But never fear, because every street in London's interesting in its own way, even (alas) this one. [streetmap][streetview][street name][street photo]
Diamond CloseGoodmayes/Chadwell Heath, IG3 Out in the deep morass of East London, in the part they prefer to think of as Essex, lies the only bejewelled cul-de-sac in my Diamond list. I was convinced I'd travelled out at least as far as Barking and Dagenham, but fractionally not quite, this is still the outer reaches of Redbridge. This turns out to be important. The Becontree Estate begins a couple of streets away, once the largest housing estate in the world, but Diamond Close avoids architectural similarity by being much later infill along the border. Most of the roads around here are straight or gently curved, but the roads on this 80s development are deeply sinuous, presumably in an attempt to cram in as many new houses as possible. These are streets where builders live, and aerial fitters, and Kelly who runs Kelly's Big Baps which she runs from a mobile burgervan she keeps parked up round the back of the house. It's the sort of area where shaven-headed blokes walk past in shirtsleeves, even when it's midwinter and bloody freezing, and where drivers are proud to affix an English Democrats sticker to their rear windscreen. You'll find Diamond Close near Crystal Way, just past Sapphire Close. It's a curved dead end, very short, with mighty evergreens at one end and a fence plus bin store at the other. The bins are "Private for use of flats only", which means none of the residents of Diamond Close can use them. They all live in the nine houses down the opposite side of the close - a staggered row of sturdy late 20th century brick with shallow-sloping roofs. As house number increases so the front garden space grows, from 100% parking space at the lower end to 50% fenced off lawn at the higher. It's parking nirvana here, to be frank, and if an entire amateur football team turned up for a barbecue in their sporty GTIs there'd be plenty of room for all. It's also precisely the sort of road where I'd expect a cabbie to live... so it comes as no surprise that in one of the nine houses one actually does. Owner-occupied, satellite dish-enabled, trim, tidy, and above all neighbourly, that's Diamond Close. I'd expect Boris Johnson to clean up along here in this year's mayoral elections - just a hunch, but I bet I'm right. And a heck of a lot of Outer London resembles Diamond Close. Ignore the suburbs at your peril. [streetmap][streetview][street name][street photo]
Diamond StreetStonebridge, NW10 That's Stonebridge, close to Stonebridge Park, the next station up the line from Harlesden and Willesden Junction. Just round the back of the Neasden temple, that's where my first Diamond-named street lies. It's also the newest of the lot, built as part of a decade-long 21st century redevelopment project which has seen the demolition of one of London's most notorious estates. The original Stonebridge Park Estate emerged in the late 1960s, replacing a Victorian suburban development with council-funded tower blocks. You know the drill - hopes of highrise utopia gradually dashed by broken-down lifts, increasing crime and communal misery - until Stonebridge Park wasn't somewhere you'd want to even visit, let alone live. How the area's changed. That's partly thanks to the Stonebridge Housing Action Trust (who have the most unfortunate acronym), but mostly due to the gradual removal of concrete monolith after concrete monolith, and their replacement by something hugely more pleasant. All of the replacement buildings are lowrise brick, none higher than four storeys, and yet the council's still managed to relocate all the residents from the old in the new. Now a tangled web of broad streets covers the area, with the most fortunate houses lining the landscaped Brent Feeder - a 200 year old channel linking the Welsh Harp Reservoir to the Grand Union Canal. From the footbridge follow Sapphire Road uphill, and at the crossroads this magically metamorphoses into Diamond Street. It's a quiet junction, quiet enough on my visit to be the kickabout location of choice for three small boys. A long dribble, a wallside tap, and then the recovery of aforesaid football from beneath a parked-up truck. Excitingly this street corner features the first VG Store I've seen in many a decade. It's not got the VG logo I remember, and the windows are bedecked only with photos of generic fruit, but this is still a Very Good convenience outlet for those living hereabouts. Flats above, with smooth curving balconies, and more flats alongside - the Diamond Street 26-42 Evens. These aren't bad as modern blocks go, mostly brick and glass but with understated metalwork features throughout. Numbers 2-24, on the other hand, are proper houses, laid out in a long brown terrace with rooms inside for above-average-sized families. Walk up the pavement to the T-junction at top of the slope and you'll likely spot the inhabitants pass, or peer from a window, or park up outside. On the corner with Ruby Street I spy a group of black-coated ladies and daughters, standing gossiping in that blessed hour immediately after attending church. It's an especially Afro-Caribbean neighbourhood around here, but not exclusively, and any taint of the old crime-ridden estate feels long gone. Clean, unthreatening, desirable - London's youngest Diamond Street is a rare triumph of post-blight cohesion. [streetmap][streetview][street name][street photo]
Diamond RoadSouth Ruislip, HA4 I'm glad that at least one of these half-dozen streets lies in proper suburbia. Far from the centre of London, South Ruislip's virtually Metroland, except that the local tube line's orange, not purple. In this corner of Hillingdon history doesn't really kick off until the fields were ploughed for housing, which'd be about 75 years ago. And this was the era of King George V's Silver Jubilee, so it's no surprise to find roads named Royal Crescent and Jubilee Drive. Diamond Road begins on the latter, at an anonymous corner which could be anywhere west of Wembley, marked by a lone dogmess bin on a narrow verge. First up are a few flats, thirties style, one unfortunate enough to have a public phonebox in its front garden. They'd never stand for open access further up the road. Diamond Road bends ninety degrees to become a tree-lined avenue of perfect semis. The dominant features are a first floor acute-angled bathroom window, and a brick arch (of varying dimensions) looping over the front porch. Although there are subtle difference between adjacent pairs, and even the occasional bungalow to break up the pattern, the entire street hangs together architecturally in a repeated motif of angular brown and white. Many houses still have the original stained glass panels in a downstairs window, probably something ornate and floral, in a variety of bright primary colours. A few front gardens are still a riot of well-tended foliage, or they would be were it not midwinter. One householder is up a ladder, chopping every branch from a roof-high fir tree, leaving behind a forlorn limbless trunk poking up into the leylandii nextdoor. A ginger tabby pads out onto the pavement through a gap in a very low hedge. Nothing much happens, for some considerable time, but then that's suburbia for you. Cut through the one street to the south and you end up on Victoria Road, which is South Ruislip's answer to an out-of town mall. All those big stores that sell electrical goods and furniture, they're all here, as well as a Kwik Fit and a Halfords and a Wickes. In the car park a small white trailer is parked up, dispensing burgers, hot dogs and hot drinks to any shopper who requires refreshment between warehouse stops. Nobody's biting. This retail park's all terribly convenient for the residents of Diamond Road, who could easily walk, except I bet they drive because driving's the done thing around here. The great majority of houses have paved over the space between building and street, all the better for parking up probably two cars, the first quite possibly a BMW, the second a smaller hatchback. It's not ridiculously comfortable living out here, but it's pleasant, and peaceful, and a darned sight more aspirational than most of its London namesakes. I spent most of my childhood living in a semi-detached house exactly like those here, and Diamond Road feels very much like home. [streetmap][streetview][street name][street photo]
It's an exciting morning to be a southeast Londoner. Yesterday Greenwich was just an ordinary London borough with housing officers, street sweepers and self-important councillors. But this morning it's awoken as the Royal Borough of Greenwich, complete with official charter from Her Majesty the Queen, in commemoration of her Diamond Jubilee. How chuffed must the mayor be to have this honour bestowed during his period of office. How thrilled must councillors be to run a bigger name borough than measly Southwark, Lewisham, Croydon or Bexley nextdoor. And how proud must local residents be now that their very existence is suddenly more important through royal recognition? Yeah, that proud.
Changes are afoot locally in order to recognise Royal borough status. The borough has a new royal crest, complete with royal bits on the shield and everything. New street signs are being erected (they say "Royal Borough of Greenwich"). The council website (now royalgreenwich.gov.uk) is getting a makeover, complete with a section of crest as a background graphic. And this weekend Royal Greenwich residents can celebrate with fireworks, and historical re-enactments, and a big parade, and even a drop-in lantern-making workshop. Here's the celebratory timetable, by royal appointment.
Friday 3rd February (Woolwich): 4:30pm Festivities begin in General Gordon Square, 6:30pm Mayoral speech, followed by ten minutes of fireworks Saturday 4th February (Eltham): 10am-2pm Historical activities and free entry at Eltham Palace, 5pm Festivities begin at the Tudor Barn, 6pm fireworks Sunday 5th February (Greenwich): 10am-6pm Historical activities in and around the Old Royal Naval College, 5pm Grand Royal Greenwich Parade, 6pm fireworks
But Royal Greenwich boasts no current royal palaces. The area merits its royal borough status thanks solely to past glories, most especially during Tudor times. Henry VIII was born in Greenwich, and twice married here. His children Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth I were all born at the palace, which is also where poor Edward died. Then there's the Royal Dockyard, and the Royal Naval College, and the Royal Observatory, not to mention the Royal Blackheath Golf Club. And if that's not enough, the Queen Mother visited in 1978 to open the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, as an increasingly tangential heritage page on the council's website proudly bears witness.
It's rare too, this royal moniker. Only two other London boroughs share the honour, a couple more in the Home Counties, and not terribly many more outside the capital. Here's the full list of British locations with nominated royal patronage.
Boroughs: Royal Borough of Greenwich (thanks to the Diamond Jubilee assignation), Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea (because Queen Victoria was born at Kensington Palace), Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames (because it was the coronation place of King Æthelstan in 925AD), Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead (because of Windsor Castle) Counties: Royal Berkshire (because of Windsor Castle) Towns: Royal Town of Caernarfon (because of the castle), Royal Leamington Spa (because Queen Victoria visited the spa in 1838), Royal Tunbridge Wells (in recognition of the town's connections with the royal family since the Stuart dynasty), Royal Wootton Bassett (because some of the townspeople paid their respects to repatriated armed forces coffins for a few years)
Meanwhile it can't be long now until an official announcement is made of the name of Britain's newest city. This is another Diamond Jubilee-related honour, and the winner will be one of the urban districts on the following list:
I think we can all agree it won't be Goole (the City of Goole, whatever were councillors thinking?). And it definitely won't be Tower Hamlets either, firstly because no committee would ever award the second Jubilee honour to anywhere adjacent to the Royal Borough of Greenwich, and secondly because the City of Tower Hamlets is an entirely ridiculous, almost megalomaniac, concept. The previous new city announcement, for the Golden Jubilee in 2002, was made in mid-March, so maybe we've a few weeks to wait yet. But the smart money is on Reading, currently 8/11 favourite following a recent spate of suspiciously big wagers, with Perth in second place at 5/1 and Medway at 8/1. And then, seriously, Tower Hamlets is the fourth favourite at 9/1?!? Surely Her Majesty has more wisdom, in her old age, than to bestow Jubilee honours on a second patch of inner city urban sprawl?
You'll be wanting an update, I'm sure, on latest progress towards the construction of the ArabFly Dangleway. In case you've forgotten, that's the cross-river cablecar which'll link a South London private entertainment venue to an East London private exhibition venue. The skyline connection which'll be of far greater interest to tourists than commuters. The sponsored aerial pod-link which the Mayor is part-funding from the public purse. That ArabFly Dangleway. How's it coming on? Rather well, since you ask.
ArabFly North Greenwich: The last time I was here, and had a cup of tea in the works canteen, there wasn't a lot to see. A pile of scaffolding rising from razed earth, with an upper deck picked out in timber, nothing more. Two months later, quite a change. The southern station is now clearly evident, with its upper platform supported by a thick central concrete block. The top level is long with one curved end, like a collapsed letter U. Tall white pillars stand ready to hold up a wall of glass, rising to further white latticework crossing the roof. And inside, or what will one day be inside, the system's machinery is mostly in place. At the riverward end it's already encased in plastic, but inshore the innards remain visible. It looks like the top shelf in a tyre showroom, with a collection of rubber wheels squished up in a curving line, ready to carry the various gondolas and their human contents as they swing round for embarkation [photo]. A few connecting staircases are evident, most for engineering use, one merely a ladder. And at the heart of it all a giant red wheel ready to rotate and move the cable around, if only there were a cable, which as yet there isn't [photo]. Plus, if all that weren't enough, a second building of similar size (but less interesting architecture) has appeared alongside. This is for the storage and maintenance of whichever of the 34 cabins aren't in motion across the river, and it too has an upper ringway of tightly-packed tyres. You won't be able to see much of any of this later, not from the outside, but for now the mechanics of the various interiors are plain to see. [photo]
South Main Tower: This is the big one, rising from the Thames off the Queen Elizabeth Pier. Or at least it will be the big one. It's not risen yet much further than water level, but a salvage platform stands guard by the site, piling complete, awaiting uplift. On the riverbank are two ginormous cranes, bowing towards each other and interlocked, or maybe it's one giant X-shaped crane looming high [photo]. Whatever, when the tower finally ascends, expect a spectacle.
North Main Tower: Across in Newham, the massive tower will rise from land not water. It's visible too, or at least the lowest cylinder of white metal is. Bolted securely to reclaimed industrial land, this first stage of pylon will support hundreds of thousands of sightseeing passovers during the cablecar's first year. It looks secure enough, so do try not to worry when you cross.
North Intermediate Tower: But this one's up and ready. It's the smallest of the three masts, designed to help lift skyward pods over the Royal Docks, but it still towers higher than anything else in the surrounding area. Elegant, twisted and thin, it rises to a narrow Y-shaped peak - a bit like a giant razor blade but where the blade's fallen off. Up top, all the necessary connecting shenanigans is already in place. Two arcs of wheels, over which each individual cablecar will joltingly pass. A gantry each side, presumably for maintenance, and not for use as a public escape route during the forthcoming disaster movie Dangleway Doom. And a balancing connecting bit, to support the whole thing high in the sky, as necessary. You might expect the view from up there to be stunning, and it might be, so long as you only look in certain directions. Look straight down in the immediate vicinity of the North Intermediate Tower and you'll see one of the ugliest landscapes that East London has to offer. The surrounding land is either industrial or post industrial. Open patches of earth await inward investment, should anybody ever care. High metal fences bar public access. Dock Road, running along the foot of the flyover, is home to wheelie bins, skips and minor commercial enterprises of the kind you'd normally hide beneath railway arches. Every so often a DLR train glides by, adding a welcome splash of colour [photo]. But, word of advice, don't look down, keep your eyes firmly fixed on the river, the Dome or the distant City skyscape.
ArabFly Royal Docks: The station on the northern side of the river is progressing a little slower than its southern counterpart. This station's different in that it's surrounded on three sides by water, built on a platform in the Royal Victoria Dock, so that'll have slowed things down a bit. Construction is ably assisted by the Haven SeaJack 3, a jack-up barge hired from Harwich, upon which a large crane has been positioned. All of the station's mechanics are nearly ready up top, exposed wheel-runners and all, but work has only just begun on the surrounding white cage. From the quayside it's easy to see the concrete station building underneath, with a selection of interior rooms and passages awaiting fit-out. Some of this will be a ticket office (see, I told you it was a tourist attraction), some will be steps for climbing to embarkation level, and some will be for the selling of coffee, pastries, and anything else that passengers can't be without for their five minute river-glide. The whole thing reminds me somehow of a giant hairdrier, or more likely a raygun lined up to fire across the Thames (precisely aimed at another raygun pointing back the opposite way). [photo]
The entire cablecar system should be ready during the summer, weather permitting, not that anybody's promising which side of the Olympics that'll be. And there'll be another brand new tourist attraction to see, should you fly in from North Greenwich, immediately after you exit the northside station...
The Crystal: This might not yet be on your radar, but a massive new spiky-shaped building is under construction at the western end of the Royal Victoria Dock [photo]. It's called the Crystal, and it's being built by German conglomerate Siemens to inspire and showcase "sustainable living choices". Inside, when it's finished, will be a major public exhibition, a 270-seat auditorium, and various other forward-looking facilities and technologies. The brochure describes this a "global knowledge hub that helps a diverse range of audiences learn and understand how we can all work to build better cities for ourselves and for future generations," which is the sort of language that reeks of tedious corporate worthiness, but I'd like to resist pre-judging the place before it opens in the summer. It's primed ready to attract Olympic crowds, those wandering ticketless around town with nothing better to do but swallow advertorial dressed up as education. And it's nearing completion, externally at least, like somebody dropped a huge new glass-panelled concert hall in the middle of nowheresville Newham. It'll be on your radar soon, The Crystal, trust me. And this July you might just ride from a mobile-sponsored Dome via an airline-sponsored cablecar to an engineering-sponsored sustainability exhibition. The future awaits.
They've updated the timetables on the DLR. They said they would, in a "simpler, easy to read format", and at the start of this week they did. And yes, as feared, dumbing down has indeed occurred. There's no longer any pretence that this is a timetable at all, apart from giving the times of the first and last trains each day (which are the least likely trains you'll ever catch). The interval between services is given as a vague range ("Trains run every 4-10 minutes"), but with no indication of which gap occurs at which time of the day and on which day of the week. Rather than revealing "Trains to Canary Wharf depart 0529 and then every ten minutes until 0039", which would be useful throughout the day, passengers at all stations are now lumbered with intermediate temporal woolliness. The much simplified map will be greatly appreciated, I'm sure, and shows clearly how long it takes to reach stations further down the line. But only stations accessible via direct trains are now included, and there's no pictorial hint that trains may not serve all destinations at all times. At stations with complicated service patterns, for example anywhere on the bifurcated line to Stratford International, a tiny easily-overlooked footnote is now the only clue that some services run peak hours, off-peak or weekends only. And rather than one poster per platform, each station now has a single timetable sheet listing services in both directions, which means ploughing through additional extraneous noise to find one-way information. To be fair, DLR timetables have been redesigned to look nigh exactly the same as those which grace tube platforms, and which Londoners have used with minimal moaning for the last few years. But on a railway like the DLR which runs regular services pretty much perfectly to time, usually at the same minutes past each hour, this latest development is unnecessarily bland. Simpler, agreed. Easier-to-read, partly. Massive over-simplification concealing potentially useful scheduling information from the travelling public, alas yes. Because this is the week when the DLR's passenger-facing scheduling information slipped behind a curtain, replaced by a very deliberate emphasis on live-running updates only. If you're connected, check in and confirm. And if not, hell, just turn up and wait.
For nine consecutive Februaries on diamond geezer I've kept myself busy by counting things. Ten different counts, to be precise, in a stats-tastic 28-day feature called The Count. You may therefore be delighted to hear that I intend to do exactly the same again this year. Or you may not, if you're a less numerate kind of person, in which case I'm sorry but that's how it is. This'll be the tenth February I've spent counting things so I have lots of thrilling historical data to compare the latest figures with, which I'll no doubt bore you all with at the end of the month. Here's my selected list of ten countables for February 2012.
Count 1: Number of visits to this blog (Feb 2011 total: 37200) (↑23% on 2010) Count 2: Number of comments on this blog (Feb 2011 total: 558) (↑41%) Count 3: Number of words I wrote on this blog (Feb 2011 total: 23120) (↑7%) Count 4: How many hours each day I work/rest/play (Feb 2011: work 24%, not-work 76%) Count 5: Number of nights I go out and am vaguely sociable (Feb 2011 total: 9) (↑125%) Count 6: Number of bottles of Becks I drink (Feb 2011 total: 20) (↑567%) Count 7: Number of cups of tea I drink (Feb 2011 total: 135) (↓1%) Count 8: Number of trains I travel on (Feb 2011 total: 109) (↑31%) Count 9: Number of escalators I walk up (Feb 2011 total: 35) (↑146%) Count 10: The Mystery Count(Feb 2011 total: 0) (again)
Once again I'll be using an online website called Daytum to keep track of my counts. Daytum is a real-time graphic tracker which displays numbers in aprettyway. For the next 24 hours it'll be displaying last February's totals, but then I'll set everything back to zero and start reporting this year's counts from scratch. I intend to update my counts on Daytum at least once a day until the 28th of the month, and then I'll come back and tell you how my February went. Stalk away.
Olympic update
Great name for a town. Gosport sounds vibrant and physical, like some well-meaning Government campaign to get schoolkids to exercise more. Alas no. This is a naval backwater on the western edge of Portsmouth Harbour, playing perpetual second fiddle to its sister city acros the water. There are two Gosports - one the aspirational marina community along the waterside (think yachts, and apartments to match), the other a less uplifting residential hinterland. The contrast between Portsmouth's Gunwharf Quays mall and Gosport's High Street is stark - less than a mile apart across the harbour, but one gets designer labels while the other gets the charity shops. Nipping between the two is the Gosport Ferry, a regular and efficient hop across the water with fine views of HMS Warrior and the Spinnaker Tower on the way. And there are at least two reasons to take the trip across...
As weapons of destruction go, submarines have a particularly alluring fascination. Maybe it's their ability to lurk underwater, maybe it's that little periscope that pokes up above the water, or maybe it's the unimaginably cramped conditions that sailors enured during months of underwater voyaging. So the existence of a national submarine museum should be of interest, especially a museum which allows visitors to go aboard two proper submarines. To gain entrance head towards the mouth of the harbour, adjacent to the Royal Navy's submariners' training school, in the shadow of the 100m tower where they practice emergency evacuation ascents. I found the place surprisingly busy for a Saturday, and not just because a coachload of teenage naval cadets had turned up for a day out (plus packed lunch).
The second submarine to explore is very special. It's HMS Holland, the Royal Navy's first submarine, and dates back as far to 1901. It looks precisely as Jules Verne might have imagined the Nautilus in 20000 Leagues Under The Sea - a cross between a bulging fish and a metal zeppelin. So fragile is the Holland that it has to be stored in a special ionised room... which I had all to myself on my visit, which was fantastic, especially when poking around inside the belly of the beast.
Its proper name is the Museum of Naval Firepower, but Explosion! sounds so much cooler. If you didn't know what the place was you then might be baffled by the brown sign in the High Street pointing towards Explosion!, like there was some security incident up the road or something. Instead a 20 minute walk up Weevil Lane awaits, past barracks converted to private housing, then across a long footbridge over a harbour inlet. This headland's a bit out of the way, I thought, but I guess that's precisely why the navy chose to build a Armaments Depot here on Priddy's Hard in the first place. Relative isolation also explained why the museum was terribly quiet, that and being the middle of winter which isn't exactly peak season for heritage tourism. The ladies on the desk took my money, watched intently to see whether I'd enter the museum or the cafe first, then went back to chatting when it became evident no fresh-brewed tea nor sandwiches were required.
The remainder of the exhibition focused on naval munitions through the ages, which I had thought might be dull, but was delivered with a Reithian flair. A cabinet of guns to satisfy the most ardent shoot-em-upper. A roomful of hanging mines, like some twisted challenge from the Crystal Maze. A large collection of heavy calibre guns, plus as much of the associated physics as you care to take. A selection of torpedoes, which are an older invention than you might think. A room of atomic missiles, thankfully decommissioned, as a jolting reminder of how far aerial weaponry has developed since the measly cannonball. And all with interactive audio-visual press button screens, because it's the 21st century now.
Charles Dickens was nine years old when he first noticed the big house at the top of the hill on the Gravesend Road. "A mansion of dull red brick," as he would later describe it, "with a weathercock surmounted cupola on the roof, and a bell hanging in it." It's in a very literary location - the precise setting of Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1 Act 2 scene 2 - which must also have appealed to the young wordsmith. Charles loved the house, and would often walk the five miles from his home in Chatham to the top of Gads Hill to stare at it. "If you were to be very persevering and were to work hard," said his father, "you might some day come to live in it." And lo, beyond Dickens' greatest expectations, this came to pass.
Gads Hill Place is no longer in the Dickens family. Charles' eldest son suffered ill-health and had to sell up, and the mansion is now in the possession of a boarding school. It's "the top-performing public school in England", according to the sign outside facing the main road, and one wonders whether English Literature is their speciality. Peer through the hedge, preferably out of term time, and a fairly non-descript frontage appears. The front garden has a broad gravel drive, some semi-smart grass and a small sundial/birdtable near the front door. The ground floor windows hint at education beyond - that's either a store cupboard of equipment or a rather messy classroom. But the fact that this might once have been home to one of Britain's greatest novelists, that's a hidden secret, unless you can read the words on the small plaque on the front wall, which only pupils (and their parents, dropping off) ever pass. [photo]
At Christmas 1864, Charles received a most unusual gift - a full-size two-storey Swiss chalet. He had it assembled on the opposite side of the Rochester High Road, and then built a brick tunnel beneath the road to link his house to his new writing studio. A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations were both written in the chalet, as was most of The Mystery of Edwin Drood - the book that Dickens never completed. Alas his end came swiftly and unexpectedly, cut down by a stroke at the age of 58 and dying on the green couch in his Gads Hill study the following day. He was buried not in Higham churchyard, as he'd requested, but in Westminster Abbey because the nation thought it knew best.
Among these, City Churchyards hold a high place. Such strange churchyards hide in the City of London; churchyards sometimes so entirely detached from churches, always so pressed upon by houses; so small, so rank, so silent, so forgotten, except by the few people who ever look down into them from their smoky windows. As I stand peeping in through the iron gates and rails, I can peel the rusty metal off, like bark from an old tree. The illegible tombstones are all lop-sided, the grave-mounds lost their shape in the rains of a hundred years ago, the Lombardy Poplar or Plane-Tree that was once a drysalter’s daughter and several common-councilmen, has withered like those worthies, and its departed leaves are dust beneath it. Contagion of slow ruin overhangs the place. The discoloured tiled roofs of the environing buildings stand so awry, that they can hardly be proof against any stress of weather. Old crazy stacks of chimneys seem to look down as they overhang, dubiously calculating how far they will have to fall. In an angle of the walls, what was once the tool-house of the grave-digger rots away, encrusted with toadstools. Pipes and spouts for carrying off the rain from the encompassing gables, broken or feloniously cut for old lead long ago, now let the rain drip and splash as it list, upon the weedy earth. Sometimes there is a rusty pump somewhere near, and, as I look in at the rails and meditate, I hear it working under an unknown hand with a creaking protest: as though the departed in the churchyard urged, ‘Let us lie here in peace; don’t suck us up and drink us!’
From the hush of these places, it is congenial to pass into the hushed resorts of business. Down the lanes I like to see the carts and waggons huddled together in repose, the cranes idle, and the warehouses shut. Pausing in the alleys behind the closed Banks of mighty Lombard-street, it gives one as good as a rich feeling to think of the broad counters with a rim along the edge, made for telling money out on, the scales for weighing precious metals, the ponderous ledgers, and, above all, the bright copper shovels for shovelling gold. About College-hill, Mark-lane, and so on towards the Tower, and Dockward, the deserted wine-merchants’ cellars are fine subjects for consideration; but the deserted money-cellars of the Bankers, and their plate-cellars, and their jewel-cellars, what subterranean regions of the Wonderful Lamp are these!
It's the big name exhibition in town, for one of the biggest names in literary London. A blockbuster roomful at the Museum of London, raking in the punters at eight quid a time, come to enjoy a collection of Dickensian memorabilia. Best plan in advance.
Please note entry to Dickens and London is by timed ticket only.Come at the weekend and you might have to wait. Even if you do get a timed ticket, be warned that the maximum number of timed tickets sold in a particular slot is rather high, so it can get very crowded inside. I decided weekday afternoon was the best bet, and was still surprised by the numbers. A post-retirement audience mostly, I'd guess Radio 4-friendly, making the most of their City matinee. And yes, we enjoyed.And while you're in Portsmouth, assuming you are, do pop into the City Museum. It's the big school-like building near the University, where their just-opened Dickens exhibition takes up about half of the ground floor. It reminded me a bit of the Museum of London's exhibition, in that it's mostly a collection of local Victoriana with a few genuine Dickensian artefacts thrown in. Here the special curios are a manuscript of Nicholas Nickleby (pictured), and the cut glass inkwell that was on Charles' desk the day he died. Every museum's got its own bit of that death scene, it seems. And at the other end of the building, as a bonus treat, you'll find a two-room display celebrating the life and works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He wasn't born in Portsmouth but moved here when starting as a GP, and it was during his decade-long practice that he wrote the very first Sherlock Holmes story. With a pair of greats like these, Portsmouth is a city punching above its literary weight.
Two hundred years ago today, not that anybody noticed at the time, one of the greatest authors of all time was born. Charles Dickens wasn't born in London, because that'd be presumptuous, nor in Kent, because that's only where he ended up. Instead he was born in Portsmouth, in a fairly ordinary terraced house near the Dockyard. John Dickens worked there as a clerk with the Navy, and it was here in Mile End Terrace that the first two of his children were born. The family didn't stay long, indeed Charles was only three months old when they moved up the road to somewhere better. But many years later, when he was considerably more successful, Charles came back to Portsmouth in an attempt to find the house where he'd spent his earliest weeks. He didn't succeed, he'd not come armed with sufficient memories or documentation. But after his death the people of Portsmouth realised they had a tourist attraction in their midst, and sought out the correct building, and turned it into a museum. And it's still going, which is damned impressive for a tiny 111-year-old concern up a sidestreet, but that's a sign of the measure of the great man.
It's fortunate that the citizens of Portsmouth preserved Dickens' birthplace when they did. The family lived on one of the main roads out of town, just north of what's now the main shopping centre, and approaching the site today things don't look very promising. A broad dual carriageway has replaced the former coaching road, which within a quarter of a mile mutates into a modern motorway to speed traffic out of town. Most of Old Commercial Road has long since vanished beneath four lanes of tarmac, or a line of scarily austere modern brick tenement blocks. But council planners have retained one small length of Georgian Portsmouth, diverting the A3 in a gentle curve around the rear of Dickens' back garden. They've preserved a desirable spot, complete with cobbles and the remains of old tramlines, made slightly incongruous by the number of council estate folk using the road as a cut-through to the deprived streets beyond. John Dickens paid rent of £35 a year, but it costs rather more to live in Mile End Terrace today, hence the houses neighbouring number 1 are beautifully maintained with ornamental front gardens. [photo]
On the residential slopes above non-tourist Greenwich, a warren of Victoriana covers the hillside. There are some most desirable properties up here, from spacious townhouses to narrow two-up two-downs, all in an ace location that's ever-so estate agent-friendly. We're homing in on one street, if you can call it a street, and that's Diamond Terrace. From Hyde Vale it looks like a private driveway, maybe two, ascending the hill into wooded seclusion. From Point Hill, beside one of the larger stucco lodgings, it looks like a back alley to someone's garage. And so it is, but further along it opens out to form a one-sided semi-private lane, running for a couple of hundred yards along a contour. You wouldn't walk along this unmade road by mistake - indeed the residents would probably rather you didn't walk along here at all. They live in blessed isolation in a motley collection of houses, most with marvellous views (at this leafless time of year) across the immediate skyline. One of London's protected views runs from The Point - at the top of the hill - across to St Paul's and Central London. Both are harder to see from Diamond Terrace because a row of chimneypots gets in the way, but the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf are clearly visible from up here, and the Greenwich Clock Tower too. If you're not familiar with the area, you may be surprised how steeply the slopes of SE10 rise up. The street parallel to Diamond Terrace is at least three storeys down, or a similar differential up, depending. You'd pay a panoramic premium to live here, as some of the assorted dwellings make evident. First past the garages are a brief collection of semi-detacheds, with gardens mostly paved, one with a stone cat acting as sentinel by the recycling bins. Then a couple of four-storey Georgian blocks, originally family homes, whose current owners protect their parking spaces with passive aggressive traffic cones. A little grander with a wrought iron balcony for the next pair, very Dickensian, very tastefully done. And finally, alas, I didn't venture right down to the end of the cul-de-sac for fear of looking intensely suspicious, but anywhere with its own heritage streetlamps has be top council tax band, surely. This was the only Diamond-themed street I visited with a lock-up offering Motor Services for classic cars, and also the only place where a faux fur shawl had been dumped in a hedge below the official nameplate. Diamond Terrace could have been snobbishly awful, but I found this back lane individual, withdrawn and understated. Just don't go looking for it on Google Streetview because it isn't there. The camera-van probably never found either of the minor entrances, or else the residents blockaded themselves in to keep this woody enclave a well-kept secret.
Less than a mile away, on the other side of the River Ravensbourne, lies a very different Diamond. You'll find it in the heart of Deptford, just off the High Street, but don't let that prejudge your expectations. This isn't a row of crumbling terraced houses round the corner from a row of pound shops, nor part of a hinterland of postwar council flats. Indeed Diamond Way isn't a residential street at all, not unless you include dead bodies, because this is the alleyway through the graveyard of St Paul's Church. What a fantastic (and unexpected) church this is - Italianate Baroque, which is rare enough, built of Portland Stone with a circular tower beneath a circular steeple. It looks quite European, surely Roman Catholic, but its origins are wholly C of E. Three hundred years ago this was one of twelve churches commissioned to serve London's growing population, the most famous of which are the Hawksmoors in Shoreditch, Limehouse, nearby Greenwich et al. The architect here in Deptford was Thomas Archer, also responsible for Birmingham Cathedral and bits of Chatsworth House. In 1969 St Paul's entered the custodianship of a new parish priest, the outgoing Father David Diamond. He built up the congregation, repositioned St Paul's at the heart of the local community, even instigated the Deptford Festival, until his untimely death in 1992. In grateful remembrance parishioners named the path along the northern edge of the church Diamond Way. It doesn't really need a name, to be honest, it's merely a cut-through from the High Street to Church Street, and the only street sign is semi-hidden behind railings and a lamppost at the western end. Close by (and facing the bookies opposite) is a red-painted cross, plus crucified Christ, as a reminder of why the church is here. And beyond are numerous stone memorials, gravestones and the like, looking precisely as weatherbeaten as you'd expect after nearly three centuries, and surround by newly laid turf (because pedestrians don't necessarily stick to the paths). It would be so easy to walk along the High Street and never notice this green oasis, indeed not to spot that this part of town has more to offer than non-chain shops and a bustling market. But the church John Betjeman described as the "Pearl in the Heart of Deptford" still thrives, and remembers, along Diamond Way.
This is the closest Diamond-named street to the centre of London. That doesn't mean you'll ever have been, indeed it's likely you've never even been close by. We're south of Burgess Park on the North Peckham estate, along Southampton Way, in the middle of one of those large swathes of the capital where people merely live. Had the Cross River Tram ever been built then services would have glided past the end of Diamond Street, either at one end or the other depending which southeast option had been built. Instead this road lives out a meagre existence in relative anonymity - a ragbag of modern flats and houses - and no more than two minutes walk from end to end. I had high hopes for some feature of interest as I approached, with a tall narrow segmented tower block rising in the general area, but no, that was on the adjacent Southampton Way Estate. Diamond Street was merely a brief link road, with the majority of flats along its length opening out onto some adjacent more important thoroughfare. One especially modern block, screened behind grey railings, is only five years old (I know this because satellite images on Yahoo Maps still show it as currently under construction). Nobody's bothered to add a balcony to these flats, not even a small one, because you just wouldn't. There are some proper terraced houses on one side of the road, numbers 2-26, although in fairly utilitarian brick. Most have a lacklustre attempt at a self-supporting porch, and a nasty black patch above the front door where either water or smoke has been leaking for years. All the so-called gardens are hardstanding for cars and wheelie bins, and while there is a patch of grass verge across the road, somebody's dumped a mattress on it plus the packaging in which the replacement was delivered. There are plenty of laybys for cars, just as in Diamond Street's Stonebridge namesake, and also a couple of pairs of speed humps (which a passing fire engine has to take inappropriately slowly). As I pass the flats at the top end of the road, I spy a pair of pink marigolds at work in the ground floor window. On reaching Chandler Way I turn and look back at Diamond Street, and sigh, and wonder how I'll ever be able to write 400 words about it when I get home. But never fear, because every street in London's interesting in its own way, even (alas) this one.
Out in the deep morass of East London, in the part they prefer to think of as Essex, lies the only bejewelled cul-de-sac in my Diamond list. I was convinced I'd travelled out at least as far as Barking and Dagenham, but fractionally not quite, this is still the outer reaches of Redbridge. This turns out to be important. The Becontree Estate begins a couple of streets away, once the largest housing estate in the world, but Diamond Close avoids architectural similarity by being much later infill along the border. Most of the roads around here are straight or gently curved, but the roads on this 80s development are deeply sinuous, presumably in an attempt to cram in as many new houses as possible. These are streets where builders live, and aerial fitters, and Kelly who runs Kelly's Big Baps which she runs from a mobile burgervan she keeps parked up round the back of the house. It's the sort of area where shaven-headed blokes walk past in shirtsleeves, even when it's midwinter and bloody freezing, and where drivers are proud to affix an English Democrats sticker to their rear windscreen. You'll find Diamond Close near Crystal Way, just past Sapphire Close. It's a curved dead end, very short, with mighty evergreens at one end and a fence plus bin store at the other. The bins are "Private for use of flats only", which means none of the residents of Diamond Close can use them. They all live in the nine houses down the opposite side of the close - a staggered row of sturdy late 20th century brick with shallow-sloping roofs. As house number increases so the front garden space grows, from 100% parking space at the lower end to 50% fenced off lawn at the higher. It's parking nirvana here, to be frank, and if an entire amateur football team turned up for a barbecue in their sporty GTIs there'd be plenty of room for all. It's also precisely the sort of road where I'd expect a cabbie to live... so it comes as no surprise that in one of the nine houses one actually does. Owner-occupied, satellite dish-enabled, trim, tidy, and above all neighbourly, that's Diamond Close. I'd expect Boris Johnson to clean up along here in this year's mayoral elections - just a hunch, but I bet I'm right. And a heck of a lot of Outer London resembles Diamond Close. Ignore the suburbs at your peril.
That's Stonebridge, close to Stonebridge Park, the next station up the line from Harlesden and Willesden Junction. Just round the back of the Neasden temple, that's where my first Diamond-named street lies. It's also the newest of the lot, built as part of a decade-long 21st century redevelopment project which has seen the demolition of one of London's most notorious estates. The original Stonebridge Park Estate emerged in the late 1960s, replacing a Victorian suburban development with council-funded tower blocks. You know the drill - hopes of highrise utopia gradually dashed by broken-down lifts, increasing crime and communal misery - until Stonebridge Park wasn't somewhere you'd want to even visit, let alone live. How the area's changed. That's partly thanks to the Stonebridge Housing Action Trust (who have the most unfortunate acronym), but mostly due to the gradual removal of concrete monolith after concrete monolith, and their replacement by something hugely more pleasant. All of the replacement buildings are lowrise brick, none higher than four storeys, and yet the council's still managed to relocate all the residents from the old in the new. Now a tangled web of broad streets covers the area, with the most fortunate houses lining the landscaped Brent Feeder - a 200 year old channel linking the Welsh Harp Reservoir to the Grand Union Canal. From the footbridge follow Sapphire Road uphill, and at the crossroads this magically metamorphoses into Diamond Street. It's a quiet junction, quiet enough on my visit to be the kickabout location of choice for three small boys. A long dribble, a wallside tap, and then the recovery of aforesaid football from beneath a parked-up truck. Excitingly this street corner features the first VG Store I've seen in many a decade. It's not got the VG logo I remember, and the windows are bedecked only with photos of generic fruit, but this is still a Very Good convenience outlet for those living hereabouts. Flats above, with smooth curving balconies, and more flats alongside - the Diamond Street 26-42 Evens. These aren't bad as modern blocks go, mostly brick and glass but with understated metalwork features throughout. Numbers 2-24, on the other hand, are proper houses, laid out in a long brown terrace with rooms inside for above-average-sized families. Walk up the pavement to the T-junction at top of the slope and you'll likely spot the inhabitants pass, or peer from a window, or park up outside. On the corner with Ruby Street I spy a group of black-coated ladies and daughters, standing gossiping in that blessed hour immediately after attending church. It's an especially Afro-Caribbean neighbourhood around here, but not exclusively, and any taint of the old crime-ridden estate feels long gone. Clean, unthreatening, desirable - London's youngest Diamond Street is a rare triumph of post-blight cohesion.
I'm glad that at least one of these half-dozen streets lies in proper suburbia. Far from the centre of London, South Ruislip's virtually Metroland, except that the local tube line's orange, not purple. In this corner of Hillingdon history doesn't really kick off until the fields were ploughed for housing, which'd be about 75 years ago. And this was the era of King George V's Silver Jubilee, so it's no surprise to find roads named Royal Crescent and Jubilee Drive. Diamond Road begins on the latter, at an anonymous corner which could be anywhere west of Wembley, marked by a lone dogmess bin on a narrow verge. First up are a few flats, thirties style, one unfortunate enough to have a public phonebox in its front garden. They'd never stand for open access further up the road. Diamond Road bends ninety degrees to become a tree-lined avenue of perfect semis. The dominant features are a first floor acute-angled bathroom window, and a brick arch (of varying dimensions) looping over the front porch. Although there are subtle difference between adjacent pairs, and even the occasional bungalow to break up the pattern, the entire street hangs together architecturally in a repeated motif of angular brown and white. Many houses still have the original stained glass panels in a downstairs window, probably something ornate and floral, in a variety of bright primary colours. A few front gardens are still a riot of well-tended foliage, or they would be were it not midwinter. One householder is up a ladder, chopping every branch from a roof-high fir tree, leaving behind a forlorn limbless trunk poking up into the leylandii nextdoor. A ginger tabby pads out onto the pavement through a gap in a very low hedge. Nothing much happens, for some considerable time, but then that's suburbia for you. Cut through the one street to the south and you end up on Victoria Road, which is South Ruislip's answer to an out-of town mall. All those big stores that sell electrical goods and furniture, they're all here, as well as a Kwik Fit and a Halfords and a Wickes. In the car park a small white trailer is parked up, dispensing burgers, hot dogs and hot drinks to any shopper who requires refreshment between warehouse stops. Nobody's biting. This retail park's all terribly convenient for the residents of Diamond Road, who could easily walk, except I bet they drive because driving's the done thing around here. The great majority of houses have paved over the space between building and street, all the better for parking up probably two cars, the first quite possibly a BMW, the second a smaller hatchback. It's not ridiculously comfortable living out here, but it's pleasant, and peaceful, and a darned sight more aspirational than most of its London namesakes. I spent most of my childhood living in a semi-detached house exactly like those here, and Diamond Road feels very much like home.
ArabFly North Greenwich: The last time I was here, and had a cup of tea in the works canteen, there wasn't a lot to see. A pile of scaffolding rising from razed earth, with an upper deck picked out in timber, nothing more. Two months later, quite a change. The southern station is now clearly evident, with its upper platform supported by a thick central concrete block. The top level is long with one curved end, like a collapsed letter U. Tall white pillars stand ready to hold up a wall of glass, rising to further white latticework crossing the roof. And inside, or what will one day be inside, the system's machinery is mostly in place. At the riverward end it's already encased in plastic, but inshore the innards remain visible. It looks like the top shelf in a tyre showroom, with a collection of rubber wheels squished up in a curving line, ready to carry the various gondolas and their human contents as they swing round for embarkation [photo]. A few connecting staircases are evident, most for engineering use, one merely a ladder. And at the heart of it all a giant red wheel ready to rotate and move the cable around, if only there were a cable, which as yet there isn't [photo]. Plus, if all that weren't enough, a second building of similar size (but less interesting architecture) has appeared alongside. This is for the storage and maintenance of whichever of the 34 cabins aren't in motion across the river, and it too has an upper ringway of tightly-packed tyres. You won't be able to see much of any of this later, not from the outside, but for now the mechanics of the various interiors are plain to see. [photo]
North Intermediate Tower: But this one's up and ready. It's the smallest of the three masts, designed to help lift skyward pods over the Royal Docks, but it still towers higher than anything else in the surrounding area. Elegant, twisted and thin, it rises to a narrow Y-shaped peak - a bit like a giant razor blade but where the blade's fallen off. Up top, all the necessary connecting shenanigans is already in place. Two arcs of wheels, over which each individual cablecar will joltingly pass. A gantry each side, presumably for maintenance, and not for use as a public escape route during the forthcoming disaster movie Dangleway Doom. And a balancing connecting bit, to support the whole thing high in the sky, as necessary. You might expect the view from up there to be stunning, and it might be, so long as you only look in certain directions. Look straight down in the immediate vicinity of the North Intermediate Tower and you'll see one of the ugliest landscapes that East London has to offer. The surrounding land is either industrial or post industrial. Open patches of earth await inward investment, should anybody ever care. High metal fences bar public access. Dock Road, running along the foot of the flyover, is home to wheelie bins, skips and minor commercial enterprises of the kind you'd normally hide beneath railway arches. Every so often a DLR train glides by, adding a welcome splash of colour [photo]. But, word of advice, don't look down, keep your eyes firmly fixed on the river, the Dome or the distant City skyscape.
They've updated the timetables on the DLR. They said they would, in a "simpler, easy to read format", and at the start of this week they did. And yes, as feared, dumbing down has indeed occurred. There's no longer any pretence that this is a timetable at all, apart from giving the times of the first and last trains each day (which are the least likely trains you'll ever catch). The interval between services is given as a vague range ("Trains run every 4-10 minutes"), but with no indication of which gap occurs at which time of the day and on which day of the week. Rather than revealing "Trains to Canary Wharf depart 0529 and then every ten minutes until 0039", which would be useful throughout the day, passengers at all stations are now lumbered with intermediate temporal woolliness. The much simplified map will be greatly appreciated, I'm sure, and shows clearly how long it takes to reach stations further down the line. But only stations accessible via direct trains are now included, and there's no pictorial hint that trains may not serve all destinations at all times. At stations with complicated service patterns, for example anywhere on the bifurcated line to Stratford International, a tiny easily-overlooked footnote is now the only clue that some services run peak hours, off-peak or weekends only. And rather than one poster per platform, each station now has a single timetable sheet listing services in both directions, which means ploughing through additional extraneous noise to find one-way information. To be fair, DLR timetables have been redesigned to look nigh exactly the same as those which grace tube platforms, and which Londoners have used with minimal moaning for the last few years. But on a railway like the DLR which runs regular services pretty much perfectly to time, usually at the same minutes past each hour, this latest development is unnecessarily bland. Simpler, agreed. Easier-to-read, partly. Massive over-simplification concealing potentially useful scheduling information from the travelling public, alas yes. Because this is the week when the DLR's passenger-facing scheduling information slipped behind a curtain, replaced by a very deliberate emphasis on live-running updates only. If you're connected, check in and confirm. And if not, hell, just turn up and wait.
For nine consecutive Februaries on diamond geezer I've kept myself busy by counting things. Ten different counts, to be precise, in a stats-tastic 28-day feature called The Count. You may therefore be delighted to hear that I intend to do exactly the same again this year. Or you may not, if you're a less numerate kind of person, in which case I'm sorry but that's how it is. This'll be the tenth February I've spent counting things so I have lots of thrilling historical data to compare the latest figures with, which I'll no doubt bore you all with at the end of the month. Here's my selected list of ten countables for February 2012.
Once again I'll be using an online website called Daytum to keep track of my counts. Daytum is a real-time graphic tracker which displays numbers in a pretty way. For the next 24 hours it'll be displaying last February's totals, but then I'll set everything back to zero and start reporting this year's counts from scratch. I intend to update my counts on Daytum at least once a day until the 28th of the month, and then I'll come back and tell you how my February went. Stalk away.
