Tubewatch (42)To Battersea
As you'll be aware, there are plans to extend the Northern line to Battersea. They're only plans because the entire project is "subject to funding", which in turn is reliant on the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station, and that's anything but a certainty. But if everything gets the go-ahead, two new underground stations could be open by 2019. Does the area deserve it? I've been down to have a look.
Kennington: At present, off-peak at least, the Charing Cross branch of the Northern line terminates at Kennington. Southbound trains disappear into a big loop of tunnel - the Kennington Loop - and emerge on the opposite platform ready to head north again. The new extension would take advantage of this loop to blast off a fresh tunnel in the general direction of Battersea. It'd be a long tunnel too, almost two miles to the next station, because this new extension pauses for no man. It careers off at right angles, drawn by the smell of developers' cash, crossing the Victoria line without making any attempt to stop. Socially speaking that's strange, because it's hard to imagine anyone in the Battersea area having a burning need to visit Kennington. The area around the station's nice enough, blessed with leafy streets and quiet squares, even a tasteful parade of independent shops. But all the action's with the interchange underground and the possibilities a direct connection the West End would bring.
Nine Elms: The site of the proposed Northern line station probably isn't what you expect. A building site perhaps, maybe a corner of the fruit and vegetable market. None of these. Instead the new station will be built along the far end of Sainsbury's car park, in the farthest corner just past the petrol station. You might be able to park there now and fill your boot with carrier bags, but in seven years this expanse could mark the site of the lifts and the ticket machine. Sainsbury's won't mind too much, they already have plans to build flats across most of the rest of their car park, and they'll also be handsomely rewarded with thousands more tube-driven customers. A couple of semi-industrial buildings will have to be demolished to make way for the station, one of them the Head Office of burglar alarm company Banhams. I do hope they're already looking for alternative accommodation, just in case. Meanwhile on the opposite side of Pascal Street is a nondescript crescent of family houses and utilitarian flats, whose residents are in for an absolute windfall if they own their own homes and a serious rent-hike if they don't. Indeed the adjacent stretch of the Wandsworth Road is anything but wealthy-looking, and precisely the sort of neighbourhood whose prospects are likely to be uplifted by the appearance of a major public transport node. But it's the area beyond the railway at the cul-de-sac end of Pascal Street that developers truly have their eye on. This is central London's biggest regeneration area, with the potential for 16000 new homes, and a pedestrian link to Nine Elms station is a necessity. The moated cuboid fortress of the American Embassy will be a short stroll away, not that the ambassador would ever dream of taking public transport when there's a bulletproof limo on call. The surrounding housing development, unimaginatively named Embassy Gardens, is already under construction, if levelling the ground and piling up portakabins counts. As for the famous New Covent Garden Market, that intends to squeeze into a smaller corner of its existing site to enable the construction of more towers, so come enjoy the Sunday boot sale while you can. It's clear that the demographic profile of Nine Elms' new residents will be in complete contrast to the community along Wandsworth Road, as moneyed Londoners suddenly decide they might be happy living just beyond Vauxhall after all. A development whirlwind is coming, entirely independent of the fate of the Power Station, but a new Northern line station wouldn't half speed things up.
Battersea: The station might be called Battersea, but the location isn't. The real Battersea's further upstream, further inland, whereas this is much more Nine Elms... except that name's been taken. Those four iconic chimneys, the cylinders that used to belch smoke but now stand crumbling, they're the magnet that draws the Battersea name here. They're also due to be knocked down shortly, and replaced if you believe the Malaysian developers. The Northern line's new terminus is destined to appear on the southern perimeter of the power station site, amid a grey tarmac expanse long since cleared of any industrial outliers. It's hard to imagine the area as offices, apartments and malls, but that's what's scheduled if the developers get their act together. Alight here for a nice meal, a multiplex cinema and the chance to rummage through arcades of designer handbags. For now the only hospitality in the immediate neighbourhood comes from The Duchess across the road, local pub of choice for the extensive council estates immediately beyond. Their residents are about to discover untold facilities on their doorstep, or else be priced out of the area altogether. Close by is Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, also ridiculously well located for the new station, which may be good news for waifs and strays yet to be born. And there are the railways. This corner of the capital already has half a dozen railway lines passing through, some from Waterloo, others from Victoria, the only problem being nobody's built any platforms immediately alongside the power station. Queenstown Road and Battersea Park stations may be five minutes distant, but you can't expect penthouse residents or Gucci buyers to walk that far, and they're only rail stations so apparently they don't count. These days only a tube connection is good enough, and that's the sole reason the Northern line is coming. If it comes. The Nine Elms development needs the station and the station needs the development - vicious circle, or superfeedback loop?
A public consultation into the Northern line extension is currently underway, with the first public event this Friday and Saturday on Nine Elms Lane. Have your say, you never know, it might make a difference.
Tube geek (42)Not on the map
This blog's not a fan of clutter on the tube map. Wheelchair blobs, excess daggers, tiny annotation, unnecessary excess, no thank you. But what other useful additions might the tube map gain? Things that might actually aid travel rather than getting in the way. I'm not necessarily recommending the following, but how about...
» Tramlink: If the DLR can cause East London to be over-represented on the tube map, why shouldn'tCroydon's tram system fly the flag for south London?
» Thameslink: A really useful railway line cuts through the heart of London from St Pancras down to London Bridge. It also extends to Kentish Town and Elephant & Castle which are already on the tube map. It'll have a very frequent service once the Thameslink programme is complete. Doesn't it deserve a place? It might even look like this.
» River Bus services: Take the Thames out and replace it by a blue line from Woolwich to Westminster with all the piers marked. Might get the Clipper service used more, if it was higher in public consciousness.
» Crossrail: Not so fast! It's still six years before London's newest underground railway clogsup the heart of the tube map something rotten.
» The South London line: Too late. This becomes part of the Overground next month, and so will be appearing on the next version of the tube map in four weeks time. Bring it on?
Tubewatch (41)Mind the gap
The Underground operates a turn-up-and-go service. You don't usually need a timetable, you simply arrive at a station safe in the knowledge that there'll be a train soon. Except on certain parts of the network, that is, where trains run slightly less frequently and you might have to wait a bit. Below is a list of all the parts of the network where trains run at intervals of ten minutes or more. Not that a ten minute wait is bad, you understand, just unusual. I wonder if passengers waiting to travel round the corners of the Circle line ever realise that they have one of the least frequent tube services? Every 10 minutes: Turnham Green → Richmond, Acton Town → Ealing Broadway, Ealing Common → Rayners Lane, Heathrow5 → Heathrow123, Hatton Cross → Heathrow4 → H123, Stonebridge Park → Harrow & Wealdstone, High Street Kensington → Gloucester Road, High Street Kensington → Earl's Court, Liverpool Street → Tower Hill, Liverpool Street → Aldgate East. Every 15 minutes: Moor Park → Watford/Chalfont & Latimer, Finchley Central → Mill Hill East Every 20 minutes: Hainault → Woodford Every 30 minutes: Chalfont & Latimer → Amersham/Chesham, Earl's Court → Kensington (Olympia)* (* if the shuttle's even running) For the purposes of this post, I'm assuming it's noon on a weekday.
Tube quiz (41)Ex stations
Here are the names of 20 stations. Ten of them used to be served by the London Underground but no longer are, five are current London Underground stations and five have never been London Underground stations. Can you spot the ten ex-stations?
Richmond
Watford Junction
Tottenham Hale
New Cross
Clapham Junction
Hendon Central
Ilford
Rotherhithe
Shoeburyness
Greenford
Leigh-on-Sea
Drayton Park
Ongar
Fenchurch Street
Southall
Slough
Alexandra Palace
High Wycombe
Balham
Stoke Mandeville
[Answers in the comments box. Have a go at picking the ten ex-stations before you peek]
Tube geek (41)Out of station interchanges
The tube map includes several blobby interchanges where you can change trains. At some of these you wander around inside the station itself, whereas at others you have to leave and head somewhere else. It's these out of station interchanges I'm interested in today. How far out of station are they? I've been busy with a stopwatch to find out. Please note: All of these times are from gateline to gateline, because that's easily defined. I tried walking these connections on a Sunday, so there wasn't much traffic around and crossing roads didn't hold me up. I walk fairly fast and I always walk up escalators. Consider these minimum interchange times - you'd probably take longer.
White City → Wood Lane (2m30) An easy stroll links these two stations, walking past the main entrance to BBC Television Centre. You'll be pleased to hear that Auntie's lair hasn't imploded yet. Hammersmith → Hammersmith (1m30) This non-trivial interchange requires walking through a shopping centre and crossing two main roads. I was amazed it was possible in as little as 90 seconds. Paddington → Paddington (3m45) Reaching the H&C line platforms from the rest of the underground station requires walking along platform 9. It's appallingly signposted. West Hampstead → West Hampstead (1m) An absolute doddle crossing the road to the Overground - the shortest of all the out of station interchanges I attempted. Bank → Monument (4m30) You're not supposed to do this at street level, but it might be worth considering because the escalator trek (from Central line platform to District line platform) took me 5 minutes underground. Tower Hill → Tower Gateway (2m5) If you can dodge the tourists, it's only a couple of minutes from the District line ticket hall and up the DLR escalator. Bow Road → Bow Church (3m10) I'm forever having to give directions to lost souls attempting to follow this one, but it's fairly quick if you know what you're doing. Canary Wharf → Canary Wharf (3m20) This includes the walk up the mega escalator out of the Jubilee line station and past the foot of the Canary Wharf tower... Canary Wharf → Heron Quays (2m30) ...but this route to the DLR is quicker (even if the service at the DLR end isn't quite as good). North Greenwich → Dangleway North Greenwich (5m) The slowest out-of-station interchange on the tube map. Because the cablecar isn't an integrated part of the transport network, it's a tourist attraction.
But hang on, there are also several out of station interchanges that are jolly convenient but don't appear on the tube map. I've timed a few of these too. Perhaps they should be more widely advertised. Euston → Euston Square (5m) From tube gateline to tube gateline is five minutes, whereas from the mainline ticket hall to Euston Square is one minute quicker. Aldgate East → Aldgate (3m20) It means crossing the gyratory, but this is a straight easy run at street level. Tower Hill → Fenchurch Street (1m35) This is much quicker than you probably think it is, using the entrance at the eastern end of the c2c terminus. Edgware Road → Edgware Road (2m35) They may be two completely different stations with the same name, separated by the Westway, but they're really quite close. Bayswater → Queensway (2m15) Famously these two stations are both on the same street, not far apart. Having to use lifts down to the platforms would slow down the interchange, though. Paddington → Lancaster Gate (7m) It requires some nous to follow, but this walk is one of the fastest routes from Paddington to the Central line. Park Royal → Hanger Lane (7m40) A bleak yomp alongside Western Avenue connects the Piccadilly and Central lines in the depths of zone 3. Northwick Park → Kenton (5m10) A useful suburban link between Metropolitan and Bakerloo which, in terms of time taken, is on much the same scale as Bank-Monument.
Time once again for diamond geezer to go totally tubular with another week devoted to the London Underground. Prepare for five days of quizzes, quirks, commentary and obscure statistics. Nine years ago I looked at the busiest stations and journeys where it was quicker to walk. Eight years ago I investigated tube line colours and the easiest interchanges. Seven years ago I discussed overcrowding and precisely where the underground is underground. Six years ago I wrote about accessibility and why people never move down the platform. Five years ago I examined the agonies of Bank/Monument and taking your bike on the tube. Four years ago I spent the entire week wondering why 'next train' indicators are installed by cretins. Three years ago I visited the tube's least used station and wondered where all the litter bins went. Two years ago I took the Chesham shuttle and bemoaned the evils of the new King's Cross passageways. And last year I ventured beyond Edgware and counted the stairs. I hope there's still something left to write about this year. Mind the doors.
I shall miss Messenger when it disappears. That's Windows Live Messenger, formerly known as MSN Messenger, the online conversational service. I've been chatting to folk through the medium of words ever since 1999 when Messenger kicked off. But Microsoft have announced that their protege will be retired from March next year and all users urged to switch over to Skype instead, which they also own.
What I liked about Messenger, and its Yahoo/AOL variants, was the "instant" part of instant messaging. A sentence typed at my end could be off to the other side of the planet and a response back in a matter of seconds. It became very easy to have a decent conversation without actually talking, which is the main reason I liked it. I'm not one for picking the phone up and actually ringing someone, so text based chat has been a godsend, even a lifeline, for keeping in touch with various acquaintances.
Email's not the same. You can write more, indeed writing more's encouraged, but then the whole chain of communication becomes slow and is anything but instant. Twitter's not the same. The whole conversation's public, and I don't know about you but I'm not happy to broadcast my private thoughts like that. Texting's not the same. Even though you can only send a few words there's still a relatively lengthy delay between each message, and attempting to have any sort of meaningful conversation can take ages. Ditto most of the other browser-based messaging services that have arisen more recently. Once you press send it'll be at least a couple of minutes before the page refreshes and any response returns, and you can waste hours of your life hanging around that way.
The advance of mobile technology is also helping to make instant messaging obsolete. I blame smaller devices. Even if you're good at typing or tapping on a mobile, it's not as quick as using a full-size keyboard. Whereas people used to be able to dash off a long comment now they tend to write considerably less and so conversation dumbs down. And I blame always-on wifi. You'd think people would be more available to chat these days, but instead it only looks that way because mobiles stay logged on even when their owners aren't looking at them. And I blame apps. Mobiles and tablets aren't designed for multi-tasking, so attempting to watch a film or play a game or read a map AND manage an online conversation is doomed to fail.
I'm missing Messenger already. There used to be dozens of people I knew on there, and now there aren't. Indeed there were years when I only had to log into the system and some friend would pop up for a conversation, maybe several. Not any more. Now I can log in and nobody says hello at all, and nobody's there if I want to say hello back.
Let me quantify that sense of disassociation. I've checked out the 141 online Messenger contacts I've accumulated over the last decade, and how long ago it is since they last signed into the service. And it's quite a long time.
Signed in...
At 9pm last night: 2
In the last year: 24
In the last day: 5
In the last two years: 10
In the last week: 11
In the last three years: 21
In the last month: 14
Longer ago than that: 54
Some of these people I can still chat to in other ways, but most just blipped out one day never to return. Maybe they blocked me because I was boring. Maybe they gave up because the interface became flaky. But more than likely Messenger just fell off the list of their priorities, and with it so did I.
I don't expect you to have sympathy, especially when alternative platforms are available. I expect you to say "Pull yourself together Granddad and get with the programme". You're probably better at keeping in touch with people than I am, and/or more embracing of modern forms of communication. But I'm sorry that something simple and effective is being killed off (if indeed it wasn't semi-comatose already) as a company ditches its past to monetise its future. Rest assured I'll still be sitting here, but I may not speak to you soon.
fivelinks
• A Bend in the River is a black and white photo essay of a journey down the Thames from Waterloo to Tilbury combining images, music, speech and estuarine noises [from Artangel]
• Take the train to Margate this winter for only £10 return using a Portas Pilot ticket. Mary's hope is that Londoners will flock down and spend money, be that the Old Town, the Turner Contemporary, the Shell Grotto or even a scuzzy caff on the high street [high-speed train included]
• For a sense of the capital's transient diversity, try watching Londoners as they wait for a bus. That's the premise behind By The Bus Stop - a portfolio of candid photographs from Richard Hooker[maybe you're in there somewhere]
• The latest (third) edition of Curiocity, the mini concertina-fold London magazine, is now available. Short and nuggety on one side, the reverse is an inspired A3 after-dark map of pseudo constellations[from selected stockists for £2.50, or through the post]
• The last few tickets for this year's Boring Conference are still available. They're £20 a time, but for that you get to sit on a chair and listen to people talk about fridges, yellow lines, toast, shop fronts, self-service machines, IBM tills and toilets [2011's conference was great]
In North Greenwich and elsewhere around the country, the Massive Stock Liquidation is underway. Three posters slapped up outside Comet bring the bad news, or the good news, depending on which side of the till you're on. The public aren't flooding in, but there's more of them than usual, which is part of the ongoing problem. The warehouse is bright and cavernous, with not quite as much stuff crammed into it as you might expect. Up near the front is a display of laptops packed with Windows 8 - only a fortnight old, but already up for grabs at reduced price. Not much reduced, to be honest, if you were expecting this firesale to be more of an inferno. 10% off is all you'll get on some aisles, twenty on others, and nowhere more than thirty. It's better than normal, but not hugely, as the administrators attempt to sell off the company silver for as much as they can get. This is the same plan as was used when winding down Woolworths, to start cutting small, then cut deeper for the less desirable stuff. And the policy seems to be working, as lots of goods have gone already and the remaining stock is slightly thin on the ground.
There are plenty of printers, plenty of fridge freezers, plenty of slimline televisions, if any of those need upgrading chez vous. But if you fancy new headphones, or a fresh toaster, or one of those electronic gizmos that plugs your thingy into your wotsit, don't hold your breath. There are plenty of display models, labelled "ROT - do not sell without permission", but very little is boxed up on the bottom shelf ready for sale. Equally there are still cards to take to the till to exchange for a year's technical support, not that Comet's likely to be around long enough to deliver. Potential customers wander around picking over potential bargains but alighting on little. It's an outmoded method of shopping, this, now the internet's taking trade away. When you can browse at home, then get some driver in a delivery van to bring it to you, why travel to a shed on a peninsula? The future of retail's changing, meaning it's more important to trim costs than sustain jobs, and Comet's just the next business off the cliff edge.
No salesperson rushes over when you hover slightly too long near anything - the staff are all standing around near the entrance discussing their futures. Dixons might offer some of them temporary Christmas posts, but once the store's stock's disappeared long term prospects aren't good. I stop at the till on the way out where one of the doomed staff directs me to another. She works politely through my minor purchase and ends by asking if I want a bag. I wouldn't normally but, you know, last chance to collect and all that. She reaches for an ill-printed piece of paper which warns me goods can no longer be exchanged, and staples it to my receipt. I wish her well and leave the store to its slow death. It might take a few weeks, with initial price reductions nothing worth dashing across town for. But this star's on an inexorable downward trajectory, due to crash to earth somewhere near you soon.
I had an hour and a bit to fill after work yesterday, so I went to the Natural History Museum. That's one of the joys of working in Central London - you can nip out for a ton of culture in the evening in a way that's not possible in, say, Ipswich. I should nip out more often.
4:30pm The Museum Ice Rink
Walk out of the subway at dusk and ooooh, all the trees are magically lit up with fairy lights. By now the ice rink's already busy with families and couples swirling around in slow circles. They all seem to be enjoying themselves, which at £13.50 for 50 minutes you'd hope they were. It's still early so few crowds are watching, and there are no queues for the rinkside refreshments either. The tented cafe is brought to you by a well known High Street coffee chain, stretching their menu beyond "Red Cup favourites" to a selection of mulled alcohols. The only natural history related features here are the penguin-branded stabilisers for kids, plus the equine merry-go-round illuminated by the entrance. But if you're a top museum with outdoor space and two months to fill, why wouldn't you freeze it over.
4:35pm Dinosaurs
This is usually packed, or at least it is at weekends. But come late afternoon in the week after half term and the experience is considerably more manageable. Turn left at Dippy in the main hall, then up onto the central walkway to stroll between old bones. The gallery's been very well done, whether you're after facts or spectacle, right down to the giant T Rex behind the screen at the far end. This scared the willies out of my nephew several years ago, growling and roaring at the bottom of the ramp with animatronic largesse. I skedaddled past the ground level displays on that occasion, but they're really varied and informative if you stop to read them. The hanging skeletons look like fibreglass, but these are proper old skulls and ribs, some of them from deepest Sussex. Oh yes, the dinosaurs are definitely best viewed without kids (sorry kids).
4:55pm The Darwin Centre
It's been open three years, but for some reason I've not made it here before. An eight storey glass extension, located just round the back of the blue whale, built to house a properly scientific exploratorium. Take the glass lift to the 7th floor to delve inside the Cocoon, which is a multi-storey egg-shapedconcrete shell housing the museum's comprehensive collection of plant and animal specimens. You won't get right inside to see the rows of shelves, but there is clear view of the scientists working in their labs alongside. Some were working late, others were packing up after a hard day's analysing and classifying. The visitor experience does a really good job of explaining what these folk do, and might well inspire an inquisitive teen to consider a career in some related scientific field. Don't forget to pick up a barcoded Nature Plus card on the way in, then you can "collect" experiences on the way round to investigate further when you get home. I had a good time on the interactive panels pretending to be twelve again, in the absence of any twelve year old audience looking on and wishing they were playing instead. If you think you've 'done' the NHM, thanks to Darwin you might not have done.
5:30pm The Minerals Gallery
It's often one of the emptiest rooms in the museum because most visitors are here for the animals not the rocks. But I love this 1881 gallery, with its rows and rows of Victorian display cases and a long row of elegant pillars stretching off into the distance. This is the largest public display of minerals in the world, from quartz to Blue John and topaz to iron pyrites. The best part is right down at the far end, in The Vault, where some truly out of this world exhibits are kept. Here are the meteorites, two of them chipped-off chunks of Mars, others formerly part of the Moon. A powder of micro-diamonds formed in a supernova before the solar system was born is described as the oldest thing you will ever see, which is fairly mind-blowing late on a November afternoon. Ladies and Gentlemen the museum will be closing in ten minutes.
5:47pm The NHM shop
There are three museum shops, one full of dinosaur-related goodies, one selling rocks, and the other larger and more mainstream. There's some serious stuff, and some gifty stuff, and quite a lot of stuff aimed firmly at children, but nothing I'd descibe as in any way tacky. It being this time of year I should probably mutter the words "stocking filler" and leave you to mull that over. Just try to arrive before ten to six.
It's time once again for the annual announcementon tube/bus fare rises. This year's average price rise is 4.2%, which sounds bad, but is rather less that the 7% increase last year and similar the year before that. Here are a few of those fares in historical perspective, with Ken's years in red and Boris's in blue.
Cost of a single central London tube journey
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
Oyster
£1.60
£1.60
£1.70
£1.50
£1.50
£1.50
£1.60
£1.80
£1.90
£2.00
£2.10
Visitor
£2.00
£2.00
£3.00
£4.00
£4.00
£4.00
£4.00
£4.00
£4.30
£4.50
The Zone 1 Oyster tube fare rises 5% in January to a new high of £2.10. Pessimists will note that this is 40% higher than when Boris came to power. Optimists, however, should note that it's still only 31% higher than a decade ago.
Cost of a single central London bus journey
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
Oyster
£1
70p
80p
80p
£1
90p
£1
£1.20
£1.30
£1.35
£1.40
Visitor
£1
£1.20
£1.50
£2
£2
£2
£2
£2.20
£2.30
£2.40
The pay-as-you-go bus fare rises by 3.7% in January. That's a whopping 56% rise since Boris came to power, whereas Ken actually decreased fares over the previous five years. Equally Ken was ruling through a time of plenty whereas Boris has virtually no money to play with, so maybe the difference isn't surprising.
Cost of a tube journey from Green Park to Heathrow
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
Peak (Oyster)
£3.50
£3.80
£4.20
£4.50
£4.80
£5.00
Off-peak (Oyster)
£2.00
£2.20
£2.40
£2.70
£2.90
£3.00
Visitor (cash)
£4.00
£4.00
£4.50
£5.00
£5.30
£5.50
It's a mixed picture if you travel further out. A peak Zone 1-6 tube journey rises precisely 4.2% in the peak and 3.5% off-peak. But had this been a Zone 2-6 journey the increase would have been as much as 7.1%. This variety of percentage increases is because TfL insist on raising rail fares by multiples of tenpence, even though they could raise them by unrounded amounts now almost everybody pays electronically. It might sound unfair, and some passengers will bear the burden much more than others, but over the entire portfolio it averages out to 4.2% overall. Apart from the next bit.
Cost of a (free) 29 minute Cycle Hire journey
2010
2011
2012
2013
24 hour access
£1
£1
£1
£2
Weekly access
£5
£5
£5
£10
Annual access
£45
£45
£45
£90
Bike hire users, your time is up. You've enjoyed rock bottom prices for a couple of years to get the project underway, but in January a major price hike kicks in. Your increase isn't 4.2%, it's 100%, although that's not a figure you'll see written in any TfL press release. It'll still be free to nip across town for up to 30 minutes, but the daily access charge will double from £1 to £2. That's 60p more than the cost of a bus ride, and only fractionally less than an off-peak tube fare. Will quite so many people choose to take a single bike ride in 2013, let alone stump up £90 for full annual access? And how come the sponsors aren't paying more to keep the public's contribution down?
If London's to have a better transport network, then fares do have to rise. That'll be cold comfort if your pay's been frozen or your benefits cut, and maybe more could have been done to keep these increases down. But if we're all to get around town in the future, the annual fare rise charade will go on.
While we're doing Birmingham suburbs, fancy a trip to Smethwick? To the northwest of the city centre, on the way to West Bromwich and Wolverhampton, close to Premiership action at The Hawthorns. Again it's a structure over a canal we've come to see, though this time nothing so complicated as a threaded motorway junction. Welcome to Galton Bridge.
This record-breaking span was built by Thomas Telford in 1829. At the time it was the longest single-span bridge in the world, although at this stage of the Industrial Revolution that wasn't saying much. At 46 metres long you could walk across it in less than a minute, but far better to stop and have a peer over the side. The view's vertiginous, staring down into an entirely artificial chasm beneath. This is the Galton Valley, an earthwork carved long and deep by hundreds of navvies, creating a single level canal where previously had been a lengthy flight of locks. Telford's fresh cut removed a bottleneck between Birmingham and the Black Country, but created a gash in the landscape that needed to be crossed by a bridge. The narrow roadway would have been bustling in its day, and busier still when someone finally got round to inventing cars, but now it's barriered at one end and open only to cyclists and pedestrians.
The best view is from the railway station alongside, that's SmethwickGaltonBridge. This is very recent, opened in 1995 at the point where one railway line crosses a perpendicular railway deep below to create a Low Level/High Level interchange. The upper platforms cross the gap in parallel to Telford's span, again a very long way above the canal passing below. Now the mills and steam engines have departed it's a very green and pleasant valley, edging towards a slightly brown and orange valley at this time of year. Such an elegant crossing, gently arched with iron struts, and well deserving of its Grade I listing. It doesn't look quite so impressive squinting through a camera lens into direct sun, but that's the perils of a whistlestop tour of the West Midlands. If you ever have ten minutes between trains, it's worth a look.
I've barely been to Birmingham before, which is remiss of me. I was there at the weekend courtesy of London Midland who were offering dead cheap tickets to anywhere on their network (don't bother looking, the offer's over). Their trains from London take so long to get anywhere that there was barely any time to explore, but I saw several places very much in passing.
» New Street station: Sheesh this is unpleasant, isn't it? Umpteen gloomy under-mall platforms, each being rebuilt, but at a snail's pace.
» Moor Street station:Blimey, this is more rural than urban - revamped like a 1930s pastiche, complete with steam train stashed away on platform 5.
» Snow Hill station: The name suggests better than the reality, but at least it's not New Street.
» The Rotunda: The famous cylindrical tower was less tall than I was expecting, and not as imposing. I could imagine it fitting in well in Croydon.
» Selfridges: The curved exterior's astonishing, covered as it is with 15000 aluminium discs, and bulging out of the Bullring.
» Birmingham Cathedral: The Baroque centrepiece of the city, but you'd think it was a big parish church if you didn't know better.
» The skyline: Redbrick and blocky, with little to pierce the sky, this is an unexpectedly homogeneous-looking conurbation.
I so need to go back one day and do Birmingham properly.
Britain's most famous motorway junction is a 40-year-old monster on the M6. Its official title is the Gravelly Hillinterchange, although you'll know it better as Spaghetti Junction. It lies just to the northeast of Birmingham city centre, about four miles out, within sight of Aston Villa's home ground at Villa Park. Here the M6 meets the A38(M), the A38 and the A5127 - the first of these the Aston Expressway, a unique seven-lane one-carriageway motorway. Every road linkage was constructed as a separate sliproad, hence the numerous threads of elevated tarmac that give the junction its name. You may have driven across these concrete viaducts, you may even have passed through by train, but you probably haven't ventured underneath to discover an even older form of transport lurking in the shadows. It's one hell of a place. [eight photos]
It's not easy to find space for a 30 acre road junction in inner suburbia. Planners therefore took the unusual step of appropriating part of the city's canal network as their construction site. They alighted on Salford Junction, the lowest point on the Birmingham Canal Navigations, and proceeded to drive the M6 motorway directly over the top. The longest viaduct in the UK touches down at Gravelly Hill, descending for several hundred yards above one of the feeder canals, with several concrete pillars rising tall out of the water. There's a river alongside too, hence an area untouched by housing, and that's where Spaghetti Junction's vast footprint touches down. It really is a most peculiar sight viewed from beneath - a lofty urban forest rising from the waters of the Industrial Revolution.
If you're visiting without a car, one of the best ways to approach is up the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal from Aston station. Birmingham's canals aren't especially wide, the locks in particular only one narrowboat wide. The towpath rises and falls for three quarters of a mile, allowing access to a number of cuts lapping perpendicularly between restored warehouses. A few yards before Salford Junction a river, an actual river, flows directly underneath the canal while the M6 thunders loudly across. To one side is Salford Bridge, the only roadway deemed necessary hereabouts in 1926, its elegant brick arch in sharp contrast to the featureless overpass above. Will you follow ahead and underneath, or will the presence of hoodied local youth put you off?
Salford Junction turns out to be Spaghetti Junction's 18th century equivalent. The Birmingham and Fazeley Canal sweeps through on a grand curve, while two others sweep in and terminate on either side. The M6 was built just long enough ago that its designers were required to make the Gravelly Hill Interchange horse-friendly. There had to be room for ropes to pass along the towpath without obstruction, so the motorway pillars were kept just far enough out of the way to ensure this. An old twisty bridge still carries the towpath over the water - head this way to discover more.
Climb up to the road bridge to discover the point where Spaghetti Junction touches down. This is Salford Circus - nothing to do with a Manchester suburb, more a giant roundabout carved out of the heart of an existing community. There are six roads on and six roads off, two of these for motorway traffic only. Pedestrians aren't allowed to walk around the edge, but can gain access to the heart of the citadel via a tiled subway. The A5127 powers across the piazza on stilts, threading precisely through the A38 sliproad, much higher than you'd normally expect. No traffic is visible from this low down, just a feeling of isolated disassociation.
Back over Salford Bridge is the Tame Valley Canal, along whose line the remainder of Spaghetti Junction lies. A modern tunnel has been created beneath a pair of sliproads - letterbox-shaped in profile, with a broad towpath that's damp and uneven underfoot. This one takes more courage to walk through, being a little too long to clearly make out what or who might be waiting for you in the gloom. But brave it out and you emerge at the heart of the machine, with buses and cars and lorries rising up a curving slope alongside. Additional sinuous routes swirl all around, each individual strand linking to a different corner of the metropolis. At Spaghetti Junction the motorist is king, but the canal offers pedestrians, cyclists and bargees a privileged glimpse into their secret world.
There have been Christmas lights in Oxford Street since 1959. They failed to appear in 1976 and 1977 due to the recession, but other than that they've gone up every year. As a child I remember coming up to town to see them, and basking in the feeling that Christmas was finally incontrovertibly underway. That would have been in December, before the days when retail Christmas crept unashamedly forwards, and the switch-on date is now much earlier than before. Switch on dates: 5th Nov 2012, 1st Nov 2011, 4th Nov 2010, 3rd Nov 2009, 12th Nov 2008, 7th Nov 2007, 9th Nov 2006, 15th Nov 2005, 15th Nov 2004
This year's lights are being switched on tonight, a full 50 days before December 25th, but not quite so ridiculously early as last year. They're being switched on by Robbie Williams, because he has an album to plug that's released today. Leona Lewis will be there too, and minor boyband Lawson, and the cast of West End musical Scrooge. This extraordinarily middle-of-the-road line-up is being championed by radio station Heart FM, in particular presenters Jamie Theakston and Emma Bunton who'll be hosting the whole event in as upbeat a way as possible. But if you fancy going along to watch the event outside House of Fraser, sorry, you can't. For the first time ever the switch-on will be an exclusive ticketed event, and all the tickets have already gone. Gutted, or what?
I went one year, and was hugely underwhelmed. But there's something especially ghastly about this year's lightshow, which you'll already have noticed from the title to today's post. These aren't the Oxford Street Christmas Lights any more, these are the Marmite Oxford Street Christmas Lights. Honest.
Quite what a yeasty sandwich spread has to do with Christmas is anyone's business, but that needn't matter. Unilever's marketing department have offered more money than anybody else this year, hence it's Marmite's turn to sponsor the lights. Where you might expect to see something seasonal, instead there'll be an illuminated jar of Marmite. Where you might expect to read a festive message, instead the legend reads "You either love it or hate it". And where you might expect Santa to be waving down from on high, instead he'll be munching on a slice of Marmite-coated toast and turning green. If I interpret one particular tableau properly, the animated graphic will show post-Marmite Santa leaning forward to vomit into his hat. How did anyone ever consent to hoist this rubbish above our streets?
Not all of the decorations have been Marmited, you'll be pleased to hear. The same unbranded lights seen every year since 2009 are there too - the sparkly presents, the umbrellas and the stars. In some parts of Oxford Street the branding's not too heavy - indeed east of Poland Street nobody's bothered hanging any lights at all. But it's a different matter outside Selfridges, which hosts additional pizazz in the form of an interactive video screen. Upload a photo to Marmite's Facebook page and your grinning/frowning face could appear for a few minutes, or visit the "interactive bus shelter" outside Bond Street station and record your Marmite expression there. It's clever, and in social media terms it's terribly zeitgeist, but it's not in the spirit of Christmas in any way whatsoever.
The West End's seen highly inappropriate Christmas lights sponsors before. 2010's Oxford Street lights were plastered with plugs for the latest Narnia film, in the hope you'd drag your kids off to the cinema after shopping. In 2006 the lights in Regent Street were sponsored by an Aardman animation set in a sewer, which meant an ugly rash of cartoon slugs, rats and toads strung out across the road. But Marmite? Even if it's the special version containing flakes of gold leaf, there's no possible excuse for branding Christmas lights with Marmite other than commercial greed.
Joanne the PR lady actually said that. What better way to top off 2012 than with Marmite-related Christmas lights. Utter tripe, but evidently convincing enough to get it printed in a number of national newspapers.
You might not mind London's premier shopping street being contaminated by sandwich spread for two months. "It's how things are in Austerity Britain," you might say. "There's not much money around, so we should seek out sponsorship instead of having no decorations at all." But look where that philosophy leads you. The Marmite Oxford Street Christmas Lights. See them and weep.
I don't know about you, but I had a busy and varied Saturday.
Barbican Weekender:Natural Circuits The Barbican this weekend is full of balloons. And screens. And happy children. This special family-focused event is devoted to digital creativity, with a variety of hands-on join-in activities for all. Print out some 3D foliage. Fire a virtual spray can at an electronic wall. Dance in front of a pixellated screen which reacts to your footsteps. You can see why the kids were enjoying it. Hollie, Joelle and Lucy turned up from Queen Mary University dressed in retractable sculptures and performed under the stage name Whimsichord. They looked like graceful demons, cavorting robotically in the main foyer, except there was some form of malfunction and the self-generated soundtrack was never heard. All was very quiet in the tweeted poems room, but the screen outside displayed some of the brief gems already submitted to the project. Staff were waiting with some activity in almost every corner of the building, some busy, others it has to be said rather less so. The usual creative types who hang around the Barbican were present too, sat at leather sofas tapping their tablets and laptops. And parallel to all this was the queue for the Rain Room, the interactive wet weather installation in The Curve. A few hundred people were waiting for their turn in the virtual shower, but with only five allowed in at one time it was going to be a helluva wait. Most were sat on the floor chatting with friends, reading the paper, fiddling with their phone or watching a movie on their iPad. Seriously, don't bother with the Rain Room at weekends, try and visit early in the morning mid-week sometime between now and March. Or come and do all the other stuff - the Barbican's never dull.
John Lewis: London 2012 Shop It's still open on the third floor at Stratford City, this long gallery stuffed with the last remnants of Games merchandise. You'd think John Lewis would have shoved their Christmas goods in here by now, but that's just outside, and still the public come. They're drawn of course by the view out of the observation window, looking out across the Olympic Park in shutdown mode. Not as much has yet disappeared as you might expect, although all the security tents have gone and a large swathe of tarmac awaits its redeveloped future. The shelves in the London 2012 shop are full, but the range of stock available can best be described as 'limited'. One rack is entirely full of tea cosies, some electric blue, others a mix of fruity shades. They're all £2, as are the tea towels on a shelf at the back. I like the UK map tea towels so much I've bought myself a second, although it seems the Stratford buying public disagree. Another rack is full of keyrings and pin badges, in an increasingly narrow range, while close by the Mandeville drinks bottles haven't sold. Someone at LOCOG HQ ordered far too many model taxis, the smallest of which are now going (boxed) for £1.85. The much mocked wallet-sized metal fish and chip forks are suddenly half price, if you've been waiting until now to buy a pair, as well as some fairly flimsily packed tins of Union Jack biscuits. Not everything's been reduced. A host of Team GB goodies are still at full whack, and the commemorative 50ps collectors album, and some of the more expensive luxury items. But if you're seeking an original if entirely inappropriate Christmas gift, maybe E20's late summer sell-off will provide a few stocking fillers.
Fireworks: Blackheath While other London council displays fall by the wayside, Lewisham continues to fund the annual pyrotechnic extravaganza on Blackheath. A hundred thousand normally turn up, some lured by the fairground, others by the bar, but most by the opportunity to stand in open darkness to watch thousands of pounds go up in smoke. Volunteers go round with buckets to try to recoup some of the costs, but they're all too easy to miss, and few seem to give more than few coins anyway. Saturday night's skies were crisp and clear, ideal for watching the lights of planes descending across the area on their approach to Heathrow. The crowds came well wrapped, displaying the latest in fashionable woolly headgear. Families and youthful groups were much in evidence, as well as couples huddling up against one another for warmth. Officially the display starts at eight, but in truth it's always five past to allow for any stragglers to take up position. A series of bangs and flashes ensued, you know the score, plus a decent mix of blasts, cracks and whizzes. Everyone gawped, and several waved their cameras as if some blurry image or video could possibly capture the all-enveloping experience. Plenty of spectacle, plenty of variety, and continuing just long enough to make everyone feel like it had been well worth coming. Sixteen minutes, if you were counting, which is fractionally less than last year. And after the fiery climax came the rush for home, or the dash for the funfair, or a lot of hanging around attempting in vain to regroup in the dark. Firework displays may be far more common than they used to be, but there's still something magic about this collective spectacle on the heath. Long may London's most popular display continue.
In five weeks time, the London Overground goes orbital. The South London link from Surrey Quays to Clapham Junction opens on Sunday 9th December, and suddenly it'll be possible to ride round the capital via only orange trains.
It's already possible to use TfL's Journey Planner to check the timetables for mid-December and discover (with a bit of digging) which trains are travelling where when. So here's my map of new Overground frequencies once the new line opens, including the typical number of trains per hour during the day.
The greatest boost will be on the line through Whitechapel, which rises from 12 trains an hour in each direction to an impressive 16. That's 4 trains an hour to each of the southbound destinations, running at 15 minute intervals. Trains from New Cross and West Croydon will terminate at Dalston Junction, while trains from Crystal Palace and Clapham Junction will run on to Highbury and Islington.
This creates the tantalising prospect of being able to ride the entire orbital route from Highbury and Islington to Highbury and Islington via Clapham Junction in only two trains. All the most hardcore London train geeks will be doing it, although the rest of you might give it a miss because it is essentially pointless.
The first train via Overground South is currently scheduled to leave Highbury and Islington at 07:11 on Sunday morning, arriving at Clapham Junction just after eight o'clock. Swap trains and you can continue your clockwise Overground journey around the capital, if engineering works play ball, returning to Highbury and Islington by 09:13.
Or you can do the whole thing anti-clockwise. The first train from Clapham Junction via Peckham Rye leaves at 07:20, arriving at Highbury and Islington at 08:13. Here you can catch a train on the existing route via Willesden Junction back to Clapham Junction (although again there are mixed messages about engineering work at Kensington Olympia which might delay you by an hour or two).
Watch out for Next Train Indicator confusion. If you're at Highbury and Islington there are going to be trains to Clapham Junction leaving two minutes apart from different platforms travelling in different directions. Meanwhile at Clapham Junction there'll be two trains labelled Highbury and Islington, one clockwise, one anti-clockwise, leaving at virtually the same time. Let's hope there's some simple way of being absolutely certain which train's which, because it would be awful to end up in Peckham when you meant to go to Hampstead (and vice versa).
Coming soon, then, the new London Orbital. A shame it has to dip into Zone 1 at Shoreditch for revenue-raising reasons, and a shame its birth erases the old South London Line. But the Overground is about to reach its full potential, and I'll race you round in two.
Remember the Games? They're not even 'last month' any more, they're a thing of the past. You can at least now dash out and buy the official BBC DVD of the Olympics, which promises fifteen hours of highlights spread across five coloured discs. It's telling that the Opening Ceremony features on as many as three of the discs but the Closing Ceremony on just one. The sporting highlights also appear to focus rather too much on "Brit wins gold" and very little on "Rest of the world does better", but that's the media summer for you, and that's how most of us will remember it.
But what of London 2012's more long term inheritance? City Hall is keen we don't forget, so has been running a promotional campaign called Gifts of the Games to showcase the legacy highlights. See what you think.
1) New Heights - The ArcelorMittal Orbit: "The Orbit has already become a London icon and is a huge hit with visitors. It was sold out throughout the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and as a permanent attraction will continue to attract future visitors to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, which is predicted to see nine million visitors a year by 2016." Sneakily that nine million figure is for the Park, not the Orbit. And there's no mention that the Orbit won't be reopening soon, indeed you'll probably not get up it again until 2014, and then at what cost? Verdict: legacy postponed
2) First Class - The Arabfly Dangleway: "Thanks to the Games, you can now fly across the Thames by cable car on the Emirates Air Line. The UK’s first urban cable car provides a much-needed new river crossing in east London, and links two world class visitor destinations, the O2 Arena and Excel" Bollocks. Right up until the end of June TfL were making absolutely no claims whatsoever that the cablecar would be completed before the Olympics. Admittedly only the Games could give this aerial link true purpose, but to say it's been built "thanks to the Games" is disingenuous to say the least. Verdict: someone's telling porkies
3) Urban Renewal - The Barking Bathhouse: "Thanks to the Games, CREATE Festival is bringing fresh new experiences to east London like the Barking Bathhouse. This pop-up health spa and architectural installation revives the spirit of Barking’s former bathhouse, which was a popular local facility until its closure in 1986, after 87 years." Erm, a pop-up bathhouse? That doesn't sound very permanent. And sorry, if you live in Barking and fancy a steamy rubdown you're too late, because the pop-up closed for good last weekend. It's true that the CREATE Festival has a much longer shelflife, but that's been running for several summers now, not just 2012. Verdict: there's no legacy here
4) Quality Street - Exhibition Road: "Thanks to the Games, public spaces across town have been brought back to life, like Exhibition Road in Kensington. Exhibition Road is part of the city's legacy from the Great Exhibition of 1851, and hosts famous visitor attractions such as the Victoria & Albert, Science and Natural History Museums." Hang on, wasn't Exhibition Road a Kensington & Chelsea project? It was completed independently in 2011, with 2012's events a mere temporary sideshow. Verdict: not a gift of the Games
5) Park Life - Queen Elizabeth Park: "Thanks to the Games, London now has the world’s largest urban meadow. This once neglected area provided a spectacular stage for the greatest show on earth this summer. The future Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park will become a leading London attraction, inviting visitors to linger in its green open spaces, landscaped gardens and tranquil waterways." Yes, absolutely, one of the finest legacies of all. Opens in eight months time. Verdict: gold medal performance
6) Bright Lights - Tower Bridge: "Thanks to the Games, Tower Bridge is now lit up to impress Londoners and visitors alike. The new lighting system was installed before the Games, and means that people will benefit from seeing the bridge looking even more beautiful for the next 25 years." A lot of money got spent displaying rings on the Thames, so it's not surprising someone wanted them well lit. Other bridges have also benefited. Verdict: another Games-related bright spot
7) Gold Standard - Lee Valley Velopark: "Thanks to the Games, London has world class cycling facilities at the Lee Valley VeloPark. The 6000 seat Velodrome is among the main attractions of the new park, which caters for every type of cyclist, from recreational to training and competition, and where Londoners will be able to train alongside future Olympic and Paralympic gold medal winners." They may have destroyed the Eastway bike circuit to build it, but these new facilities are a definite improvement. Opening next summer. Verdict: wheelie good
8) Opportunity Shops - Westfield Stratford: "Thanks to the Games, there are over 8,000 new jobs for Londoners at Westfield Stratford City. The new retail destination opened in September 2011 giving a massive boost to the local area." Bollocks. Westfield Stratford was firmly on the drawing board before London won its Olympic bid. What the Games did was speed things up a bit, not kick things off. Verdict: this one's all spin
9) Midas Touch - Whitechapel Gallery Makeover: "Thanks to the Games, the Whitechapel Gallery’s had a golden makeover. The gallery commissioned leading British artist and Turner Prize winner Rachel Whiteread to produce a frieze to enliven the façade." A few golden leaves may not sound much, but this project is representing High Street2012, a linear improvement project that's done sterling long-term work. Verdict: as a resident of the A11 corridor, a big thanks from me
10) House Party - New Homes for Londoners: "Thanks to the Games, there will be over 2,500 new homes for families in east London. Five new neighbourhoods will be developed in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, each with its own distinct character and up to 8,000 new homes built by 2030." This is the true transformation of the Games. From post-industrial backwater to fresh residential sprawl, East London really will never be the same again. Verdict: from coldspot to hotspot
11) In The Pink - Friendly Volunteers: "Thanks to the Games, London’s friendly volunteers have left a fantastic impression on visitors to the city. Who can forget the Mayor’s 8000 Team London Ambassadors who offered a warm and enthusiastic welcome to visitors from around the world?" The summer of 2012 was made great by its volunteers, not least because there were far too many of them. City Hall are very keen to hang onto their fully-trained unpaid workforce and are piloting projects (starting this half-term) to make them useful again. Viable legacy or cheap labour? Verdict: yet to be proven
Tubewatch (42) To Battersea
Nine Elms: The site of the proposed Northern line station probably isn't what you expect. A building site perhaps, maybe a corner of the fruit and vegetable market. None of these. Instead the new station will be built along the far end of Sainsbury's car park, in the farthest corner just past the petrol station. You might be able to park there now and fill your boot with carrier bags, but in seven years this expanse could mark the site of the lifts and the ticket machine. Sainsbury's won't mind too much, they already have plans to build flats across most of the rest of their car park, and they'll also be handsomely rewarded with thousands more tube-driven customers. A couple of semi-industrial buildings will have to be demolished to make way for the station, one of them the Head Office of burglar alarm company Banhams. I do hope they're already looking for alternative accommodation, just in case. Meanwhile on the opposite side of Pascal Street is a nondescript crescent of family houses and utilitarian flats, whose residents are in for an absolute windfall if they own their own homes and a serious rent-hike if they don't. Indeed the adjacent stretch of the Wandsworth Road is anything but wealthy-looking, and precisely the sort of neighbourhood whose prospects are likely to be uplifted by the appearance of a major public transport node. But it's the area beyond the railway at the cul-de-sac end of Pascal Street that developers truly have their eye on. This is central London's biggest regeneration area, with the potential for 16000 new homes, and a pedestrian link to Nine Elms station is a necessity. The moated cuboid fortress of the American Embassy will be a short stroll away, not that the ambassador would ever dream of taking public transport when there's a bulletproof limo on call. The surrounding housing development, unimaginatively named Embassy Gardens, is already under construction, if levelling the ground and piling up portakabins counts. As for the famous New Covent Garden Market, that intends to squeeze into a smaller corner of its existing site to enable the construction of more towers, so come enjoy the Sunday boot sale while you can. It's clear that the demographic profile of Nine Elms' new residents will be in complete contrast to the community along Wandsworth Road, as moneyed Londoners suddenly decide they might be happy living just beyond Vauxhall after all. A development whirlwind is coming, entirely independent of the fate of the Power Station, but a new Northern line station wouldn't half speed things up.
Battersea: The station might be called Battersea, but the location isn't. The real Battersea's further upstream, further inland, whereas this is much more Nine Elms... except that name's been taken. Those four iconic chimneys, the cylinders that used to belch smoke but now stand crumbling, they're the magnet that draws the Battersea name here. They're also due to be knocked down shortly, and replaced if you believe the Malaysian developers. The Northern line's new terminus is destined to appear on the southern perimeter of the power station site, amid a grey tarmac expanse long since cleared of any industrial outliers. It's hard to imagine the area as offices, apartments and malls, but that's what's scheduled if the developers get their act together. Alight here for a nice meal, a multiplex cinema and the chance to rummage through arcades of designer handbags. For now the only hospitality in the immediate neighbourhood comes from The Duchess across the road, local pub of choice for the extensive council estates immediately beyond. Their residents are about to discover untold facilities on their doorstep, or else be priced out of the area altogether. Close by is Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, also ridiculously well located for the new station, which may be good news for waifs and strays yet to be born. And there are the railways. This corner of the capital already has half a dozen railway lines passing through, some from Waterloo, others from Victoria, the only problem being nobody's built any platforms immediately alongside the power station. Queenstown Road and Battersea Park stations may be five minutes distant, but you can't expect penthouse residents or Gucci buyers to walk that far, and they're only rail stations so apparently they don't count. These days only a tube connection is good enough, and that's the sole reason the Northern line is coming. If it comes. The Nine Elms development needs the station and the station needs the development - vicious circle, or superfeedback loop?
Tube geek (42) Not on the map
Tubewatch (41) Mind the gap
Tube quiz (41) Ex stations
Time once again for diamond geezer to go totally tubular with another week devoted to the London Underground. Prepare for five days of quizzes, quirks, commentary and obscure statistics. Nine years ago I looked at the busiest stations and journeys where it was quicker to walk. Eight years ago I investigated tube line colours and the easiest interchanges. Seven years ago I discussed overcrowding and precisely where the underground is underground. Six years ago I wrote about accessibility and why people never move down the platform. Five years ago I examined the agonies of Bank/Monument and taking your bike on the tube. Four years ago I spent the entire week wondering why 'next train' indicators are installed by cretins. Three years ago I visited the tube's least used station and wondered where all the litter bins went. Two years ago I took the Chesham shuttle and bemoaned the evils of the new King's Cross passageways. And last year I ventured beyond Edgware and counted the stairs. I hope there's still something left to write about this year. Mind the doors.
In North Greenwich and elsewhere around the country, the Massive Stock Liquidation is underway. Three posters slapped up outside Comet bring the bad news, or the good news, depending on which side of the till you're on. The public aren't flooding in, but there's more of them than usual, which is part of the ongoing problem. The warehouse is bright and cavernous, with not quite as much stuff crammed into it as you might expect. Up near the front is a display of laptops packed with Windows 8 - only a fortnight old, but already up for grabs at reduced price. Not much reduced, to be honest, if you were expecting this firesale to be more of an inferno. 10% off is all you'll get on some aisles, twenty on others, and nowhere more than thirty. It's better than normal, but not hugely, as the administrators attempt to sell off the company silver for as much as they can get. This is the same plan as was used when winding down Woolworths, to start cutting small, then cut deeper for the less desirable stuff. And the policy seems to be working, as lots of goods have gone already and the remaining stock is slightly thin on the ground.
I had an hour and a bit to fill after work yesterday, so I went to the Natural History Museum. That's one of the joys of working in Central London - you can nip out for a ton of culture in the evening in a way that's not possible in, say, Ipswich. I should nip out more often.
4:55pm The Darwin Centre
5:30pm The Minerals Gallery
I've barely been to Birmingham before, which is remiss of me. I was there at the weekend courtesy of London Midland who were offering dead cheap tickets to anywhere on their network (don't bother looking, the offer's over). Their trains from London take so long to get anywhere that there was barely any time to explore, but I saw several places very much in passing.
Britain's most famous motorway junction is a 40-year-old monster on the M6. Its official title is the Gravelly Hill interchange, although you'll know it better as Spaghetti Junction. It lies just to the northeast of Birmingham city centre, about four miles out, within sight of Aston Villa's home ground at Villa Park. Here the M6 meets the A38(M), the A38 and the A5127 - the first of these the Aston Expressway, a unique seven-lane one-carriageway motorway. Every road linkage was constructed as a separate sliproad, hence the numerous threads of elevated tarmac that give the junction its name. You may have driven across these concrete viaducts, you may even have passed through by train, but you probably haven't ventured underneath to discover an even older form of transport lurking in the shadows. It's one hell of a place. [eight photos]
If you're visiting without a car, one of the best ways to approach is up the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal from Aston station. Birmingham's canals aren't especially wide, the locks in particular only one narrowboat wide. The towpath rises and falls for three quarters of a mile, allowing access to a number of cuts lapping perpendicularly between restored warehouses. A few yards before Salford Junction a river, an actual river, flows directly underneath the canal while the M6 thunders loudly across. To one side is Salford Bridge, the only roadway deemed necessary hereabouts in 1926, its elegant brick arch in sharp contrast to the featureless overpass above. Will you follow ahead and underneath, or will the presence of hoodied local youth put you off?
Climb up to the road bridge to discover the point where Spaghetti Junction touches down. This is Salford Circus - nothing to do with a Manchester suburb, more a giant roundabout carved out of the heart of an existing community. There are six roads on and six roads off, two of these for motorway traffic only. Pedestrians aren't allowed to walk around the edge, but can gain access to the heart of the citadel via a tiled subway. The A5127 powers across the piazza on stilts, threading precisely through the A38 sliproad, much higher than you'd normally expect. No traffic is visible from this low down, just a feeling of isolated disassociation.
X-50
There have been Christmas lights in Oxford Street since 1959. They failed to appear in 1976 and 1977 due to the recession, but other than that they've gone up every year. As a child I remember coming up to town to see them, and basking in the feeling that Christmas was finally incontrovertibly underway. That would have been in December, before the days when retail Christmas crept unashamedly forwards, and the switch-on date is now much earlier than before.
Quite what a yeasty sandwich spread has to do with Christmas is anyone's business, but that needn't matter. Unilever's marketing department have offered more money than anybody else this year, hence it's Marmite's turn to sponsor the lights. Where you might expect to see something seasonal, instead there'll be an illuminated jar of Marmite. Where you might expect to read a festive message, instead the legend reads "You either love it or hate it". And where you might expect Santa to be waving down from on high, instead he'll be munching on a slice of Marmite-coated toast and turning green. If I interpret one particular tableau properly, the animated graphic will show post-Marmite Santa leaning forward to vomit into his hat. How did anyone ever consent to hoist this rubbish above our streets?
The West End's seen highly inappropriate Christmas lights sponsors before. 2010's Oxford Street lights were plastered with plugs for the latest Narnia film, in the hope you'd drag your kids off to the cinema after shopping. In 2006 the lights in Regent Street were sponsored by an Aardman animation set in a sewer, which meant an ugly rash of cartoon slugs, rats and toads strung out across the road. But Marmite? Even if it's the special version containing flakes of gold leaf, there's no possible excuse for branding Christmas lights with Marmite other than commercial greed.
The Barbican this weekend is full of balloons. And screens. And happy children. This special family-focused event is devoted to digital creativity, with a variety of hands-on join-in activities for all. Print out some 3D foliage. Fire a virtual spray can at an electronic wall. Dance in front of a pixellated screen which reacts to your footsteps. You can see why the kids were enjoying it. Hollie, Joelle and Lucy turned up from Queen Mary University dressed in retractable sculptures and performed under the stage name Whimsichord. They looked like graceful demons, cavorting robotically in the main foyer, except there was some form of malfunction and the self-generated soundtrack was never heard. All was very quiet in the tweeted poems room, but the screen outside displayed some of the brief gems already submitted to the project. Staff were waiting with some activity in almost every corner of the building, some busy, others it has to be said rather less so. The usual creative types who hang around the Barbican were present too, sat at leather sofas tapping their tablets and laptops. And parallel to all this was the queue for the Rain Room, the interactive wet weather installation in The Curve. A few hundred people were waiting for their turn in the virtual shower, but with only five allowed in at one time it was going to be a helluva wait. Most were sat on the floor chatting with friends, reading the paper, fiddling with their phone or watching a movie on their iPad. Seriously, don't bother with the Rain Room at weekends, try and visit early in the morning mid-week sometime between now and March. Or come and do all the other stuff - the Barbican's never dull.
It's still open on the third floor at Stratford City, this long gallery stuffed with the last remnants of Games merchandise. You'd think John Lewis would have shoved their Christmas goods in here by now, but that's just outside, and still the public come. They're drawn of course by the view out of the observation window, looking out across the Olympic Park in shutdown mode. Not as much has yet disappeared as you might expect, although all the security tents have gone and a large swathe of tarmac awaits its redeveloped future. The shelves in the London 2012 shop are full, but the range of stock available can best be described as 'limited'. One rack is entirely full of tea cosies, some electric blue, others a mix of fruity shades. They're all £2, as are the tea towels on a shelf at the back. I like the UK map tea towels so much I've bought myself a second, although it seems the Stratford buying public disagree. Another rack is full of keyrings and pin badges, in an increasingly narrow range, while close by the Mandeville drinks bottles haven't sold. Someone at LOCOG HQ ordered far too many model taxis, the smallest of which are now going (boxed) for £1.85. The much mocked wallet-sized metal fish and chip forks are suddenly half price, if you've been waiting until now to buy a pair, as well as some fairly flimsily packed tins of Union Jack biscuits. Not everything's been reduced. A host of Team GB goodies are still at full whack, and the commemorative 50ps collectors album, and some of the more expensive luxury items. But if you're seeking an original if entirely inappropriate Christmas gift, maybe E20's late summer sell-off will provide a few stocking fillers.
While other London council displays fall by the wayside, Lewisham continues to fund the annual pyrotechnic extravaganza on Blackheath. A hundred thousand normally turn up, some lured by the fairground, others by the bar, but most by the opportunity to stand in open darkness to watch thousands of pounds go up in smoke. Volunteers go round with buckets to try to recoup some of the costs, but they're all too easy to miss, and few seem to give more than few coins anyway. Saturday night's skies were crisp and clear, ideal for watching the lights of planes descending across the area on their approach to Heathrow. The crowds came well wrapped, displaying the latest in fashionable woolly headgear. Families and youthful groups were much in evidence, as well as couples huddling up against one another for warmth. Officially the display starts at eight, but in truth it's always five past to allow for any stragglers to take up position. A series of bangs and flashes ensued, you know the score, plus a decent mix of blasts, cracks and whizzes. Everyone gawped, and several waved their cameras as if some blurry image or video could possibly capture the all-enveloping experience. Plenty of spectacle, plenty of variety, and continuing just long enough to make everyone feel like it had been well worth coming. Sixteen minutes, if you were counting, which is fractionally less than last year. And after the fiery climax came the rush for home, or the dash for the funfair, or a lot of hanging around attempting in vain to regroup in the dark. Firework displays may be far more common than they used to be, but there's still something magic about this collective spectacle on the heath. Long may London's most popular display continue.
Channel 4 is 30 years old today.
