Tonight England have the opportunity to celebrate their biggest triumph since 1966 when they face Italy in the Euro 2020 final at Wembley. Victory would be the country's first major tournament win in half a century and for the team the biggest moment of their professional lives so far. The England players hold their destiny in their own hands, but they'll have to be at their very best if they're to topple the Italian side and realise their European dream.
Gareth Southgate and his young team have the opportunity to become national heroes when they step out in front of 60,000 supporters at Wembley in the most important match the national side has played in a generation. This is the moment many England fans thought they would never see, a milestone in English sporting history and an unmissable opportunity to deliver the country from the gloom of the last year by embracing the prize of European glory.
As this momentous day dawns Bobby Moore remains the only male captain to have lifted silverware, but Harry Kane is just one win away from doing what no other England captain has done since that fateful July day. He has a special gift where football's concerned, plus a heartfelt drive to win it for the fans, and after scoring the goal that ended England's run of major semi-final defeats he knows he's spearheaded a team that has thrilled the nation.
The squad are all just normal lads doing a job but this'll be the biggest game in their careers so it's time to step up and grab the opportunity with both hands. A tough game lies ahead but the Three Lions know they can win it so the mood is upbeat and confident. Every one of them should be proud of the way they've represented themselves on behalf of the country, their motivation's been 100%, so it's just a case of staying calm and positive and believing they can do it.
It's now four weeks since Harry Kane led the team out for their opening game and so much has happened on the road from Wembley to Rome and back again. The players have peaked at precisely the right time, working towards a common goal and underlining their collective tactical focus. Football has dominated the national conversation with the country cheering the boys every step of the way through tears of unbridled joy. It's been an undeniably exciting time.
There's no doubt that England have reshaped the history that has weighed them down in past tournaments. We now have a national team to be proud of, overflowing with personality, pride and purpose, shepherded by a kind, intelligent and empathetic ambassador who knows the scale of the challenge. They have the confidence to step up when it matters and the self-belief to remain focused and clear-minded in the face of fierce opposition, both on and off the pitch.
This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for a new generation of down-to-earth footballers to share the stardust and write one more piece of history. Rashford, Saka and Sterling have the technique and mentality to withstand the pressure, grasp home advantage and finally end England's long-term generational shame. This must be the moment each player dreamt of as a child, lifting a trophy for their country on the steps at Wembley, not the usual agonising loss on penalties.
The final training sessions have been completed as the build-up reaches fever pitch. The road to Wembley has rarely been more passionate. There's only one place to be tonight, whether you're at home or in the pub, as excitement exceeds expected levels and hope is superseded by belief. England have never lost a major tournament final and are hoping to get their hands on the European trophy for the first time, and the team that scores the most goals will win it.
Every time England play they have an opportunity to create new memories for fans that last a lifetime. Football runs deep through the veins of this island and the team's hunger for success has already inspired a generation. These are the big moments when heroes stamp their names on footballing history as all ages come together to rally behind the flag. You don't realise you're in the moment until it's a memory, but tonight will be remembered forever whatever the final result.
Expectations are also high for Italy who are unbeaten after 33 matches, but there is pride at the school where Kane grew up and Gareth Southgate has a depth of options and the team is impatient for glory and millions of fans are managing their nerves and the question on everyone's lips is whether a team focused on passion and dedication can restore national pride and you have to believe it's possible so we'll all be cheering them on in every corner of the country.
It's a tense countdown for England supporters as they manage their nerves in advance of kick-off, tens of millions of us will be getting ready to watch the drama unfold, the focus of the world will fall on Wembley, the fans cannot wait to find out what happens on the pitch, it's a massive deal, everyone's got that butterfly feeling that we can end that 55 year-old drought, the talking is almost over, there'll be some sore heads on Monday morning.
Tonight is the toughest step of all, the very definition of a landmark experience, a unique national occasion, we're finally within touching distance of glory, it's payback for all those years of falling short, half a century of hurt, the lads have already done the whole country proud, they'll face a tough fight, they say they're ready, the ultimate goal is to finish the job, there'll be nerves, expect a fierce battle from both sides, fate will surely prevail.
England expects, it's time to deliver, echoes of 1966, a real 50-50 game, a match to remember, a scramble for silverware, a crowning moment, a huge weekend, one for the history books, it's what we live for, failure is not an option, it's coming home*!
• Duchess of Cambridge self-isolates
• Queen awards George Cross to NHS
• all legal restrictions will end at Step 4
• "if not now, when?" (PM)
• gap between jabs cut from 12 to 8 weeks
• double-jabbed won't have to self-isolate
• ... or quarantine after visiting amber countries
• surge in foreign holiday bookings
• no pupil bubbles in schools next term
• no spectators at the Tokyo Olympics
• NHS app to be desensitised
• 1 in 160 Britons has the virus
Today's post is about an entirely ordinary street somewhere in London. I picked it while I was out and about, thinking 'yeah that'll do', having never previously walked down it. It turned out to have fewer than twenty houses. It doesn't have an interesting back-story, having once been a field and nothing more. It's of absolutely no interest unless you live there, which only 0.0005% of Londoners do so I'm betting you're not one of them. Here's my attempt to write 1000 words about it.
Ordinary Street is a brief suburban curve, barely 100m long, with one telegraph pole and a trio of street trees. It's quiet, but within easy walking distance of two takeaways and a hairdressers on the main road if you fancy the high life. It's also a one-way street, unless you're on a bike in which case two-way travel is actively supported. Someone's even gone to the effort of painting separate cycle lanes at either end, plus the occasional bike symbol inbetween, not that the level of vehicular traffic generally requires it. The remnants of previous line-painting exercises are still intermittently visible.
The maximum speed limit is 20mph although I doubt you could easily accelerate past that in the space available given the bends, the speed humps and all the parked vehicles. Only a handful of houses have their own off-road parking spaces, so instead little rectangular fiefdoms for Hyundais and Volkswagens are marked out beside the kerb. One of the lucky ones has stuck up a sign saying "this driveway is in constant use", which is brazen cheek given their Lexus pokes out far enough to block the pavement.
Number 1 Ordinary Street is painted a drab shade of magnolia with red stains and several small cracks in the plaster. Whoever fixed a security light above the front door trailed three separate wires across the front of the house and left a large coil of cable inexpertly dangling. Nextdoor is pebbledashed, which gives you some idea of the age of the street, and they also have a large silver Hotpoint fridge freezer in their front garden. Someone's toppled a chest of drawers on the pavement, its individual compartments scattered separately at the foot of a Swedish whitebeam.
It's hard to judge what the original front walls looked like because they've almost all been replaced at some point, perhaps with a fence, a hedge or just a posher wall with wrought iron twiddles on top. Even the fences vary wildly, from regularly slatted to diagonal trellis. Some of those with hedges trim them with pride but most have been allowed to let rip, bursting out with yellow and green privet or exploding upwards to provide a burst of unkempt privacy. Only a few homeowners take growing flowers seriously, unless you count a clump of three foot dandelions as deliberate, but one display of red and pink roses is currently at its peak and the hydrangeas at number 10 are positively glorious.
Front gardens are often used as dumping grounds, or somewhere to store sacks of building materials before they're opened. I can see why the owners of number 3 got rid of that black and red leather chair because it was hideous, even before someone ripped the seat. I also reckon the pavement was originally much narrower with a stripe of grass verge alongside, but that this has long since been filled in. During repairs someone wrote Vicki TH 2010 in the concrete before it set, possibly the elusive HS whose initials are scraped to one side.
One of the houses in Ordinary Street has a 'Sold' board outside, courtesy of a local agent, whose website allows me to go online and peer inside. Their video reveals that this "lovely home" looks somewhat tired, that timber-style lino is never a good choice, that the "practical bathroom" could do with an upgrade and that "enclosed rear garden" is about the best you can say for a small corner patio surrounded by weeds. The "well-equipped kitchen" gave me the biggest shudder, so I'm not surprised that the new owners have bought themselves a Beko QSE222X Stainless Steel Built‑in Single Multifunction Oven & ceramic hob and dumped the packaging on their hardstanding.
Another home was recently on the market, the detached house at number 12, and that's another world entirely. A snooper's delight of a YouTube video, not yet taken down. reveals that this place has been immaculately kept with bright white walls throughout, an inbuilt woodburner and a thoroughly modern fitted kitchen (with artfully placed utensils). The biggest surprise is the large net-curtained conservatory, invisible from the street, because it didn't look possible that Ordinary Street could contain anywhere so intrinsically Home Counties.
The big house on the corner looked to be the most intriguing, with its sea-life stickers, Green Day poster in the window and a poorly-handwritten sign warning All The Times No Visiter CCTV Watch. The red-stains on the fence outside added a particularly unnerving vibe. But although the number looked plausible the house is officially part of the adjoining road so ineligible for inclusion. Instead I had to make do with wondering about the makeshift lattice of canes supporting number 9's roses, the silver tree frog clinging to the outside of number 11 and whether the No Canvassers sign on the door of number 13 ever has the desired effect.
(that's got me over the 900 word mark, so I'm on the home straight now)
Satellite dishes are popular here, often inelegantly cabled. Most of the houses have two steps leading up to their front door because they were built in an era when level access wasn't important. The kerbside is fairly clean apart from a discarded milk carton and a scrunched-up blue plastic bag. The yellow line at the northern end of the street needs repainting. The family at number 17 bought their house number from that generic company that advertises in the Sunday supplements. And perhaps most typical, given what I also saw in neighbouring streets, is that absolutely nobody has hung an England flag from their window, even in this week of weeks. That's Ordinary Street for you.
It's long been the plan to open Crossrail in three phases, starting with the central section and eventually connecting everything up. That's not changed. But a big adjustment has been made to what the intermediate phase will look like, silently revealed in papers for an upcoming TfL meeting, because it turns out there's a better more efficient way to do it.
Here's how things are at present (and have been since the end of 2019). One arm out west from Paddington towards Heathrow and Reading, and one arm out east from Liverpool Street towards Shenfield.
Officially this is Stage 2 (following the 2015 takeover of the Shenfield line which was stage 1). Everything's currently branded TfL Rail because the Queen's name doesn't get a look-in until Crossrail properly connects.
What's coming next is Stage 3, the opening of the central section, a long-delayed event currently due "in the first half of 2022".
A full service will operate between Paddington and Abbey Wood with trains running every five minutes. But this won't yet be proper Crossrail because the two suburban arms won't connect up, terminating at Paddington and Liverpool Street mainline stations while the new services operate underground.
In terms of branding only the central section will launch as the Elizabeth line while the two separate outliers continue to operate as TfL Rail. And because the central section is entirely separate from the rest of the rail network it can open as soon as it's ready, without having to wait for the nod from National Rail.
Here's what was planned to happen next, that's Stages 4 and 5.
Stage 4 would have seen services from Shenfield connected to the central section, just west of Stratford, completing the rollout of Crossrail across east London. But the TfL Rail brand would have lingered on across west London, until eventually in Stage 5 the final tunnels opened and the disconnect at Paddington was removed.
That's now not happening.
Instead the powers-that-be have thought again and come up with a new optimised approach "which both reduces operational and performance risks and helps maximise the benefits to passengers as early as possible". It's clever, broadly beneficial and should deliver additional money via fares and branding.
The central section opens as expected next year, that's Stage 3. But the next stage (renumbered 5b) will see two simultaneous tweaks rather than just one. Services from Shenfield will operate to Paddington, as previously planned, but services to/from Reading/Heathrow will also be diverted to operate through the central section to Abbey Wood.
The cunning bit is that this creates "two separate but overlapping railways", one from Shenfield to Paddington and one from Abbey Wood through Paddington. The two can be operated entirely separately, interleaving with each other through the central section, bringing all the benefits of the final configuration (5c) but without the technical complexities.
It works because trains will either operate on the National Rail network in the west or on the National Rail network in the east, not both. It's efficient because drivers need only be trained on one set of National Rail procedures, not two. It's more resilient because the previous version had a huge number of trains reversing at Paddington and this plan halves that. And it's convenient because it'll utilise the existing Shenfield and Reading timetables, just extended into the tunnels, so doesn't need to wait for a specific National Rail timetable changeover date.
Financial bonus 1 is that passengers from the west will be whisked direct into the West End for the first time, which is expected to provide a welcome boost to TfL revenue. It also works the other way, for example with Canary Wharf now connected direct to Heathrow, and this all happens one stage earlier than it would have done before. Financial bonus 2 is that TfL will be able to ditch their TfL Rail branding at this point and go full-on purple, taking more money off advertisers and sponsors, potentially six months earlier than they could have done otherwise.
The final stage is still the same, seamless interconnectedness with trains from Shenfield finally allowed out to Reading and Heathrow. But this time the general public may not even notice, because under the revised scheme the benefits of catching purple trains straight across London will already be a thing.
No timings for the last two stages have been provided, just as we don't yet have a specific date for Paddington to Abbey Wood services to begin. But if Stage 3 takes place in the first half of 2022 then Stage 5b might well kick in at the end of 2022, with the final Stage 5c being introduced at the subsequent spring (or winter) timetable changeover day.
In which case this month's change to project phasing means the Crossrail service pattern during a substantial portion of 2023 will be as follows.
It won't look like this on the map, it'll only operate like this underneath, but the campaign to rename the two lines Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II starts here.
It's time for the traditional diamond geezer post in which someone at TfL creates a poster and I attempt to show it's unhelpful/misleading/incorrect.
A snazzy floral roundel has appeared at Stratford bus station promoting the London Blossom Garden in the Olympic Park. The garden's been open for a month, commemorates lives lost during the pandemic and you might well appreciate a visit. If you do then a poster alongside provides a map and tells you it's "about a ten minute walk"... except it very much isn't.
The straight line distance between Bus Stop A at Stratford bus station and the London Blossom Garden is 1.1km, or just under three-quarters of a mile. At a normal walking speed of 3mph (5kmh) this distance should be walkable in 13 minutes. You'd need to up your pace to 4mph (6½kmh) to manage it in 10 minutes. So, doable?
The big problem is that it can't be walked in a straight line.
» Firstly Stratford station gets in the way, a massive chasm spanned by a single footbridge, so getting to it and then climbing lots of steps is going to slow you down.
» Secondly the Westfield shopping centre gets in the way, and this was never designed as a straight-forward cut-through. Either you walk through the interior (which is curved and full of obstructive people) or you have to walk round the edge (which is less direct).
» Thirdly Stratford International station gets in the way, another chasm spanned only in a handful of places, none of which are ideally placed.
The shortest possible walking distance is actually 1.33km, or five-sixths of a mile, and you'd need to be averaging 5mph (8kmh) to manage that in ten minutes. It's not a realistic prospect.
Admittedly what the poster really says is "about a ten minute walk from this station" which is a different claim altogether. Some additional smallprint at the foot of the text says "for display at Stratford station", which suggests whoever created the poster didn't have one specific starting point. Let's be charitable and assume the ten minute walking time is from the station's northern entrance which is as close to QEOP as you can get. Is ten minutes a realistic walking time to the London Blossom Garden? Spoiler - of course it isn't, as I shall proceed to demonstrate with a stopwatch.
0:00 I'm standing outside the northern entrance to Stratford station. It's tempting to enter the shopping centre at ground floor level because that looks to be in the right direction, but that'd deliver you to a suboptimal point at the other end of the mall. Instead it's quicker to head upstairs first, as the pink signpost over by the bus station suggests. I know this because I've spent five minutes drawing lines on Google Maps before I got here. The map on TfL's poster doesn't even have a suggested route, let alone an indication of the split-level terrain.
0:01 I'm upstairs approaching Marks & Spencer's main entrance. If I'd been walking from the bus station where the roundel is it would have taken three minutes to get to this point (so add two minutes to all the times that follow). Another pink signpost directs me along 'The Street', Westfield's outdoor mall, rather than into the seething maelstrom of the main shops.
0:03 I've reached the junction in The Street where the Olympic Park and Aquatic Centre come into view. A lot of inexperienced Stratford-goers would turn off here, and this is indeed the quickest way into the Park, but only to the southern half and we need the north. Anyone getting that wrong faces a 10 minute time penalty.
0:05 I'm outside John Lewis. Again it's tempting to think the quickest route is across the mall and down past Stratford International, but that would be an illusion because the smart route is to turn left towards Westfield Avenue instead. How any visitor who hasn't internalised a mental map over several years is supposed to know this I'm not sure.
0:08 I'm negotiating the one annoying road crossing, beneath the hideous block of student flats at the junction round the back of the multi-storey car park. Fast is not pretty.
0:10 My ten minutes are up but I haven't even got to the Park yet, I'm on the road bridge over the DLR over High Speed One.
0:13 I'm alongside the Waterglades next to the East Village, and this is the first time I've seen a pink sign directing me towards the London Blossom Garden. It's almost pointing in an unambiguous direction.
0:14 I'm very nearly there, at the Timber Lodge entrance to the Park. The problem is I only know I'm nearly there because I've been before. The last pink sign points across the bridge, and if you decide to go that way another pink sign eventually points back the way you came. It's no good checking the nearby Park map, the Blossom Garden isn't on it yet.
0:15 Here I am at the entrance to the Blossom Garden, a lovely spot. But you'd only know it was the entrance if you stopped to read the information board or noticed 'London Blossom Garden' written on a pink fingerpost, which when approaching from the southeast is completely hidden behind nine other destinations. From any kind of distance you could easily miss it.
So I managed to walk from Stratford station to the London Blossom Garden in fifteen minutes, but only because I knew where I was going and had researched the quickest way to go. A typical visitor is going to take more than fifteen minutes to get here, I'd venture more like twenty. This is not the "about a ten minute walk" the poster claimed.
It's unlikely to inconvenience anyone. Nobody gets off a bus in Stratford, sees a poster and thinks "ooh I've got half an hour spare, I could go and see that Blossom Garden", then misses their connection because they failed to get back in time.
But it's poor practice to write "about a ten minute walk" on a poster when in fact it's more like double that, especially when you're a transport organisation and timings are supposed to be your bread and butter. It would only have taken ten minutes to check, or in fact more like fifteen.
Perhaps more to the point, although the London Blossom Garden is a perfectly delightful corner of the Olympic Park it's not really worthy of a special roundel, let alone a special visit. I expect it to come into its own and be gorgeous next spring when the 33 young trees finally burst into flower, but that's not "about a ten minute walk", that's "about an eight month wait".
My 20th random ward is small, compact and the closest any City division comes to being a rectangle. It occupies a 270m×130m patch between Cheapside and Cannon Street and contains much worthy of note, including Bow Bells, a listed 1990s building and a Roman temple. It also used to be London's shoe-making district, that being the job of a medieval cordwainer, whereas mending shoes was done by a load of old cobblers. [pdf map]
St Mary-Le-Bow has long been one of London's most important churches, and holds the distinction of having been destroyed by a bomb (1941), a fire (1666) and a tornado (1091). It also famously housed the bells that true Cockneys had to be born within earshot of, although the sonorous originals have been replaced and research suggests they barely reach Shoreditch these days, let alone the wider East End. They certainly sound loud enough if you're stood underneath at nine on a Sunday morning. The modern church is progressive and outward-looking, hosts daily weekday services and (normally) hosts a cafe in its Norman crypt. One of the most famous parishioners was Captain John Smith, founder of Virginia's Jamestown settlement, and that's his statue outside in the churchyard surrounded by a ring of plastic barriers. n.b. The church was said to be the first in London built with stone arches, hence the name ‘le bow’. St Mary's church in Stratford-le-Bow, E3, was named after a similarly-arched bridge across the Lea, and people have been confusing their Bow Bells ever since.
The spire is a dominant feature on Cheapside, for centuries the City's retail spine. Despite the pandemic Daunt Books, Greggs and Argos are still going strong but Cards Galore has folded and the Vodafone shop on the corner of Bread Street is no longer engaged. The none-too-thrilling office block here is called Bow Bells House and covers the footprint of John Milton's birthplace, an almost textbook case of Paradise Lost.
Bow Lane, curving bow-legged from the church, is a much more characterful thoroughfare and the ideal place to wield your Cheapside Privilege discount card. Smaller joints range from a vape shop to a wine bar charging £6 for a side of chips, and from a newsagent to a cake shop charging £39 for a carrot sponge. Historically speaking I'm pleased to say the area still has a proper shoe shop with an emphasis on brogues and loafers, should your workwear budget stretch to £350. But it's the even narrower alleyways to either side that merit the most careful attention. Well Court conceals a gentleman's tailor with a display of armoury in the window, Watling Court leads to the keg-choked beer terrace of The Pavilion End, and as for Groveland Court...
This alleyway starts well between two gently indented shopfronts, clearly signposted by a pristine old-style City street sign. The passage then opens out into a narrow Neo-Georgian courtyard with a Nicholson's pub on one side and a mothballed cocktail joint on the other. The pub extends into the red-brick townhouse at the far end, one of the very first buildings to be erected after the Great Fire and built as the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London. The wrought iron gates out front were donated by William and Mary after a particularly hospitable stay. But by 1739 these lodgings was deemed insufficiently grand so the Mayor moved out to Mansion House and the house instead became a hotel, and today serves Schofferhofer Grapefruit Radler, Smoked Applewood Macaroni Cheese and Pale Ale Pie.
Crossing Bow Lane is Watling Street, which sounds like it must have been part of the famous Roman Road but is on entirely the wrong alignment. It is pre-medieval in origin, though, and until the 19th century was the main route between St Paul's and the Tower of London. The dome of the cathedral is nicely framed at the western end, scaffolding excepted. Several buildings merit closer architectural inspection, especially the former warehouse at number 23 and the turquoise faience at number 67. As for Ye Olde Watling, this was the first tavern to be built in the City after the Great Fire and its upper room was used as an office for draughtsmen working on designs for St Paul's.
Behind the pub is St MaryAldermary, one of Wren's few Gothic rebuilds, paid for by a widow who insisted he build something resembling the original pre-Fire church. It's currently home to the Moot Community, a contemplative bunch who prefer to worship via collective reflection rather than hold formal services, plus a number of diaspora-specific congregations who meet here on Sundays. Outside is a ward-specific bronze statue of a seated man with an upturned leather boot between his knees - a cordwainer - although I still haven't quite worked out what he's doing with his hands.
Two churches that didn't make it past 1666 are the delightfully-named St Benet Sherehog and the City's only St Pancras. The latter's churchyard was upgraded in 2010 into a garden with some delightfully quirky wooden benches carved by students from the City & Guilds of London Art School, each with an intricate Romanesque design. I spent some time inspecting the city scenes, fabulous beasts and geometric patterns, then inspected a planning notice on one wall and sighed. The office block at the rear has requested to create a new entrance and 'reconfigure' the garden, which will involve replacing the benches, removing the central tree and adding a set of lockable railings. They've spun it as improving pedestrian circulation, increasing daylight and removing the "opportunity for rough sleeping at night", but the end result is an identikit joyless bolthole with its heritage vibe extinguished so let's hope the City objects.
They didn't object to 1 Poultry, the startling postmodern wedge that faces Bank junction on the site of the old Mappin & Webb jewellers. Its pastel layers rise to an exclusive roof garden enjoyed by cosseted restaurant patrons, which tapers to a pair of overhanging balconies and a porthole viewpoint. Mere mortals are allowed to pass through at ground level via Bucklersbury Passage, or perhaps pay for a round of minigolf at Puttshack whose neon-lit basement bar can be seen through a large hexagonal skylight. Very few buildings get listed before their 20th birthday, in this case specifically to protect the architecture from its owner, but you only have to look up from within to see how multi-dimensionally extraordinary 1 Poultry is.
The latest megastructure in the ward is Bloomberg London, the media corporation's fortress-like sandstone-clad European HQ. It fills a footprint formerly occupied by a 1950s office block, broken only by a central passageway shamelessly given over to a sequence of dining opportunities. Londinium's Temple of Mithras was a national sensation when it was uncovered here in 1954 and relocated alongside Queen Victoria Street, and has since been relocated back to the spot in Bloomberg's basement from whence it came. Free pre-booked Mithraeum tickets are available for a very modern illuminated experience, or you can descend into Bank station nextdoor to see several glassy Roman figures at the foot of the escalators. The Waterloo and City Line platforms, if you've ever wondered, are under Queen Victoria Street, beneath the westbound bus stop, in Cordwainer.
Yesterday the Prime Minister announced that the final step of unlocking will involve the ending of all legal restrictions on social distancing. No more signing into venues, no more Rule of Six at home, no more insistence on face coverings, no more One Metre Plus rule indoors, no need for table service in bars and no blanket recommendation to work from home. It's all subject to confirmation next Monday and won't come into effect until the Monday after, but it's an enormous step to take.
It's also a highly controversial step because cases are rising fast but deaths are a fraction of what they were as vaccination weakens the chain of infection so do you restore freedom of choice and revitalise the economy and learn to live with the disease or hold off for now and keep some restrictions to protect those who otherwise might die or suffer from long term complications?
When Boris introduced his roadmap in February he assured us it would be irreversible.
He didn't seem quite so keen to use the word yesterday, instead focusing on the fact it's the height of summer and the start of the school holidays so if not now, when?
But if he's correct, or determined to be unlock whatever, then England can look forward to no restrictions for the rest of the year (and beyond).
This allows me to create a simple timeline of the pandemic during 2020 and 2021, a brief monthly snapshot of fluctuating curbs on freedom. I like the simplicity of it (and if only recent unlocking stages hadn't occurred mid-month it'd be simpler still).
2020
2021
Jan
Normal
LOCKDOWN
Feb
Normal
LOCKDOWN
Mar
→ LOCKDOWN
→ Step 1
Apr
LOCKDOWN
Step 1 → Step 2
May
LOCKDOWN
Step 2 → Step 3
Jun
STAY ALERT
Step 3
Jul
EAT OUT
→ Normal
Aug
EAT OUT
Normal
Sep
RULE OF 6
Normal
Oct
TIERS
Normal
Nov
'LOCKDOWN'
Normal
Dec
TIERS
Normal
One big red peak last spring.
One smaller red peak last autumn.
One longer red peak this winter easing through the spring.
Not that we realised all this at the time.
Back on 2nd January 2021 I asked you to consider 'the Christmas test'.
Imagine an unlimited number of households being able to travel across England to meet inside somebody else's home. When do you think we might be able to have a normal Christmas again? It doesn't have to be December 25th, it could be any replacement date to make up for the one we didn't just have. It might not be this year. When's the first time, legally speaking, a normal Christmas might be allowed?
I asked you to pick a month and a year and leave a prediction, and 108 of you responded.
We now know the 'Christmas' date is going to be this month. Come July 19th an unlimited number of households will be able to meet up inside someone else's home anywhere in the country, and if they fancy eating turkey and pulling belated crackers they can.
But this is not what you thought six months ago, you were a lot more pessimistic.
Back in January only five of you correctly predicted July 2021 (that's RC, Simon Guy, Rich, Bob L-S and 2d53's wife). Another five picked June and another ten picked August, so they were close. But most people picked a later month, with October 2021 the most popular.
In fact 43% of you picked 2022 as the next time Christmas might be possible, which proved way short of the mark, and 88% of you picked a date later than the actual result of July 2021.
The day I asked the question was a few days before the UK re-entered lockdown for the third time, which may have coloured opinions about how long getting out of this mess might take. Instead vaccination got us to the exit date much faster, that and a government focused on taking risks to restore normality.
But you were much too optimistic when I asked you to make a prediction this time last year. On 2nd July 2020 I asked whether you thought lockdown restrictions would be in force at New Year and 70% of you wrongly said they wouldn't.
We are notoriously bad at predicting the future, and when that future arrives we often forget how bad we were at predicting it.
So let's give it one more go. Let's ask the Christmas question again.
On Christmas Day 2021 will an unlimited number of households will be able to travel across England to meet inside somebody else's home (as normal), or will certain restrictions have been reimposed?
Pick one box, make your prediction and leave a comment in the relevant box.
It can be a one-word comment (Normal/Limited/Restricted/Lockdown) or you can write a brief sentence.
This is what you think will happen, not what you want to happen.
Please don't leave the name field blank.
And at Christmas we'll come back and see if you were any better at making predictions this time... or any better than our Prime Minister.
Blogging is endangered and outdated, because what's the point of reading something when you could be listening to it instead? Working your way through several paragraphs of text is a lot of visual hassle and rarely frictionless. How much better to simply sit back, press play and let the words wash all over you.
Which is why I've decided to accelerate my blog into the future by introducing 🎤 a series of podcasts 🎤 you can take with you wherever you go. They'll cover the usual range of eclectic topics you've come to enjoy over the years but this time in handy audible chunks. No longer will you need to find your reading glasses every time you want to find out what I've published next or pinch your smartphone screen so that the text appears in a legible size. Instead just press play and absorb the latest diamond geezer offering without expending any effort whatsoever.
Sometimes the podcasts will be a one-off, like a nostalgic update from my spare room, a description of a seaside jaunt or a review of the latest tube map. But the key thing with podcasts is to provide regular content so I'll also be introducing a weekly schedule of themed uploads for you to slot into your busy schedule. A new file will be available to download at 7am daily, and that's your morning commute, jogging soundtrack or afternoon tea break sorted.
Mondays: Somewhere You'll Never Go
Join me in an obscure London location each week as I walk the backstreets pointing at things and telling you what they are. Look there's a shopping parade, that's quite an old church and over here is a road sign with a faintly amusing subtext. Because it's somewhere properly obscure I can guarantee it's somewhere you'll never go, so prepare to be enlightened, unless by some freak chance you grew up there or live there now in which case be sure to share your favourite nostalgic anecdote.
🎤 DG Monday Podcast 1: Coney Hall
Everything you need to know about West Wickham's outpost estate, including what really goes on up Corkscrew Hill, the hygiene rating of the Golden Valley takeaway and where to find the obligatory Greenwich Meridian marker.
Tuesdays: Pedant's Corner
One of the joys of podcasting is that there's no need to take hours writing 1000 words of carefully-checked text, you can simply outpour a continuous stream of commentary griping about some minor infringement of grammar, design or common sense. Even better the audience will only hear your rant rather than reading it so nobody will be able to point out any unintentional spelling errors.
🎤 DG Tuesday Podcast 1: To Apostrophe Or Not To Apostrophe
In the first episode I address the elephant in the room, which is whether Pedant's Corner should be spelt with the apostrophe before the 's' or after it.
Wednesdays: DG Stays Local
Another joy of relaunching within a different communication medium is that I can revisit all sorts of previous written content so all sorts of incredibly local things are suddenly fair game again. Expect to hear more about which bits of the Olympic Park are eventually going to be flats, how the Bow Roundabout pedestrian crossings have proved an imperfect interim solution and how difficult it is to get hold of pink recycling bags. If you live nearby you'll be gripped, and even if you don't I hope you'll still be mildly intrigued.
🎤 DG Wednesday Podcast 1: Tom Thumb's Arch
In my E3 opener I'll be investigating how this micro-subway got its name, who designed the underwhelming art in the centre, how steep the gradient is on the approach and how dangerous it might be if you met an e-scooter coming the other way.
Thursdays: Museum Of The Week
London is jam-packed with quirky museums so I intend to bring you the cultural flavour of one a week. I'll record my thoughts as I go round, from the customer experience at the front desk to the unexpected exhibit in the third room, so long as I don't feel horribly self-conscious or get told off for talking inappropriately loud. Please note that I won't be reviewing the coffee and cake in the cafe but I might just pass judgement on the quality of the gift shop.
🎤 DG Thursday Podcast 1: Headstone Manor
Come for a virtual stroll around this fascinating medieval house/barn complex in the wilds of almost-Harrow. Hopefully you won't notice I am in fact sitting at home and basing my commentary on a set of old photos I took on my last visit, because podcasting is an entirely non-visual medium so why waste time and money going again?
Fridays: What TfL Got Wrong Next
There's always something imperfect in the world of London's public transport, and as an armchair pundit I feel uniquely qualified to point this out. Only recently I've been overcharged 10p for a zone 3 journey, spotted a misleading poster on a river pier and forced TfL to delete a tweet in which they claimed you needed to touch out when travelling by bus. Don't expect the content for this weekly podcast series to dry up any time soon.
🎤 DG Friday Podcast 1: Bus Stop M Update
I am of course kicking off with an in-depth report recorded live inside the shelter at London's most notorious bus stop. After checking that the timetables are up to date and the tiles are in the right order I'll be focusing on the most egregious issue, namely the long-term absence of the Bow Church spider map. Waiting passengers will be invited to comment on other pressing concerns as appropriate.
Saturdays: Viral Content
As the pandemic rumbles inexorably towards its inevitable end, or perhaps doesn't, I need to share with you my thoughts on how it's going, what the science really means and why you need to be adjusting your behaviour. I firmly believe that burying my thoughts within a podcast is the best way to influence everyone who's inexplicably come to different conclusions and needs to be re-educated. Better still, podcasting is a firmly one-way medium so nobody'll be able to leave comments pointing out why my amateur interpretation may not be 100% correct.
🎤 DG Saturday Podcast 1: Hands Face Space?
As the government seeks to rescue the economy by withdrawing all social distancing restrictions, I ask whether the inevitable increase in cases will cause the Test & Trace app to ping so regularly that millions of people will end up self-isolating and the economy will crash anyway, or whether that is perhaps a massive oversimplification.
Sundays: London Journeys
Round off your week with a relaxing jaunt in good company. Every Sunday I'll visit a different part of the capital and follow a different route to uncover hidden secrets, perhaps exploring a bridleway, shadowing an invisible boundary or tracing a lost river. I might go by rail, by tube, by bus or on foot, although walking obviously remains most likely at the moment. Simply close your eyes, try to imagine what I'm seeing and let a thousand words paint a picture.
🎤 DG Sunday podcast 1: A ride aboard the 456 bus
I recently went for a ride aboard London's newest bus route, the 456, which wends its way from the garden centres of Crews Hill to a hospital beside the North Circular. I've already blogged about my journey but thought this'd make an excellent first podcast so I've revisited my Enfield safari in audio form and it's available to listen now. I'm particularly excited because it turns out two thousand words expand to fill over 12 minutes of podcast, which means I'm going to be occupying even more of your time than I was before. Just click below and enjoy.
US State Capital quiz
Here are clues to the names of all 50 US state capitals.
How many can you name?
definition 1) Pollock 2) firebird 3) French Peter 4) Channel port 5) formerly Saul 6) bicycle maker 7) Bonham Carter 8) Italian explorer 9) Simpsons home 10) Stingray officer 11) Cheshire village 12) Metro or Maestro 13) Lincolnshire town 14) Lincolnshire city 15) exhibition centre 16) 1st Space Shuttle 17) German battleship 18) on the District line 19) desert commander 20) divine intervention
a bit cryptic 21) pebble 22) month A 23) red stick 24) jousting? 25) Claus iron 26) supersonic 27) Ogden's city 28) baptism zero 29) next King 100 30) honest castle 31) Annie's Singer 32) cut price 1000 33) are you aware? 34) like a Herts city 35) river operational 36) insane is not off 37) BMWs above Berlin 38) dictator currency NE 39) end of French raspberry 40) 60s singer is not a whore
anagram 41) pet oak 42) Spain loan 43) demonises 44) briar shrug 45) lone permit 46) atlases heal 47) like catalyst 48) inlaid pianos 49) hook calamity 50) secret jiffy on
• Sajid Javid is the new Health Secretary
• Portugal makes unjabbed Britons quarantine
• mixing vaccines 'gives good protection'
• "We see no reason to go beyond 19 July" (Javid)
• concerns over pupils repeatedly self-isolating
• no Covid deaths in Wales last week
• lockdown reimposed in most Australian cities
• plans for winter booster jab for over-50s
• furlough scheme starts to wind down
• doctors want some distancing rules to remain
• δ variant identified in 16 African countries
• 1 in 6 UK adults still unvaccinated
Let's go for a walk down Francis Road, E10, an off-grid residential street with a wholly unexpected rush of middle class consumerism in the middle. Leyton doesn't generally look like this.
For orientation purposes we're deep in the hinterland between Leyton's two stations, working down from the High Road towards the A12. Until the 1890s these were open fields but then suburbia turned up big style (which is the history of most of Outer London but with the dates changed). Francis Road is just over half a mile long and used to be classified the B161 until it got Low Traffic Neighbourhooded a few years back. I'm starting at the quieter, leafier, northern end opposite Leyton Sports Ground and working my way south to the pub.
One side's all big bay-windowed houses, although on closer inspection many are actually maisonettes with squished-together doors at ground level. The other side is dominated by the back of a long two-storey institution which unexpectedly turns out to be Leyton's oldest building, Walnut Tree House, whose timber frame and first floor jetties date back to Tudor times. In the 19th century it briefly became a school (from which Benjamin Disraeli got expelled for fighting), and later it morphed (highly appropriately) into the local Conservative Club. It's now a mosque, because 21st century Leyton is nothing if not unpredictably diverse, and you'll need to walk round to Jesse Road to admire it properly.
Just beyond the double bend is Francis Road's most startling building, a bulky corner block with porthole windows and a staircased tower, which is patently 1930s in design. It used to be Leyton Police Station, the second on this site, located centrally at the heart of the Met's J Division. Climb the steps to the main entrance to see its finest feature, carvings of six historical police officers including a Peeler, an expressionless policewoman and a dapper goggled chappy on a motorbike. High maintenance costs ensured this was one of the police stations Boris sold off in 2012, and the fact its upper floor was given over entirely to residential married quarters will have assisted the inevitable conversion into flats.
Further nice terraced houses follow, much as you'd find on any intersecting street. But then suddenly motor vehicles have to turn off, courtesy of a one-way semi-pedestrianised interlude operational between 10am and 8pm, because this is where the shopping parade starts. These used to be bog standard shops, underwhelming even by Leyton standards, but inexorably a range of gentrified offerings moved in and now Francis Road is full-on Time Out orgasm territory.
The retail offering starts with a double-fronted winebar on one side and an organic jar stockist on the other, then progresses through a delicatessen, a pilates studio, a windchimes and candles joint, two florists and an unnecessary gift shop. Multi-purpose spaces are common, so for example the independentcoffee shop hosts a sunset cocktails pop-up and the bookshop's staff also have to be trained baristas. It's not all posh - the intermediate units include a launderette, a cobblers, a Romanian grocers and a Bengali community centre which thinks it's based in 'Layton'. But when a vinylrecordshop opened five weeks back, an actual vinyl record shop ffs, the owners knew they'd only succeed if they made a special effort to explain the provenance of their pastries.
The wormhole closes after one final pavement cafe and suddenly Francis Road is low-key residential again. Also the traffic's back but only one way, and mind the speedbumps, indeed Waltham Forest council have very much shifted the emphasis from drivers to cyclists in recent years. A faded signpost points down a narrow alleyway directing residents towards a Public telephone, a feature which may once have been relevant. A tiny cluster of unspecial shops follows, as if deliberately quarantined from the majority, including a burger takeaway, a minimarket (genuinely called Freshco) and a doctor's surgery whose telephone number is still planted firmly in the 01 era.
Here comes the multi-faith bit... starting with Christ Church, a lofty wedge of brickwork enclosing a conservative evangelical Anglican congregation. The former Christ Church Institute nextdoor was bought by Waltham Forest's Sikh community in 1979 and is now a gurdwara, a rather large one, and across the road is the UK headquarters of the Islamic Sharia Council who mediate/dictate on Muslim families' marital matters. The final 50 metres of Francis Road is much busier because it's part of Leyton's one-way system, and on the last street corner is the NorthcoteArms, a pub that likes to fill its Sundays with a drag show. The Greenwich meridian even slices through the lounge bar, which I guess makes Francis Road the first street in the western hemisphere.
Come down tomorrow (between 11am and 3pm) and you can attend The Francis Road Street Party, a community event which promises live music, local stalls, a tombola and MORE. It's a bit of a cheat that they're holding it in the pedestrianised stretch outside the shops, but I guess that made getting a licence easier. Or if taking a tour of understated chunks of Leyton is more your thing you might be interested in Matt Haynes' new Unchartered Streets book, a six mile fully-illustrated 'guided walk for the misguided'. Matt was behind the very excellent Smoke magazine which this blog enthused about on a regular basis between 2003 and 2010, and here's what he has to say about stop number 16, the former Leyton Police station.
To give you a further flavour of the trail's content, number 17 is the classically-proportioned electricity substation just around the corner in Dawlish Road. Leyton is the first in a series that'll eventually continue with walks round Peckham, Vauxhall and (ooh) Brentford, because Matt reckons London's unsung suburbs deserve to be celebrated. And if you pop into Phlox Books on Francis Road you can pick up a copy for a tenner, because that's how joined up Leyton is.
Today's post is about catchment areas, or more specifically catchment populations, i.e. how many people need to live in a neighbourhood before it's worth opening a business there. You need a lot of people before it's worth opening a piano shop, rather fewer before you open a hardware store and fewer still before you open a small supermarket. But is it possible to estimate roughly how many?
It was corner shops which set me off thinking. Step off the main roads in the London borough of Newham and you enter a grid of Victorian terraces where numerous corner shops still exist. There are nowhere near as many as there would have been, most have been transformed into homes or flats, but isolated street corners still have convenience stores for the convenience of very local residents. Racks of fruit and vegetables, shelves of kitchen roll and cleaning products, stacks of tins, supplies of rice and sauces, a display of sweets, maybe beers, probably a stash of cigarettes behind the counter and would you like a lottery ticket with that? Variety may be limited and you can expect to pay a premium, but proper corner shops still keep micro-neighbourhoods ticking over.
But how many people need to live nearby to ensure a corner shop is economic?
It's usually too hard to work this number out. People don't always go to their nearest corner shop, catchment areas overlap and the influence of larger supermarkets distorts things somewhat. It's generally easier to determine catchment populations in the countryside, where single shops support a village, than it is in heavily-built up areas. But I think I've found a bit of Newham that allows me to give a calculation a shot.
This is HP Food and Wine, the sole corner shop/grocery store serving a thin splinter of streets in East Ham. It's also a really well defined splinter because one side is blocked by the Northern Outfall Sewer, the other by the A13 dual carriageway and the far end by a school. Residents of Roman Road, Saxon Road and Stokes Road can't easily walk anywhere else, and potential shoppers from elsewhere are never going to walk in. I can therefore define an accurate catchment area and count the number of homes, which is about 550, and translate that into an estimated local population of 1500. This seems appropriately ballpark.
My Dad's Norfolk village has a population of about 1300 and has a village shop, so that's some reinforcement. My brother's Norfolk village has a population of about 800 but no longer has a village shop, it closed a few years ago, suggesting 800 is too few. The village where I used to live in Suffolk also has a population of about 1300 but only has a shop because the community organises it, not because it's economic. And Croxley Green where I grew up has a population of about 12500 and I think supports seven grocery stores, so that's more like 1800 people per shop. I'm going to suggest that 1500 is a reasonable stab at the catchment population for a corner shop.
I've long wondered what the catchment population is for a coffee shop. Small outlets seem to thrive on fairly minor footfall, and even quiet museums seem to think it worthwhile to have a corner serving drinks. But this is a much more difficult thing to count or tally because where do you draw the line, and what's the difference between a cafe and a coffee shop anyway? I'll have a go because in 2017 I compiled a definitive list of all the coffee-serving shops in the E3 postcode and I also know 52,000 people live here. So that means back in normal times E3 had ten what-I'd-call-proper coffee shops, that's one per 5000 residents, and 33-ish coffee-serving outlets, that's one per 1500.
I can do better with pharmacies because they're more easily countable. The E3 postcode has 11 pharmacies, that's one per 4800 residents. Croxley Green has 2 pharmacies, that's one per 6250 residents. The Isle of Wight has 27 pharmacies, that's one per 5200 residents. And if you scale up to the UK as a whole it has 14000 pharmacies, that's one per 4850 residents. These are impressively similar ratios suggesting there's a nationally prescribed population per dispensing chemist. I don't think there actually is, I think it's all just market forces, but you probably share your local pharmacy with about 5000 other people.
And let's do schools, specifically primary schools because they tend to be located close to home. The E3 postcode has 12 primary schools, that's one per 4300 residents. Croxley Green has 3 primary schools, that's one per 4100 residents. The Isle of Wight has 41 primary schools, that's one per 3500 residents. And the UK as a whole has 21000 primary schools, that's one per 3300 residents. Primary schools vary a lot in size so are hard to properly compare, but overall you need a slightly smaller population for a primary school than you do for a pharmacy.
And pubs, pubs are interesting. The E3 postcode has 15 pubs, that's one per 3500 residents. Croxley Green has 6 pubs, that's one per 2000 residents. The Isle of Wight has about 120 pubs, that's one per 1200 residents. And the UK as a whole had 47000 pubs pre-pandemic, that's one per 1500 residents. My local area is an outlier here, I suspect because a large proportion of the population don't drink alcohol, but overall it looks like 1500 has come up trumps again.
These are appallingly rough numbers that probably won't apply precisely where you live for a variety of geographical and economic reasons. But as catchment populations go a pharmacy needs about 5000 local people, a primary school needs 3500 and a corner shop, a coffee shop and a pub need 1500 each. I'll leave hardware stores and piano shops as an exercise for the reader.
Tue 1: The first struts of Pudding Mill Lane's new temporary theatre have been erected, opposite the station, on hardstanding unused since the Olympics. It's running several months behind schedule but is due to become a 25m-high hexagonal auditorium with seating for 1500, offering eight shows a week, at least until July 2024 when it all has to be taken down again.
Wed 2: Left London for the first time in nine months (even if it was less than a mile into Essex), at the end of my first paid-for bus ride in 15 months (aboard London's least frequent service). I'm merely nudging boundaries at this stage. Thu 3: Finally managed to log back into my Amazon account, after it got stroppy when I changed my email address last year, and thus confirmed that I haven't bought anything from them since October 2007. Fri 4: Dear lorry driver, thanks, but I would actually far prefer to let you pass and cross behind you than accept your kind offer to walk in front. Sat 5: The price of my Saturday newspaper has gone up, so it's now a pound more than 7 years ago and twice as much as 12 years ago. Still, at least they're still publishing a paper, which may not be the case in 12 years' time. Sun 6: Made a special visit to Southwark Bridge on its 100th birthday (or at least the 100th anniversary of the most recent span being opened by King George V and Queen Mary). No celebrations were evident and it was all a bit quiet.
Mon 7: Tried to explain to a dog owner in Victoria Park that it's not Dalmatians I don't like, it's large unpredictable dogs inadequately supervised by their owners. Tue 8: The heat means today is going to be my annual Singling-the-duvet Day, which if nothing else makes it easier to change the cover. Wed 9: Strode across Wanstead Flats listening to the Popmaster documentary on BBC Sounds, which was fascinating, but they never explained the really important thing which is why all the questions are worth a multiple of three points. Thu 10: Went to Argos to buy a bread bin, and it was so early in the morning I got to be customer 007. Fri 11: Up in Norfolk one of the first things I helped my Dad with was buying a new microwave, more specifically getting it off the shelf in the shop and carrying it to the car. It felt really odd unplugging the family's 20th century microwave, which my Mum would have used repeatedly, and dumping it unceremoniously on the floor of the garage. Sat 12: I was jolted to discover that my Dad's teabags are decaffeinated, so not technically teabags (and Yorkshire decaffeinated at that, which was a double whammy). Sun 13: I have really missed being in a house where you can watch the sun set (and, a few hours later, actually see the stars).
Mon 14: Another much-delayed task was sorting through the parental CD collection and extracting my Mum's selection of easy listening modern crooners. Many's the Christmas or birthday I'd have bought her the new Michael Ball album, Il Divo compilation or something from the latest group of good-looking tenors, and now here I was packing them all off to a charity shop. The very last such CD, however, I keep back at home... wrapped but never opened. Tue 15: On my last morning in Norfolk I heard, and then spotted, the silhouette of a Typhoon flying over the village. Beats going to an airshow. Wed 16: It's June weather tipping-point day. Before today 13 days over 24°C, after today none. Before today one fully overcast day, after today eight. Before today one wet day, after today well over a monthsworth of rainfall. Today is where summer vanishes. Thu 17: Thrilled to discover I'm mentioned several times in the latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Idioms, specifically for 'cop' ("great if you like trees and shrubs but not much cop if you prefer flowers"), 'pop', 'a tough act to follow', 'billy-o', 'have your eye on' and 'and no mistake'. Fri 18: The McDonalds at the Bow Roundabout has reopened after its refurb and now has a special door for McDelivery moped drivers with an Argos-style collection display. Sometimes it's busier than the main walk-in section.
Sat 19: I managed to be walking past London City Airport's runway as a plane took off, which is shockingly infrequent these days, although the number of Saturday departures has recently doubled... to two. Sun 20: Walking down Bow Road a slightly bleary couple stopped and asked what day it was, and I said the 20th, and they said it's Saturday isn't it, and I said no Sunday, and they looked really quite surprised. Mon 21: So far I've spotted several hireable e-scooters parked outside Tower Hamlets stations but as yet none on the roads. At Island Gardens one Lime scooter had been parked outside the official zone, so the geofencing can't be that tight. Tue 22: There are lots of cut-out Moomins across the Walthamstow Wetlands as part of a summer-long thing called
The Woman Who Fell In Love With An Island, a celebration of Tove Jansson. I didn't visit the upstairs exhibition or collect a trail leaflet because I didn't know about those at the time, plus all the free tickets appear to have 'sold out', but I did find a Moomin up a ladder at the top of the Coppermill Tower.
Wed 23: Among the many delights of Crews Hill are the showroom of the Fake Grass Company, London's highest concentration of greenhouses, the Enfield Bird Centre, a long row of ten different styles of hot tub chalet, Jane's Woolworks, a specialist reptile shed, Marble Fantasy, a bank of Amazon lockers plonked immediately outside the station and an oversized rooster. Thu 24: For the last eight months I've had some unfinished building work at home, and today the contractor finally came back. He promised to arrive between 8 and 9 but then turned up at 7.15, the bastard. He'd said the work would take two days but it only took four hours. And he mismeasured something last year so the door he brought didn't fit so he's got to come back again later. My money's on 2022. Fri 25: Walking down the Greenway at 7pm I was awed by a large white cloud bubbling up, actually growing visibly while I watched it, somewhere to the east. This turned out to be the 'explosive convection' which led to the Barkingtornado that touched down near Hulse Avenue, so I wish I'd taken a photo. Sat 26: The soles of my trusty Reeboks have very nearly fallen apart, which perhaps isn't surprising given I've walked at least 2000 miles in them since last summer, but none of my other trainers are quite so kind to my feet so I shall sorely miss wearing them.
Sun 27: There's some serious filming going on down Cornhill today, with a swarm of crew, a ton of equipment and some really high value cars parked outside the Royal Exchange. The black cabs have green headlights and all the cars have numberplates with dotty patterns, not letters and numbers, so I suspect this'll be some sci-fi/superhero caper. If you spot this taxi on Netflix or the big screen in the future, do come back and tell me what it was all for. Mon 28: Most appearances in The Archers so far this year - Alice, Kirsty, Brian, Chris and Jazzer. No appearances this year - Pat, Jill, Jolene, Debbie and Hannah. Tue 29: Spent a couple of hours rearranging boxes of stuff, now the builder's gone, most of which time was spent getting nostalgic about their contents. Chucked away several old Christmas cards (but not the first one my nephew scribbled or the last one my favourite English teacher sent). Wed 30: I finally went upstairs to talk to my neighbours about the noise they keep making, and we kept it polite, and I now know what they're doing to cause it and they now know how frustratingly annoying it sounds, but it remains to be seen whether they tone it down.
Tonight England have the opportunity to celebrate their biggest triumph since 1966 when they face Italy in the Euro 2020 final at Wembley. Victory would be the country's first major tournament win in half a century and for the team the biggest moment of their professional lives so far. The England players hold their destiny in their own hands, but they'll have to be at their very best if they're to topple the Italian side and realise their European dream.
