100 years ago Britain's main roads weren't numbered because they didn't need to be. Cars were new-fangled inventions that had yet to take over the world, so most important roads still had names from the era of the horse and cart. Most were named after the town at the other end (Cambridge Road) or the direction in which they travelled (Great West Road) or perhaps the Roman road that they followed (Watling Street). But then motor transport started to get popular and in 1921 the newly-formed Department of Transport decided that all of Britain's major roads should be numbered.
Civil servants selected six particularly important roads leading out of London (most starting close to the Bank of England) and numbered them A1 to A6 (clockwise from the north). Then they took three important roads leading out of Edinburgh (starting at Princes Street) and numbered them clockwise A7 to A9. These nine key trunk routes were as follows:
A1 London to Edinburgh (409 miles, originally the Great North Road) A2 London to Dover (77 miles, originally Watling Street) A3 London to Portsmouth (74 miles) A4 London to Bath (103 miles, originally the Great West Road) A5 London to Holyhead (270 miles, originally Watling Street) A6 London to Carlisle (282 miles, actually started in Barnet) A7 Edinburgh to Carlisle (101 miles) A8 Edinburgh to Gourock (67 miles, via Glasgow) A9 Edinburgh to Wick (273 miles, via Inverness)
You might have thought that the remainder of Britain's roads were numbered fairly haphazardly, but there is in fact a clinical logic to the fact that the A366 is in Somerset, the A666 is in Lancashire and the A966 is in the Orkney Islands. And it works like this:
The Numbering of Roads (Michelin Guide, 1921)
For the purpose of numbering the roads, Great Britain has been divided into nine sectors, six of which radiate in clockwise order from London, and the remaining three similarly from Edinburgh. Sector I includes all the roads situated between roads A1 and A2, and so on clockwise for the remaining sectors. Note: an exception occurs between road A2 and the estuary of the Thames which is part of sector II and not sector I. All roads take their initial number from the sector in which they start, eg A12 and A17 start in Sector I, A36 and A310 start in sector III. A road does not necessarily terminate in the same sector in which it begins. The commencement of a road is determined by the end of it which would be reached first by the hands of a clock radiating from London.
It may help to imagine the country divided up into nine 'cones', six emerging from London and three from Edinburgh (there's a helpful diagram here). For example, all the roads in Devon start with a 3 because they lie between the A3 and the A4. And the A57 from Liverpool to Lincoln starts with a 5 because Liverpool is the first of the two towns reached clockwise from London, and because Liverpool lies between the A5 and the A6. Erm, simple. There are exceptions, of course, but that's roughly how the system still works.
In honour of the fact that the country's first five arterial roads all start in central London, I've decided to take a walk along the first mile of each of them. Join me every day this week to discover where and how these five Great British Roads begin. I'll meet you tomorrow morning on the A1 just north of St Paul's Cathedral...
Bow Road station update: We're now ten months into the renovation of my local tube station - six months where the contractors prepared to maybe do something followed by four months of gradual change. Visit my local tube station now and you'll usually be able to spot a few workmen hanging around looking less than busy, probably out the front taking a fag break. You'll see loads of ugly cables draped across the ceilings and down the stairwells. You'll see extra cameras all over the station as well as stickers showing where even more cameras are going to be installed. You'll see mucky blue walls along the platforms behind which restoration work may or may not still be happening. You'll see gaps where tiles used to be, repainted window frames and a whole host of unfinished repairs. But as of this week you'll also find one less blue wall in the ticket hall, which is being slowly gutted and replastered but not yet redecorated. You'll find the floors have just been stripped away beyond the ticket barriers and down the stairs, leaving an ugly uneven concrete surface surrounded by homemade safety notices. And, most excitingly, you'll also be able to see the front of the station again because they've just taken down the scaffolding that's been shrouding it for the last nine months. I suppose the brickwork looks slightly cleaner than it did last April but quite frankly I can't see why it's taken so long to give the front of the station a fractional facelift. You can keep up to date on what is or isn't going on with my daily reports from the station in the comments box, or thrill to the complete story on my special Bow Road blog page.
100 things that seem to take forever: paying off your mortgage, saving up enough money to afford a mortgage in the first place, learning to play the piano, Monday mornings, the bit of the week from Monday morning to Friday afternoon, the gap between Stone Roses albums, reading the Sunday papers from cover to cover, winter, childhood, waiting for the final whistle in a cup match when your team's one goal ahead, the hour between 4am and 5am when you can't get to sleep, a watched pot boiling, American presidential elections, George Bush's presidential term, waiting for a star to fall, trying to think up a really good idea, the split second before a car crash, recovering after a stay in hospital, waiting for your 10th birthday, losing weight, running a bath, the football season, the gap between football seasons, waiting for Blogger to publish what you've just written, paying off a credit card bill, queuing up at the post office, finishing off a bucket of cinema popcorn, suffering from a cold, completing a game of Monopoly, January, waiting for payday in January, watching the second hand on a clock tick round once, Bow Road station regeneration, waiting for your lottery numbers to come up, driving to Cornwall, second class mail deliveries, cooking a jacket potato in the oven, growing out an embarrassing hair style, airport security checks, Big Brother, coming of age, rebooting a PC, waiting for scars to heal, fast-forwarding through the movie trailers at the start of a video, sitting in a laundrette, ironing shirts, trying to attract the waitress's eye in a restaurant, finding the end of a roll of sellotape, sitting through a really dull film, persuading a friend or colleague to change their annoying habits, walking between platforms at Holborn tube station, post-tsunami recovery, trying to throw a six at the start of a board game, a prison sentence, being at a dinner party with somebody else's friends, completing a crossword, waiting for the meat to cook at a barbecue, getting rid of hiccups, deleting spam, growing your own vegetables, inter-continental flights, puberty, deciding what to wear before you go to a party, waiting while someone else decides what to wear before you go to a party, the decade before you retire, escaping from a relationship that's going nowhere, being stuck in traffic, evolution, thinking up the rest of this list.
I was never blessed with an instinct for fashion. Not that I wander around in tweed jackets, nylon trackies or sandals, you understand, but the latest trends in clothing tend to pass me by. I have a functional wardrobe, and little desire to augment it with catwalk chic or cutting-edge style. You won't find me frequenting those smart boutiques that abound in certain quarters of London, nor hunting through the racks in high street chain stores in search of cut price imitations. I'm far more likely to carry on wearing one particular item long after the rest of the country has discarded it as passé, then when that item finally wears out to go wandering around the sales trying to find something that matches it as closely as possible. I don't understand how people tune into the fashion zeitgeist, nor how they work out what's in and what's out. So my question today is this. How the hell did square-toed shoes get to be so fashionable?
They've caught me unawares, square-toed shoes. I own round-toed shoes, and have done for several years because I thought they were nice and normal. But I looked down on the tube yesterday morning (like you do when the carriage is packed and your head's at a funny angle) and half the world was wearing square-toed footwear. I checked again in the office and, sure enough, a significant number of people had joined the square-toed clique. It was generally the younger trendier folk, the ones who wander around in chocolate coloured trainers on dress-down Fridays, but this new faddish footwear had permeated my workplace without me noticing. Why wasn't I told?
And they were everywhere on the tube on the way home too. In one Central line carriage all of the six seats opposite me were filled by an improbable line-up of matching square-toed men and women. I even managed to snap four of them here (lace-ups, heels, boots and slip-ons) in this surreptitious cameraphone photo. What is up with these people? Do they have sawn-off toes? Are they sheep? Where has this fad sprung from?
I'm guessing here, but I suspect there's a conspiracy afoot. Chief executives of footwear companies must sit around in smoky committee rooms plotting out which style of shoe they want the public to buy next. They cycle each season between round-, pointy- and square-toed shoes, encouraging the gullible to replace their footwear every year with the latest must-have tip-shape. No matter that pointy shoes pinch your toes something rotten (so I'm told), last year people were happy to suffer them in the name of fashion. No matter that flattened shoes look like part of some medieval pantomime costume, this year it's hip to be square. At least next year my ordinary curved shoes should be back in fashion without me having to pay a penny to the shoemakers. Load of cobblers, all of them.
1) Bring a torch: It's always foggy in London. Every single day the capital is clouded in thick peasouper fog (except between noon and 1pm which is when they take all the official tourist photographs). Over the last few centuries all Londoners have developed chimneysweep eyes which enable them to see in the pitch black streets. This endless murk is also the reason why London's trains run underground - it's lighter there. Visitors are advised to buy a fluorescent white iTorch from the Apple Store on Regent Street.
2) Bring an umbrella: It always rains in London, which is why Londoners carry umbrellas at all times. The umbrella evolved from an ancient jousting weapon used by knights in medieval times (that's before the invention of history). Londoners also all wear bowler hats, each with a rim specially designed to act like guttering and keep the rain off. If you want to keep dry and blend in properly while you're in London, make sure you never leave your hotel without a bowler and brolly.
3) Stay in the suburbs: Hotels in central London are extremely noisy places to stay because the sound of Big Ben wakes everyone up every fifteen minutes during the night. Take our advice and stay slightly further out in quaint market towns like Nuneaton, Swindon or Calais. These towns are cheap and convenient, each located less than 100 miles away from the centre of the capital as well as being international tourist magnets of their own.
4) Don't drink the tea: Tea is the devil's drink, an unnatural blend of chopped leaves which defies all attempts at vending machine palatability. Londoners are brought up drinking this acidic brown drink from an early age which is the reason why all their teeth are stained and rotten. But don't worry - there are plenty of coffee shops everywhere in London, maybe even more than there are at home.
5) Don't bother learning the language: The English don't speak proper English like Hollywood actors do, they speak Cockney which is an ancient street slang invented by William Shakespeare. Those wishing to brush up on their Cockney should watch Dick Van Dyke's performance in Mary Poppins several times prior to their visit, Alternatively, should you be unwilling to waste your time learning an alien language, just shout loudly until the locals eventually understand and bring you a root beer.
6) See the sights from the back of a taxi: There's nowhere better to view the sights of London than from the back seat of a black cab (except perhaps from the top deck of a Routemaster, but that would mean sharing seats with the locals and would clearly be unhygienic). Ask your friendly cabbie to take you on "the scenic route", and prepare to enjoy your extended journey at a very special price.
7) Be vigilant: London is always jam-packed full of foreigners so be sure to keep a watchful eye open for potential terrorist activity. Look out in particular for people with oversized rucksacks talking in strange accents standing around outside major tourist attractions taking an unnatural interest in their surroundings. You may even be one of them.
8) Order double portions: London cuisine is world-renowned for being bland, uninspiring and undersized. Restaurants always serve up stingy portions, sometimes just a slice of roast beef on a few leaves squirted artistically with watery sauce. Should your waiter forget to serve up a huge side portion of french fries with your meal then remember that negative tipping operates in the UK, and that there's almost certainly a McDonalds down the road where you can pig out properly.
9) Pop in to see the Queen: Arrive at 11am in time to watch the Changing of the Guard. You may even be lucky enough to be chosen to join the voting panel that decides which guard should be changed. Her Majesty loves to welcomes visitors, especially those in fancy dress. If the policeman at the front gate won't let you in, bring a ladder and try shimmying up over the side wall instead. However, whatever you do don't let Her Majesty offer you a cup of tea - just look at her teeth...
10) Your choice. The comments box awaits.
Voyage of the dawn treader: Very occasionally my job takes me somewhere different. Yesterday it took me on a 20 mile train journey to a small town in Thurrock (that's the arse end of Essex). I set off in darkness, travelled eastwards up the Thames estuary (via Barking, Dagenham, Grays and Tilbury) and arrived at my destination just after sunrise. It was a journey into dawn, and here are some of the sights I saw.
Dawn minus 50: early truckers tucking into drive thru breakfasts, a tiny cloudburst of blue fire dawning in the eastern sky
Dawn minus 40: discarded copies of Metro in an empty carriage, compressed commuters rattling past in the opposite direction, gasholders silhouetted against approaching morning
Dawn minus 30: redbrick valleys and concrete cuttings, litter-strewn back yards cloaked in shadow, bleary car workers lined up on platform 7 with tabloids in hand
Dawn minus 20: motor city, tarmac fields blanketed by identical saloon cars, industrial deserts where nobody lives, whirling wind farms driving away the darkness, a busy trunk road on concrete stilts
Dawn minus 10: unspoilt expanses of gloomy marshland, the dawn chorus sung by waves of waterfowl, le nouveau chemin de fer exprès vers Paris, distant chimneys belching smoke into daybreak, affordable housing in blocks and boxes, jammed traffic suspended in midair across the QE2 bridge
Dawn: delivery lorries at the Poundstretcher hypermarket, long lines of containers stacked tall by the dockside, warehouse after warehouse after warehouse after warehouse, ocean-going ships revealing the river's hidden path, towering pylons stalking the landscape, water towers reflecting the first glints of sunlight
Dawn plus 10: power stations that Londoners never see, local traffic queued at level crossings, a flock of gulls alighting on a silent lake, medieval churches perched on tiny hillocks in a muddy patchwork of brown and green, a load of bullocks on Mucking Flats, far-flung communities under threat of tidal flooding, an orange globe peeking over the lowland horizon, a new day rises in the east
Forum update: The diamond geezer forum burst into life yesterday when 17 new users (and several guests) posted more than 50 messages in a total of 9 threads. We learnt where to take a visitor who's on a whistlestop tour of London, which tube stations don't have ticket gates and which other forums you spend your lives reading. Between us we posted approximately 2000 words, which is far more words than would normally be posted in my comments box in one day and a lot more interactive than this blog normally gets. I was impressed, but not quite impressed enough. I still prefer blogs to boards because I prefer oneness to multiplicity. On a blog everything new is on the front page, whereas on a board you have to dig down one layer for the latest content. We can probably only cope with monitoring one or two message boards each day, whereas blogs are such a concentrated source of information that it's possible to digest more of them. Maybe that's why my forum ran out of steam yesterday after the climactic 'Tea at three' cuppa-sharing half hour. It's been a fascinating experience, but welcome back. Unless maybe there's some future in establishing a London Bloggers forum? It might have some longevity, that. Anybody interested?
Where are all the people who could be reading blogs? There are millions of people on the net every day, but only a tiny proportion of them are reading blogs. So, where's everybody else? I suspect a large number of world wide webbers are off reading forums or message boards instead. Maybe you're a user yourself.
Message boards are a bit like blogs. They're online portals for amateur publishing with a potential worldwide audience. People write stuff, offer opinions or ask questions on all sorts of diverse topics, then other people write back with their comments. Sometimes there are scores of new comments every day, sometimes nothing gets posted for months. So far so bloglike. But message boards aren't much like blogs. The dialogue is much more two-way, a chance to enter a conversation rather than react to one. Boards may be moderated but there isn't really one person in control - anybody can suggest topics rather than waiting around to see what today's subject is. And boards tend to focus on one small area of interest, rather than being personal viewpoints on the way life is. Boards are more interactive, blogs are more reflective, but both can build supportive online communities.
I found a free service from Forumer.com and the whole thing only took a couple of minutes to set up. I divided up my message board into London and non-London sections, set up special categories for London places, London events and London transport, then asked a few questions to start you off. You can pop over there and ask questions, post replies, start threads, make comments and generally interact with one another, if you like. You'll need to sign up to comment (don't worry because I'm not planning on selling your details to the spam merchants) or you can just read for free. Click <here>, OK? (4pm update: 48 posts so far)
I doubt that the diamond geezer forum will take off, though. Most successful forums target a very specific core interest, and mine doesn't really. And, to be honest, there's normally quite enough interaction in the comments boxes on this page without me diluting your thoughts by taking them off-site. In fact I'll be surprised if my forum gets any hits at all after this week, it's not really meant as a long term thing, but it'll be an interesting experiment for the few hours it survives. As an incentive for you to take a look I've set up a special Tea at three forum and I'm inviting you to join me there for a cuppa at 3pm (GMT) (ah, the joys of working from home this afternoon). But I'll see you back here on this page tomorrow - blogs still rule.
Number One quiz
Here are clues to the names of 20 artists who've had five or more number 1 records in the UK singles chart. The artists are arranged in descending order - the more number 1s they've had the nearer the start of the list they are. How many can you identify? (Answers in the comments box)
Number One number 1100 It Doesn't Matter Any More - Buddy Holly(February 2009)
I visited my local shopping centre in Stratford yesterday to see who was still buying singles, and the answer was seemingly nobody. In common with hundreds of other towns across the country there's now only one shop left in Stratford where you can still buy singles and that's Woolworths. Tucked between the albums and the endless racks of DVDs was a small section devoted to the 50 mainstream singles that Woolworths' buyers thought would least offend their customers this week. A small girl in a pink coat wandered over and picked up the latest single by Steps clones Pop! which had been conveniently positoned at seven year-old eye level. She gazed for a couple of seconds at the grinning bronzed singers on the cover, perhaps wondering whether the Blue Peter team had finally made a record, then carefully placed the plastic case back on the shelf and wandered off to look at the PlayStation games instead. Nobody else, even on a busy Saturday afternoon, gave the singles section a second look. Long live the download.
"Now you go your way and I'll go mine, now and forever till the end of time. I'll find somebody new and baby we'll say we're through and you won't matter anymore"
Number One number 80 One Night / I Got Stung - Elvis Presley(January 1959) Number One number 1000 One Night / I Got Stung - Elvis Presley(January 2005)
And so the 1000th number one goes to the dead American who also had the 62nd, 67th, 80th, 85th, 109th, 112th, 115th, 119th, 129th, 134th, 136th, 140th, 143rd, 154th, 197th, 289th, 412nd, 930th and 999th. Which is kind of appropriate, if not very inspiring. Thanks to a 70th birthday marketing stunt we've been lumbered with this ancient double A side atop the millennial chart, rather than anything new, fresh and forward-looking. I reckon that by March the British public will be so pissed off by Elvis re-releases that thay'll welcome the imminent merger of over-the-counter sales and downloads with open arms, only to discover that a stagnant chart dominated by six month-old U2 tracks is even more depressing. In the meantime let's all sing along with Elvis... erm, has anybody actually heard either of these songs anywhere in the last week?
"One night with you is what I'm now praying for, the things that we two could plan would make my dreams come true."
Number One number 900 Lady Marmalade - Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mya and Pink(June 2001)
Just three years later Lady Marmalade returned to number 1, again sung by an all-girl quartet but this time an urban supergroup assembled to promote Baz Luhrmann's movie Moulin Rouge. The film is a masterpiece, so I'm told, but stripped of its visuals this single merely sounds like four American starlets screeching shakily through a seventies standard. Christina had already topped the charts once (with a work of Genie-us), and both she and Pink would do so again, but this was as good as it got for the less well known Lil' Kim and Mya. Only two singles have ever reached number 1 twice not performed by the original artist. This LaBelle cover is one, while the other is Against All Odds (which first hit the top for the execrable Westlife and Mariah Carey, then returned to the summit just a fortnight ago for X Factor winner Steve Brookstein).
"He met Marmalade down in old Moulin Rouge, strutting her stuff on the street... Voulez vous coucher avec moi ce soir?"
Number One number 800 Bootie Call - AllSaints(September 1998)
Saints they weren't, but Shaz, Mel, Nic and Nat were the credible R&B alternative to the Spice Girls in the late nineties. The quartet were named after All Saints Road in Notting Hill, site of the recording studio where Shaznay and Melanie first met, and they endeared themselves to many with their trademark crop tops and combats. All Saints enjoyed a highly successful chart career, achieving five number 1 singles before the band imploded in an orgy of petty back-stabbing. Alas the 800th number 1 was the weakest of the girls' chart toppers, with Bootie Call lacking either the classy funk of Never Ever, the chilled-out soul of Pure Shores or the sassy sleaze of Lady Marmalade. Of which more later...
"Good loving is not always from the heart, you gotta be smart, stay just the way you are, it's just a bootie call."
Number One number 700 Twist And Shout - Chaka Demus & Pliers(January 1994)
Chaka Demus and Pliers sound like they were named after a firm of Caribbean decorators, but they were actually christened John Taylor and Everton Bonne (which somehow isn't so catchy). Both grew up in Kingston, Jamaica, making their mark on the local dancehall scene by mixing contemporary and roots reggae styles. The mid nineties saw a bit of a reggae revival in the UK, also featuring Shaggy, Bitty McLean and Shabba Ranks (although Shabba was later outed as a rampant homophobe and dropped by his record label). As for the song, Twist And Shout is a much-covered Fifties classic which, in the hands of The Beatles, became the title track of the UK's top selling EP (ever). You won't remember EPs because they flourished in the early 60s and then died out (much like the single is about to).
"You know you look so good, you know your twist so fine, come on and twist a little closer now and let me know that you're mine."
Number One number 600 China In Your Hand - T'Pau(November 1987)
Unforgettable intro + plaintive singing + screeching chorus = local radio classic. T'Pau hailed from Shrewsbury and were named after the Vulcan matriach who supervised at Mr Spock's near-miss Star Trek wedding. The music press kindly described singer Carol Decker as 'flame-haired', which was better than her secret 80s twin Mick Hucknall fared. Carol was inspired to write this cracking song about the fragility of ambition after watching a documentary about Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein. Nowadays the only monsters associated with the hit are the drunkards who regularly massacre this 80s standard at pub karaoke nights. But you would too, wouldn't you?
"Your dreams are china in your hand, don't wish too hard because they may come true and you can't help them."
Like Abba eight years previously, Nicole Hohloch from Saarbrücken (representing West Germany) had won Eurovision in the UK, this time hosted by Jan Leeming in the Harrogate Conference Centre. Like Abba, Nicole also took her winner to Number 1 in the UK, the third consecutive year that the Eurovision winner had achieved this.
She had won Eurovision by a mile with ‘Ein Bißchen Frieden’ in German, gaining the maximum ‘douze points’ from nine of the seventeen other juries. Performing last, a 17 year-old girl seated on a stool, with a white guitar, singing a simple song about world peace, had cleaned up at a time when Europe was gripped by nuclear arms build-up, Reagan, Thatcher and fear of the cold war getting out of hand. Chig had been getting into trouble at school by going on CND marches and forming human chains around Greenham Common. Against this backdrop, when cunning linguist Nicole took us all by surprise and sang her winning reprise in French, Dutch and English too, it was all too much and 15 year-old Chig had to pretend not to be crying as he made his family keep quiet while he held the microphone of his tiny cassette recorder to the TV set. (That Summer, on a school trip to Holland, Chig bought the Dutch version of the 7” single. Even now, he can sing along to it in Dutch without having much idea what the actual words are!)
Nicole went on to save herself from the ‘one hit wonder’ category by the narrowest margin possible when her follow-up single scraped one week in the chart, at #75, giving her a chart career composed entirely of singles which peaked at either end of the UK chart. She’s still well-known in Germany. Nicole was Germany’s first Eurovision winner. They’re still waiting for their second.
"A little loving, a little giving, to build a dream for the world we live in, a little patience and understanding for our tomorrow, a little peace."
Number One number 400 Don`t Cry For Me Argentina - Julie Covington(February 1977)
Julie came to acting through the Cambridge Footlights, and in 1973 was the first actress to play Janet Weiss in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. She found fame as Dee in ITV's Rock Follies, but also found time to sing on the album Hey You! alongside Brian Cant, Toni Arthur and the rest of the Play Away team. Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber chose Julie to sing on their Evita album in 1976, and her rendition of Eva Peron's swansong became the pair's first international chart topper. Julie later turned down the lead role in the stage version for political reasons, and that's how the world was lumbered with Elaine Paige instead.
"So I chose freedom, running around trying everything new but nothing impressed me at all - I never expected it to."
Great British Roads - from the beginning
Bow Road station update: We're now ten months into the renovation of my local tube station - six months where the contractors prepared to maybe do something followed by four months of gradual change. Visit my local tube station now and you'll usually be able to spot a few workmen hanging around looking less than busy, probably out the front taking a fag break. You'll see loads of ugly cables draped across the ceilings and down the stairwells. You'll see extra cameras all over the station as well as stickers showing where even more cameras are going to be installed. You'll see mucky blue walls along the platforms behind which restoration work may or may not still be happening. You'll see gaps where tiles used to be, repainted window frames and a whole host of unfinished repairs. But as of this week you'll also find one less blue wall in the ticket hall, which is being slowly gutted and replastered but not yet redecorated. You'll find the floors have just been stripped away beyond the ticket barriers and down the stairs, leaving an ugly uneven concrete surface surrounded by homemade safety notices. And, most excitingly, you'll also be able to see the front of the station again because they've just taken down the scaffolding that's been shrouding it for the last nine months. I suppose the brickwork looks slightly cleaner than it did last April but quite frankly I can't see why it's taken so long to give the front of the station a fractional facelift. You can keep up to date on what is or isn't going on with my daily reports from the station in the comments box, or thrill to the complete story on my special Bow Road blog page.
And they were everywhere on the tube on the way home too. In one Central line carriage all of the six seats opposite me were filled by an improbable line-up of matching square-toed men and women. I even managed to snap four of them here (lace-ups, heels, boots and slip-ons) in this surreptitious cameraphone photo. What is up with these people? Do they have sawn-off toes? Are they sheep? Where has this fad sprung from?
Number One quiz
