It's all change on the railways this weekend. Four of the train companies serving London and the Midlands cease to exist tonight, and are replaced tomorrow by four new companies owned by different conglomerates run by different boardrooms of grey-suited financiers. Customers will probably notice no immediate difference but gradually, over the next year or three, all the stations and rolling stock will be repainted, re-signed and rebranded in lovely new corporate colours. And then the new companies will raise their ticket fares to pay for it, because that's how non-nationalised railways work.
One of the expiring train companies is Silverlink. From tomorrow their backwater suburban "Metro" services will become part of Transport for London's empire, branded London Overground, and you'll be able to use your Oyster card to swipe in and out. From tomorrow (probably) these lines will appear on the London tube map, strangling its once-classic design "like an evil tangerine octopus". [More on the important topic of tube map "information pollution" on Radio 4 this afternoon, on iPM at 5:30pm, sandwiched between features on Pakistani politics and mental health blogging]. But Underground passengers inspired to switch to the Overground may be sorely disappointed. The trains are slow, messy, short, overcrowded and infrequent, which means a lot of hanging around on platforms waiting for something ramshackle to turn up. And it could be years before TfL investment starts to improve things.
Here's the dg guide to the new London Overground, should you plan to risk using it.
Omigod omigod omigod! It's here! The gadgetiest gadget in the history of gadgets is released in the UK today! The iPHONE is here! Yip yip hooray!
I've been SO looking forward to today, ever since Steve the AppleMan announced the iPhone's iBirth back in January. It's been SO hard waiting SO long for today to arrive that I nearly got on the plane to America and bought one there. Oh how I've longed just to stroke its interactive touchscreen and feel those sleek metal curves against my skin. Oh to have an iBulge in my pocket, vibrating its cybergoodness every time somebody sends me a text. And so soon now, SO SOON!
Have you seen how COOL the iPhone display is? Big chunky icons in proper nice technicolour, mmmm yummy. And menus that swishy-woo across the screen at the touch of a finger, wheeee! You can add ALL your music until the 8gig memory gets full, and there's a headphone socket which only takes iPod headphones but that's fine because iPod headphones are BRILL and don't leak. You can upload tons of photos to bore people with on the bus, and there's a really great camera which has TWO megapixels which is like cutting edge these days. It's all so intuitive, so flash and so gimme gimme gimme! And SO easy to get hold of. All you need is an up-to-date computer and proper broadband and a fully-functional iTunes account and an 18 month mobile phone contract and a lot of money. I mean, what could be simpler?
Me, I'm DEFFO going to be joining the queue outside the Apple store in Regent Street this afternoon, because I need an iPhone SO much. The big launch is at 6:02 tonight. 6:02, that's clever that is, because O2's the only phone network on which you can use the iPhone. I'm not on O2 myself, well not yet, but obviously I will be by half past eight this evening. I'm tied in with the opposition at the moment, but that's OK because I don't mind having two phone contracts with two different companies simultaneously. I can be rid of the old one by Christmas next year, and then I'll just have my LUVVERLY iPhone to pay for. It's only £269 up front and then thirty-five quid a month for at least 18 months. And that's only £899 altogether, that is. Utter bargain, just to have swishy-woo screen menus.
And my iPhone will work really fantastic so long as it has wi-fi. Which is great cos I've got wi-fi at home. I can sit on my sofa with my iPhone and surf the internet on my ickle squinty iScreen for as long as I like. Hurrah! I doubt I'll be using my laptop again, EVER, not now I've got miniature perfection. And it'll be dead easy using wi-fi when I'm out too, just so long as I'm at the British Library or staying at a Holiday Inn or in a Little Chef or some other really conveniently located hotspot. For everywhere else O2 has this excellent special 2.5G network called EDGE which is nearly everywhere. Well they promise it WILL be - it's only across 30% of the country so far, but who wants to live in the dull 70% part anyway? Sorry Mum, sorry Dad, but I can't demonstrate how ace and interactive the iPhone is while I'm up in Norfolk. Serves you right for living where there are fields. But, like, your loss.
The whole iThing is like TOO EXCITING. It's all about interactive gleamy technology. It's all about poking stuff with your magic finger. It's all about knowing what the temperature is in Los Angeles. It's all about being able to download the new Macy Gray album no matter where you are in the UK (near enough). It's all about watching YouTube videos of Japanese gameshows while you're on the train. It's Mega-iPod PLUS. It's the iFuture. It's iIconic. Oh, and it makes phone calls too.
That's what I wrote on this blog back in November 2003 when the idea of an Olympic Stadium just outside Stratford was first mooted. Four years on, not only is this stadium set to become reality but we also now have the first plans of what it'll actuallylook like. The Olympic stadium will be a big sloping circular amphitheatre with a sports field in the middle, a bit like a giant gooseberry tart. There'll be room for eighty thousand seats around the rim, with several pebble-like pods scattered outside the perimeter for selling fast food and branded souvenirs. The stadium looks nothing like the funky muscled design that London 2012 published in their bid book back in 2004. In fact this newly launched structure isn't in any way a thriller, is it? Compared to other Olympic stadia of recent years it's really a bit dull. And, I must say, thank Zeus for that.
Last time the 2012 team launched something vibrant and cutting edge they were ridiculed across the globe. This time they've offered a safe, solid solution with an eye to the future, and reaction has been rather more muted. No vitriolic rants or sighs of disappointment, except in the usual quarters. This is a functional design solution, with one eye on the public purse and the other on 2013 and beyond. The new stadium will be, the organisers hope, the embodiment of sustainability. And those of who live round here are rather pleased by that.
There are few larger white elephants on this planet than Olympicstadia. Half a billion pounds is being pumped into London's, and for what? The Games themselves will last no more than five weeks, and the stadium itself for an ever shorter time (11 days for the main games and 11 for the Paralympics). During that time, if past events are any guide, its 80000 seats will be full on only three occasions. Once for the opening ceremony (because, you know, it would look wrong if 79999 people held up their special coloured cards and there was a gap in the middle). Once for the men's 100 metres final (an event less than 10 seconds long, for heaven's sake). And once for the closing ceremony (at which point spectators may turn to one another and ask "bloody hell, what are we going to do with this arena now?").
Never fear. After the Games that top tier of seating can be removed, cutting the stadium's capacity down to a rather more sensible 25000. That fabric wrap around the edge of the arena will be taken down and turned into souvenir bags (see, and you thought the Games would never make a profit). And a new owner will be given custodianship of the slimmed-down facility to ensure that this enormous engineering project has a proper legacy after September 9th 2012. Except that, erm, nobody's quite sure who that legacy client might be. West Ham were interested until they were told that the maximum capacity of 25000 was non-negotiable. Leyton Orient are still interested, sort of, although they really don't like the enforced athletics track round the edge because it distances spectators from the pitch. And rugby clubs like Wasps and Saracens might be interested, possibly, although East Londoners aren't renowned for their support of elongated ball games. Never mind, somebody'll turn up and be interested in buying the place, won't they?
In the meantime, demolition on the Olympic stadium site continues. I've been back to the Greenway bridge severaltimes since the rest of the Lower Lea Valley was sealed off, and every time I go back something else has disappeared. Two weeks ago [photo] everything to the left of Marshgate Lane had been razed and levelled, while piles of crumbled brickwork littered the ground close by to the right. Gone, gone, gone, gone. And, if I view the BBC's latest aerial shots correctly, during the last fortnight every other building on "Stadium Island" has been wiped out of existence. I would go back and check for myself, but it's November and it's dark so I can't be certain (until the weekend) that the salmon factory and net curtain warehouse have been destroyed.
In four years time I'll have a semi-decent view of the Olympic Stadium, once it's (hopefully) finished, without leaving my flat. I'll see its lights twinkling in the distance and be able to watch the opening night firework display from the comfort of my own sofa. I can't wait. But, for the needs of the local community, it's more important that the stadium has a long-term use for decades into the future. Let's hope that the gooseberry tart doesn't end up a gooseberry fool.
It's a busy life being Queen. In the morning you go to the Houses of Parliament in your gold coach and read out a tedious speech to cynical MPs, and in the evening you get to reopen a station. Not just any station though, this was St Pancras, surely the most magnificent rail terminus in London. Over the last few years its soaring glass roof and Victorian brickwork have all been painstakingly restored ready for the arrival of Eurostar services next week, and last night the Queen officiated at the officialreopening ceremony. Two Gothic masterpieces in one day.
Once only the great and good were allowed to attend opening ceremonies, but things have changed. This time we were all invited, and we didn't even have to leave the house and sit on a draughty platform. All we had to do was log on to a streaming webcast, kindly provided by development partners London & Continental Railways, and we could watch all the festivities for ourselves. If only the Queen had thought to do the same she could have saved all that dressing up, and watching rather a lot of promotional videos too.
In an inspired piece of stagemanship St Pancras's Master of Ceremonies for the evening was William Henry Barlow, the engineer who constructed the great vaulting train shed. Not the real WHB, obviously, because he died a century ago, but Victorian lookalike actor Timothy West. In his top hat and trademark whiskers he delivered a well-disguised history lesson recounting the trials and triumphs of the station's construction. His audio-visual presentation went on a bit, but it had been good to give the original builders due respect for their architectural innovation. Eventually somebody out of sight flicked a big switch and all the lights came on. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra fiddled and scraped, and the assembled dignitaries applauded politely.
Further schmaltzy muzak heralded the arrival of a trio of Eurostar & Javelin trains. A billowing cloud of dry ice obscured most of their entrance, but the three nosecones eventually poked through the mist to give a really good view of the name of a train manufacturer's website plastered across the front. There followed several further films on the big video wall erected for the occasion. Some concentrated on the legacy that the High Speed 1 link will bring to East London and to Kent, while others were shameless promotional epics which you could easily imagine being screened during a Channel 4 commercial break. "Mr Barlow" linked each together by following a well-plotted script, although occasionally this sounded more appropriate to a very posh shopping centre than an international station. Rail and retail - such a dual-purposed fate will be the future of split personality St Pancras.
At last Her Majesty strode up to the lectern to deliver her speech. She sounded almost convincing as she spoke of "bringing people together" and looking forward to the 2012 Olympics. But there were just a few too many marketing buzzphrases slipped into her words. I bet that London & Continental Railways' chief PR guru had a minor orgasm when he heard the sovereign describe St Pancras as "not just as a station but as a destination". This particular word has been at the heart of St Pancras's mission statement for several years, and here was the Queen giving it her unbiased endorsement. Ah yes, this was less an opening ceremony and more a celebratory rebranding.
Who more perfect to sing the praises of the new station than cosy opera diva Katherine Jenkins? She warbled her way through a short medley of Beatles songs (mainly Ticket To Ride, of course), accompanied by popstrel Lemar for added R&B cool. A series of multi-coloured lights duly blazed across the roof of the Barlow Shed, and the great clock on the wall ticked round to "just over an hour since the ceremony began". Time for beardy William to bid us farewell, and for the VIPs to head downstairs for "supper in the undercroft". I'm sure that Gordon and Boris and Ken and Liz enjoyed their grand evening out, witnessing the glorious rebirth of a great Victorian architectural treasure. I sort of enjoyed watching it, even without the canapes afterwards, but it wasn't quite the same as actually being there. The public are invited back inside St Pancras next Wednesday for the first day's services and some special celebratory arty stuff (and, the owners hope, lots of shopping and drinking too). I'm looking forward to going back. Meet you there?
London Journeys: the Willett Way The other weekend, when the clocks went forward, I brought you the tale of William Willett - the Chislehurst builder who inspired British Summer Time. You were suitably underwhelmed. I can tell this because the associated photographs are, by a factor of about five three, my least viewed Flickr set ever. Anyway, I've written a piece about the Willett Way for Time Out (800 completely different words to what you've seen already), and the article can be found nestling on page 16 of this week's issue. Should you be interested. Alternatively you might want to look at somebody else's photos instead, from a recent Willett-related visit to Petts Wood by a Greenwich astronomical society. I note, with pleasure, that William's grave has been properly renovated since my visit.
• Mmm, pie and mash, surely the foodstuff of choice for plump-faced Cockney gobblers. True addicts will find solace in the Pie & Mash Club whose members compete monthly to guzzle as much beefsteak, mash, eels and liquor as possible. The 2007/8 season is now well underway, with frontrunner Tom walking away with the calorie-packed spoils at Manze's in Tower Bridge Road last month. [Even if you're not free on Friday lunchtimes, you might still find their directory of London's Pie & Mash premises invaluable]
• Ever find yourself miles from home and in need of a local radio fix? 48 UK commercial radio stations are now available to stream online with the Radio Centre Player. Perfect, should you ever want to listen to Cornwall's Pirate FM in Dundee, Dundee's Tay FM in Kent or Kent's Invicta FM in Los Angeles. [no need to sign in, just click the "default player" option]
• Roof Unit are a photography collective with their HQ on the top floor of a retired soap factory in East London. I bumped into one of them in the middle of the Olympic Park recently - both of us snapping away as bulldozers demolished the landscape all around us. My new random acquaintance then alerted me to an exhibition called Foundations which they're holding at the Space Studios in Hackney for the next six weeks. On show are 13 separate projects visually cataloging the closure of the Lower Lea Valley, including allotment evacuation, disappearing fish and general atmospheric wistfulness. [flier][part of the East London Photography Festival]
• This weekend Radio 4 launches a half hour magazine programme devoted to blogs, bloggery and issues raised by bloggers. And about time too, I hear you say. The programme's called ipm and, as you would imagine, it has its own blog (and its own Flickr pool). Here you can watch the show's running order evolve through the week (and indeed watch the tube map feature inspired by this blog drop from nearly-lead item to deleted also-ran). Be there at 5:30pm on Saturday. [or more likely Listen Again]
• If you don't want to get any work done for the rest of the day then try Bloxorz - one of those infuriatingly simple yet not-so-simple strategy games. Can you roll the block around the grid and through the hole without falling over the edge? I'm currently loitering on Level 25, so only another eight to go. But I'm sure you can beat that. [via Londonist]
Lucky old Greenwich. By being at the heart of global astronomy back in the mid 19th century, a committee of scientists selected it to be the most important place on earth (longitudinally speaking). All eastward and westward measurements around the planet start from here, along a line through the middle of a telescope set up in the famous Observatory in 1851. This is otherwise a very ordinary line, its location completely arbitrary and artificial. But, if you know where to look, the meridian has been marked across the face of London in several different locations. There are plaques and monuments, and sundials and statues, and even hedgerows and footpaths that precisely follow the dividing line between the western and eastern hemispheres. I've told you all about them before. Three years ago I took you on a week-long journey up the zero degree line of latitude from Greenwich to the M25, stopping off at all the places where the PrimeMeridian has been marked in some way. But I didn't have a Flickr account at the time, so I couldn't show you as many photographs as I'd have liked. Today I'm making up for that earlier omission by presenting 50 assorted photographs for your perusal and pleasure. They're all of deliberate "Meridian markers", and not of random places and objects that just happen to lie on the 0° line.
So please enjoy today's special pictorial tribute feature - Marking The Meridian.
See also:
• Marking the meridian - my blog from three years ago, with oodles of meaty detail
• Greenwich Meridian Trail - take a walk along the meridian through Greenwich and Greenwich Park (with a nice map to print out)
• On The Line - An Oxfam website comparing and contrasting the eight countries found along the meridian
• The Greenwich Meridian laser(sorry, that's the one photo I didn't get)
People of Britain take heed. Please do not, repeat not, take your camera to an organised firework display. I know it's very tempting, but please don't do it. There's no point. You know it makes sense.
It's early November and there are a lot of organised firework displays about. Most of us will end up going to one, just because it's easier (and cheaper) than setting fire to £100 of gunpowder in one's own garden. And most of us will take a camera. It's quite hard not to take a camera to an event these days, because most mobile phones double up as portable megapixel devices. And it's quite hard to avoid whipping your camera out and taking pictures of things, because everybody takes photos of everything these days. If it moves - click. If it's pretty - click. If you've just happy-slapped a grandma - click. Honestly, we've become a nation of instinctive image-snapping addicts. But please try to resist.
Ah, see the lovely fireworks. They flash, they blaze and they sparkle, and they really are very pretty indeed. So, instinctively, you get your camera out and aim it at the sky. Bang! - click. Whoosh! - click. Ooooooh! - click. And everyone else in the crowd is doing the same. Lenses pointed skyward, clicking at the sky, desperately trying to capture some of the magnificent spectacle now visible in the heavens. But why? Firework photos rarely come out well. Firework photos are never as bright, dynamic and exciting as the real thing. They're two-dimensional smeary snapshots of a moment in time, and not in any way like watching a pyrotechnic drama unfold. Please don't bother.
I mean, why are you taking photographs of a firework display anyway? It's dark for a start, with only a few points of bright light across a black background. There's also that annoying time delay which means that the pretty explosion will be over before your camera reacts. And what are you going to do with these hundreds of photos afterwards? Stick them in an online gallery? Nobody cares you know. There are millions of firework photos online already, all pretty much the same, and nobody really wants to see yours. They'll add nothing to the global collection of firework photography, they're just be pointless internet clutter. Or maybe you intend to email your bonfire night snaps to some friends. Like they'll care. They've all seen fireworks before, and they'll not be interested in your splotchy digital canvases. Really, there's no point, so don't.
People of Britain, please refrain from waving your camera in the air for a full half hour - the unfortunate spectators stood behind you will appreciate that enormously. The whole point of a firework display is to experience the spectacle with your eyes. Not to stand there watching the whole event on a tiny glass screen. You'll end up so absorbed by the act of photography that you'll never get the opportunity to gawp upwards with due awe and wonder. Put your camera away in your pocket and leave it there, or better still just leave it at home. Aim your retina upward, not your artificial lens. Fill your memory with marvellous images, don't fill your memory card instead.
If it's quarter past seven on the morning of the third of November then I've been single for exactly eight years. (Yes, I know I post this particular post at thesametimeeveryyear, but I have updated it a bit, and I intend to keep posting it every year on this date until my situation changes. Not that I care if it doesn't, you understand.) Some might say that we single people are missing out on the joys of coupledom, and maybe we are, but I'm convinced that there are equally many positive points to being single:
Single: You get the whole duvet to yourself. Coupled: You don't need a hot water bottle.
Single: There's half as much ironing to do. Coupled: There's twice as much ironing to do but somebody else might do it.
Single: You can hoover the carpet when you think it needs doing. Coupled: Somebody else hoovers the carpet before you think it needs doing.
Single: Nobody ever tells you that the kitchen must be repainted and the bathroom must be retiled. Coupled: Two people can repaint the kitchen or retile the bathroom far more quickly than one.
Single: You never have to waste a Saturday doing what somebody else wants. Coupled: You never sit around on a Saturday wondering what the hell to do.
Single: You can play your music collection really loud, even the track that nobody else likes. Coupled: Your music collection is twice the size.
Single: You can watch whatever TV channel you like, without arguments. Coupled: There's someone else on the sofa to snuggle up to.
Single: Nobody complains when you burp, belch or fart. Coupled: Somebody points out when you have ketchup on your chin.
Single: You don't have to put up with somebody else's niggly annoying habits. Coupled: Somebody else puts up with your niggly annoying habits.
Single: You never come home to a blazing row. Coupled: You sometimes come home to a cooked meal.
Single: You get to eat the whole ready meal for two yourself. Coupled: It takes just as long to cook for two as it does for one.
Single: You can spend all your money on yourself. Coupled: There are two salaries coming in and only one set of bills.
Single: You can walk away from a flatshare, any time. Coupled: You can afford a mortgage, together.
Single: There are no important birthdays or anniversaries to accidentally forget. Coupled: Somebody actually remembers your birthday.
Single: You never have to buy useless presents for your partner, just for the sake of it. Coupled: Somebody buys you presents occasionally, and it's the thought that counts.
Single: You're allowed to flirt with people in the street. Coupled: You don't need to flirt with people in the street.
Single: You like the idea of being coupled. Coupled: You like the idea of being single.
Single: You can still have a riotous social life in your 30s. Coupled: You can still have a riotous social life in your 60s.
Single: You can always get a double seat to yourself on public transport. Coupled: You can never find a double seat because they're all being hogged by single people.
Single: You have no friends to go out with because they've all partnered off and are staying in. Coupled: You don't have to go out with those annoying friends you had while you were single.
Single: You don't catch every sniffle, cold and flu bug off your partner. Coupled: When you suffer a major cardiac arrest, somebody actually notices and dials 999.
Single: You never get left all alone and desolate because your life partner's just passed away. Coupled: When you get old and infirm, you don't end up in a care home because there's nobody to look after you.
Single: If you meet the partner of your dreams, it's not too late to marry them. Coupled: Nobody ever meets the partner of their dreams, so better to get married before it's too late.
Single: Being coupled is restrictive, stifling and a sign of personal weakness. Coupled: Being single is unnatural, lonely and a sign of personal failure.
Single: You can have sex with anyone you like. Coupled: You can have sex whenever you like.
Single: The bathroom is always free. Coupled: The bedroom is always full.
Single: You can lie in bed in the morning for as long as you like. Coupled: There's a very good reason for lying in bed in the morning.
Single: Nobody sees what you look like first thing in the morning. Coupled: Somebody loves you despite what they see first thing in the morning.
Single: You never discover that your partner took last Tuesday off work by pretending to be sick, then spent all day shagging a bloke from Colchester. Not that I'm in any way bitter, you understand...
It's 25 years to the day since Channel 4kicked off with the very first edition of the yet-to-be-cult Countdown. I missed it because I was out having a driving lesson, but I was back in time for Brookside and The Comic StripPresents and all the other first night shenanigans. In the 25 years since that dark Tuesday, Channel 4 has broadcast more than its fair share of really rather fine programmes. Here are 25 of my favourites (all clickable). (you'll probably disagree wth my choice, in which case there's a full 300-month summary over here)
• Brookside (1982): The everyday story of everyday Liverpool folk used to be great, inbetween the over-realistic early years and the long-faded final years. I've probably watched more episodes of Brookie than any other programme on the channel. Our Sheila would be proud. • TheTube (1982): Possibly the finest music programme ever, blessed by its north-east location, professionally shambling presenters and a golden age of proper music. • TreasureHunt (1982): If this list were in rank order, Anneka's chopper would be at the top. 45 minutes every week to zip about an English county looking for clues in increasingly bizarre locations, while Graham's camera focused on the glorious countryside and a jumpsuited rear. Geography was never so attractive. • MaxHeadroom (1985): Latex-headed actor Matt Frewer stuttered wry comments from 20 minutes into the future (it was really just another music show, but so well dressed up). • The ChartShow (1986): Stuff the presenters, just play back-to-back videos for an hour. Inspired, for the 80s at least, but now there are fifty channels that do the same. • Saturday Live (1986): Cutting edge comedy (UK version) which made staying in at the weekend the preferable option. A studio-based tour-de-force which broke the careers of an unexpectedly high proportion of today's comedy mainstream. • Network 7 (1987): Jerky camera angles, on-screen captions and bite-sized news chunks - most people hated Janet Street Porter's Sunday yoof magazine at the time, but now nigh every TV producer mimics it. • Whose LineIs It Anyway? (1988): Ultra-cheap TV, just a quartet of comics generating laughter out of nothing, but demonstrating far greater cleverness and nerve than any comparable over-rehearsed panel show. • Sticky Moments (1989): Unparalleled innuendo from Julian Clary (and the lovely Hugh Jelly) in this uber-camp gameshow format, all at the expense of four unfortunate contestants plucked from the audience. I don't think my BestMate's ex ever recovered from the experience. • Vic Reeves Big Night Out (1990): Half an hour of weird. Much the same half an hour of weird every week. And all the better for it. Spin spin spin that Wheel of Justice! • The CrystalMaze (1990): Only Richard O'Brien (and an exceptionally creative production team) could have made an hour-long hit show about logic problems and falling off logs. But who, sat watching at home, didn't secretly want to have a go at riding the Aztec river or meeting Mumsie in a Medieval dungeon? • Drop TheDead Donkey (1990): A properly topical newsroom comedy, filmed dangerously close to transmission, set in the charming world of egotistical media buffoons. Ran for years because it was so grotesquely believable. • GamesMaster (1992): Did you watch this pioneering virtual world for Dominik Diamond's sarky asides, or for the surreal sight of Patrick Moore dressed up as the King of the Joysticks? • The BigBreakfast (1992): No other breakfast TV show has ever managed to be must-see, not since Chris and Gaby (and then Johnny and Denise) put E3 on the broadcasting map. A perfect load of Bow Locks. • Don't ForgetYour Toothbrush (1994): Brought an unexpected sense of occasion to the Saturday night gameshow genre, back in the days when a foreign holiday was still a prize worth winning. And if you were in the audience, maybe it was under your seat... • TFIFriday (1996): Hang on, that's Chris Evans' third show in a row on this list. Either he had the golden touch in the mid 90s or there was nothing else on. • Wanted (1996): Remember this game of cat and mouse? Three teams of Runners attempted to hide somewhere in the UK from an evil band of Trackers, spending the programme hiding out on camera in an anonymous phone box, and if they survived they won money and got to stay on the run for another week. Inspired, exciting, and so wouldn't work ten years later in an age of mobile phones, email and the internet. • BrassEye (1997): Chris Morris's enticingly anarchic fake documentary series in which celebrities were tricked into saying the unsayable in front of swirly video backdrops. Nowadays Sky News looks like this all the time. • Queer AsFolk (1999): Before Russell T Davies got Doctor Who to play with, he cut his teeth on this ground-breaking drama about Doctor Who nerds having rampant gay sex. Alas no gay daleks. • Big Brother (2000): OK, so I probably have watched this more than I've watched Brookside, if only because all the drama (or lack of it) was real. Dominates the year in a way that no other show anywhere could ever equal. And it'll be back in six months.... • FakingIt (2000): Ushering in an age of lifeswap documentaries, there was nothing quite like watching somebody wholly unlikely attempting to learn something wholly unsuitable. At least for the first five shows anyway. • AsIf (2001): Character-based teen drama (a sort of pre-Skins Skins) where a bunch of six friends had almost-possible adventures in London suburbia. Would you? • Jamie'sSchoolDinners (2005): Influential current affairs programmes don't have to be dull and boring. Mr Oliver has been single-handedly responsible for transforming the nation's school canteens into healthy green eateries, and significantly decreasing take-up in the process. • The ITCrowd (2006): It's about time a Channel 4 comedy was funny. Maybe it's because every workplace has an IT department and they're all, well, you know, a bit odd. • UglyBetty (2007): It's saying something when my favourite programme on C4 at the moment is an American import. But this is Dynasty with teeth braces and botox, and it's hard to beat that. Here's to another quarter century.
Londyńskie Wiadomości Operatywny wydanie 1 - Listopadowe 2007
Tam są tysiące Polskiego lud w Londynie. Teraz będę pisać dla mojej Polskiej publiczności. Mam nadzieję co wy cieszycie się wiadomościami.
CHODZENIE PODZIEMNY Tunele metra nie są dostępne dla każdego. Obowiązują ostre restrykcje. Żeby się tam dostać, trzeba tam pracować. Na szczęście jest tam Łukasz Wiśniewski z Krakowa. Dzięki niemu dowiemy się, jak wygląda praca w tunelach, dlaczego bilety za przejazd są takie drogie i co było powodem niedawnego wypadku na Central Line. Łukasz mieszka niedaleko stacji Ruislip Gardens, w piątej strefie. Przeczytany artykuł tutaj.
HOROSKOP Skorpion (23.X - 21.XI) W nadchodzącym tygodniu klopoty ze zdrowiem mogą pokrzyżować Twoje plany. Jeśli tylko gorzej się poczujesz, wybierz się do lekarza. Nie licz na to, że te objawy same miną. Praca pochlaniać będzie sporo Twolej energii. Nowy, ważny projekt wymaga Twojego nadzoru. Wolny czas po pracy przeznacz na odpoczynek.
Mieszkanie Wynajmę SOUTH EALING. Studio flat z osobnym wejściem w pobliżu Piccadilly Line, autobus E3 65 H91. Cena £170/tydz. z rachunkami + 2 tyg. depozytu. Tel 07960186777 NEASDEN. Flat £1400/miesiąc, na 1 piętrze, 4-5 sypialni, salon, kuchnia. 2 lazienki, ume-blowane, doestępne od 5.11. Tel 07869280348 Patrycia PERIVALE: Dwuosobowy pokój do wynajęcia. Tel. 07828257232 Romek
PO CZYM POZNAĆ POLAKA? Ogolony na łyso, odziany w dres prymityw, albo krótko ostrzyżony osobnik z wąsami, które maskują braki w uzębieniu. Polka – na głowie pasemka, krótki top z dekoltem po kolana, złota torebka, złote buty, złoty pasek. Tak Polki i Polaków widzą inni... Polacy. Kpimy z „drespoli” i „disco-Polek” irytując się, że kompromitują nas w oczach Brytyjczyków, że utrwalają w oczach Wyspiarzy nasz negatywny obraz, ale zaraz, zaraz... skąd mamy pewność, że w tym różnorodnym, wielobarwnym tłumie nasz rodak czy rodaczka jest w stanie zwrócić na siebie uwagę czymkolwiek? Przeczytany artykuł tutaj.
Wlazł Kotek Na Płotek I Mruga Wlazł kotek na płotek i mruga, i mruga, ładna to piosenka niedługa, niedługa.
Nie długa, nie krótka, lecz w sam raz, lecz w sam raz. Zaspiewaj koteczku jeszcze raz, jeszcze raz. Śpiewają po tutaj.
PLANOWE PRACE REMONTOWE METRA 03-04.11 Linia Circle: W weekend nieczynna Linia District: W weekend nieczynna pomiędzy Mansion House i Whitechapel Linia Jubilee: W weekend nieczynna pomiędzy Wembley Park i Stanmore Linia Northern: W weekend nieczynna pomiędzy East Finchley i High Barnet oraz pomiędzy East Finchley i Mill Hill East Linia Piccadilly: Brak remontów Linia Victoria: W weekend nieczynna pomiędzy Walthamstow Central i Brixton Skończony informacja tutaj.
1) Offset your broomstick flights: Leave that birch-broom in the cupboard! It's no longer socially acceptable to fly everywhere, especially for short-distance domestic flights where alternative public transport options are available. Remember that witches over the age of 60 travel free on buses, and that most carriers allow cats, owls and other familiars on board for no additional charge.
2) Use low-energy bulbs instead of candles: You might think that flickering wicks add the perfect eerie ambience to any Samhain seance, but they may instead be harming Mother Gaia's cloud-filled airblanket! Have you stopped to consider the damage that an entire pack of IKEA tealights can do to the atmosphere? Blow out that greedy carbon-guzzling flame and flick the switch on the wall instead.
3) Turn down your cauldron by 1ºC: Ask yourself, does your favourite metal pot need to be hubble-bubbling away at quite so high a temperature? Such tender delicacies as eye of newt and toe of frog taste just as good on a low heat, and you'll save money on burning woodpiles too!
4) Recycle your pumpkin innards: Once you've carved out your gap-toothed pumpkins, it would be ecologically irresponsible to throw away the inner flesh. Thankfully everyone in Britain adores the crisp fresh taste of pumpkin, so they'll thank you for converting your leftovers into a series of tasty orange-pulp dishes. Why stop at pumpkin pie? Party guests will lap up a banquet of pumpkin salsa, pumpkin hummus, pumpkin soda and chocolate-coated pumpkin seeds.
5) Use only locally-sourced apples for bobbing: It'd never do to stick your head face-down into a bucket of water for a French Golden Delicious or a South African Granny Smith. Instead you ought to bite your teeth into a knobbly Egremont Russet or Laxton's Epicure scrumped from the orchard just down the road. It may be theft, but it's better than buying some limp irradiated fruit that's been flown halfway round the world.
6) Send your child out trick-or-treating unaccompanied: Everyone says it's dangerous out there at Hallowe'en. Everyone says watch out for strangers with evil intent. Everyone says beware of murderers dressed up as little old ladies. Everyone says stay clear of back alleys and dimly-lit streets where knife-wielding maniacs might lurk. Everyone says double-check any sweets you're given in case someone's laced them with rat poison. But, quite frankly, the very best outcome for the environment this Hallowe'en is that your child ends up dead. That'd be 80 years of wasteful carbon footprint prevented in one simple stab wound. Go on, send 'em out by themselves, just this once. You know it make eco-sense.
7) Switch off your television, turn off your hi-fi and spend the evening sitting in the dark: Not only is it good for the planet, but it's also the best way not to be spotted by those bloody trick-or-treaters. Sssh, they might hear you!
I don't know about you, but I spent a lot of the weekend in hospital. This time it was my mum's turn to be admitted, so I was merely the dutiful son who went visiting (and expressed gobsmacked adoration at how fast she appeared to be recovering). A dodgy knee joint was to blame, half of which has now been replaced by a pseudo-bionic implant (and which hurts like billy-o when you bend it, so I'm told). It's given me yet another opportunity to observe nursing staff and hospital facilities up close. And this time, on the other side of the financial fence.
My mum was admitted as an NHS patient, but she ended up in a private hospital. I'm not quite sure how this switching system works, but it seems that health service reforms now offer greater choice by external outsourcing. Waiting lists are kept down by funnelling off certain patients into private care, and NHS hospitals thereby absolve themselves of providing a sufficient level of services using their own facilities. My mum gets a new half-knee, the NHS "cures" another patient, and private healthcare shareholders rake in profits from their empty beds. Everybody wins, except perhaps the ghost of Clement Attlee who spins ever faster in his grave with every market-driven government health reform.
I recognised the end of town where the private hospital was located - it was a stone's throw from the regional NHS hospital where most of the private consultants have their day job. They spend most of their week operating on the general public in a government funded state-of-the-art operating theatre, and the fifth day up the road in a bijou cottage hospital raking in considerably meatier fees. Fortunately for them it's only a short drive inbetween the two, which makes it easy to keep an intermittent eye on all their patients and tell them how well they're doing. Nobody would sanction such split-site loyalty amongst, say, teachers or police officers, but for senior healthcare professionals it's now seemingly second nature.
I didn't recognise the atmosphere inside the private hospital. Everything seemed calm and relaxed, even down to the "security" (or lack of it) at the front reception desk. No terminal diseases here, no A&E, just nice routine surgical procedures that cure chronic conditions and improve lives. Long carpeted corridors with en-suite bedrooms off to either side - this was more like a hotel than a hospital. A walk-in shower, each, and personal telephones and televisions free from money-grabbing subscription fees. Even the meals came on china plates rather than plastic trays, covered by a clear lid rather than impenetrable clingwrap, and accompanied by proper salt and pepper pots rather than a couple of sachets of mass processed condiment. The service was everything the NHS ought to be, but can no longer afford.
One thing was no different, and that was the care and professionalism of the nursing staff. They ensured that my mum had as comfortable a stay as possible (except when they were deliberately bending her knee) and tended to her every need promptly and with a smile. Rather more of them spoke English than in the NHS hospital over the road, presumably because they'd not had their services contracted out to the lowest bidder. But they too worked stupid ridiculous shifts for not enough money, just like their public sector counterparts.
I'm delighted to have my mum back on both feet again, and pleased that her time in hospital was more pleasant than it might have been. There's nothing like recuperating with dignity in your own private space, and with the maddening witterings of others blocked out while you attempt to sleep overnight. But I'm not quite so comfortable that this was only possible by diverting NHS funding into the private sector. There's something very wrong with a National Health Service that can't treat its own, and is instead beholden to targets, deficits and extended choice networks. I know that "free" healthcare costs, but we'll all end up paying if going private ever becomes the defaultoption.
Tube Week ExtraUpdated tube map
Typical. I run a whole blogweek all about the tube, including lots about the tube map and how it needs updating, and then over the weekend TfL only go and update it. It's one of the biggest updates for years, and incorporates the newly rebranded London Overground lines into Harry Beck's once-elegant design. It's all getting terribly overcrowded. Someone somewhere must have decided that the map has to contain as much information as possible, and with every update there are more symbols, more blobs, more angles and more text. Much more inclusive, but far less accessible. For the time being* you can compare the old (jpg) and the new (pdf) on the TfL website. See if you can spot the difference.
*2pm update: Aha, TfL appear to have removed the new map and have stuck the old one back again. Sorry to all my afternoon and evening readers. Still, enjoy the clear clean lines of the old map while you still can!
Here's what I've spotted...
• The London Overground: Wham, a big tangerine octopus has suddenly grabbed hold of the old tube network. The North London line may have been on the tube map for years, but now it's bright orange and unmissable. The Gospel Oak to Barking line appears for the first time, although with no indication of how infrequent the service is. The Watford to Euston line reappears (the north end's been on and off the map several times over the years) while the West London line is brand new (ending south of the river at a rather forlorn looking Clapham Junction). All four lines have been inelegantly embedded onto the map with rather too many bends and several over-long stretches. All in all, not lovely.
• Four brand new stations: They're opening "soon" and they're new on the map. They're Wood Lane (on the Hammersmith & City line, "station under construction"), Heathrow Terminal 5 (on the Piccadilly line, "under construction"), Shepherd's Bush ("London Overground station under construction") and Langdon Park (DLR, "opening November 2007").
• 19 other stations that weren't there before: All of them are Overground stations, including such backwater dumps as Leytonstone High Road, Kilburn High Road and Hatch End.
• 10 new step-free stations: Don't get excited, they're all on the Overground and they were all step-free before.
• Three new airport connections: Maybe TfL were listening to our conversation last week. Harrow and Wealdstone now has a red airport symbol , as do new arrivals Watford Junction and Clapham Junction.
• Two big orange boxes: one warning of special fares north of Hatch End, the other announcing the demise of the East London line in December.
• The longest station name just got longer: Kings Cross St Pancras is now "Kings Cross St Pancras for St Pancras International". You know, just in case you couldn't work that out for yourself.
• Lots of superfluous extra text relating to British Rail connections: It doesnt say Moorgate any more, it says "Moorgate no weekend service". Same thing at Old Street and Highbury & Islington. Like anybody cares. It's even wordier at Sudbury Hill on the Piccadilly line, which now reads "Sudbury Hill Sudbury Hill Harrow (no weekend service) 150m". Whatever happened to clarity?
• Lots more squashed-up station names: The northern end of the Bakerloo line is a lot more tightly packed. Acton Central almost crashes into the H&C line nextdoor. Turnpike Lane's been bumped nearer to Wood Green. Which of those three neighbouring stations is Blackhorse Road? And whose idea was it to shoehorn the London Overground lines onto a map where they don't really fit?
Pray that your eyesight never gets worse, because future tube maps can only be uglier, more cramped and even less legible. Someone needs to try to convince TfL that increasing inclusivity doesn't always help Londoners get around.
London Journeys: the Willett Way Part 2: Petts Wood → Chislehurst
I hope you enjoyed your extra hour in bed this morning. Let's return to Petts Wood and continue retracing the footsteps of William Willett, the man who came up with the idea of British Summer Time. The man who shifted us all sixty minutes into the future. The man who invented saved daylight by inventing time travel. Thanks Willie.
The Willett Way continues up a side alley, underneath the railway and out into deep green woodland. This is what's left of the ancient forest of Petts Wood, the bit that hasn't disappeared beneath a carpet of suburbia. The wood was bought by public subscription in 1927 and handed over to the National Trust, and has since acted as a buffer against unfettered housing development [photo]. And it's rather delightful. Twisting tracks and muddy bridleways lead beneath a leafy canopy, with the occasional view out across sheep-infested fields. And it must have been much the same when local builder William Willett took his morning constitutional 100 years ago. He was riding his horse through Petts Wood early one morning when he noticed that all his neighbours were still asleep in bed. What a waste of daylight, he thought. What if we could shift an hour of summer daylight from the morning to the evening? Being a man of action he went home and wrote a polemic pamphlet entitled "The Waste of Daylight", and campaigned to get his timeshifting plans forced through Parliament. And what do you know, he was actually successful. Eventually.
Introducing British Summer Time took rather longer than William Willett expected. The first Daylight Saving Bill was introduced in 1908, but struggled to get through Parliament despite support from a majority of MPs. It took a world war to focus Europe's attention on the importance of saving daylight, and therefore fuel, and Germany was first to take the plunge. A coal shortage forced Britain to follow suit shortly afterwards, and on 21st May 1916 a bemused nation turned its carriage clocks and fobwatches forward by 60 pioneering minutes. In 1925 a permanent British Summertime Act was passed, and the grateful people of Petts Wood erected this memorial sundial in honour of its trailblazing inventor. It stands in a silent clearing in the middle of the wood [photo] and commemorates William as "the untiring advocate of Summer Time" [photo]. It's another very special hour-ahead sundial, running on BST rather than GMT, with the Latin phrase beneath the dial translating as "I only keep the Summer hours" [photo]. I arrived in the clearing when the sun was almost exactly overhead, so the shadowed time in my photograph indicates 1pm BST rather the more normal 12 noon GMT. Of all the sights along the Willett Way, this was the most special.
But William never lived to see his ideas come to fruition. He died in 1915, just a year too early, and was buried in the churchyard at St Nicholas's in Chislehurst [photo]. The Willett Way passes his burial site, and you can slip beneath the lych gate into the churchyard and search out his grave in the southeastern corner. It's a sorry sight, at least in comparison to some of the more upright memorials close by [photo]. William's marble cross headstone has been snapped off and now lies folornly across the top of a bare earth grave [photo]. Some of the plot's low stone borders have also toppled over, and the text on what's left of the gravestone is barely readable. You wouldn't ever imagine, looking at this mess from the pavement outside, that here was the last resting place of a man once so revered that he had his own waxwork in Madame Tussauds.
The Willett Way terminates just up the road at William's self-built home - The Cedars [photo]. It's an impressive detached pile overlooking Chislehurst Common, and Bromley Council have placed a plaque by the front door to commemorate "the initiator of British Summer Time". Thank goodness a few people still remember William Willett - the ordinary man whose early morning horse-ride ended up changing the world. Ah, if only changing all those clocks back an hour didn't take so long! Damn you William, damn you!
Everyone appreciates the long light evenings. Everyone laments their shrinkage as Autumn approaches, and nearly everyone has given utterance to a regret that the clear bright light of early morning, during Spring and Summer months, is so seldom seen or used. Nevertheless, Standard time remains so fixed, that for nearly half the year the sun shines for several hours each day, while we are asleep, and is rapidly nearing the horizon when we reach home after the work of the day is over. There then remains only a brief spell of declining daylight in which to spend the short period of leisure at our disposal. Now, if one of the hours of sunlight wasted in the morning could be added to the end of the day, many advantages would be gained by all, and especially by those who would spend in the open air, whatever time they might have at their disposal after the duties of the day have been discharged. The Waste of Daylight, William Willett (1907)
London Journeys: the Willett Way Part 1: Petts Wood → Petts Wood
If you're looking forward to an extra hour in bed tomorrow morning, then the man you need to thank is a builder from Chislehurst. His name was William Willett and he's the visionary genius who, exactly a century ago, first proposed the idea of Daylight Saving Time. William noticed that late-sleeping Britons were wasting valuable daylight every morning and, in 1907, started a national campaign to put the clocks forward. And he came up with his idea whilst riding through Petts Wood. Let's go for a commemorative walk (in pictures)...
The people of Petts Wood in southeast London are understandably proud of William Willett. Look, here he is commemorated on the town sign in Queensway, just outside Woolworths [photo]. The sun and moon in the lower right quarter represent Daylight Saving (and then there's a horse representing Kent, an old coat of arms and an Elizabethan galleon built from local timber). And it's beneath this sign that a very special walking trail begins - the Willett Way. This three mile walk [pdf] has been put together by a local historian as part of a special centenary exhibition at the Royal Greenwich Observatory [link]. It's not a terribly exciting walk, just a trudge down suburban avenues and through a bit of woodland, but there's a certain charm in following in the footsteps of the man who invented BST. And this weekend would be perfect, because you've got an extra hour to do it.
Cross the railway by Petts Wood station and you'll find a matching sign, and a pub. The pub has been named in honour of William Willett (as have a lot of things round here - you'll get the hang of it as we proceed) and it's called the Daylight Inn[photo]. They do beer and food (and a trivia quiz on Tuesdays) just like any normal pub, but they also specialise in badly-repainted pub signs. The sign may look quite impressive, featuring a big smiling sun flanked by two clocks, but only until you peer a little closer [photo]. In the original pub sign one of the hour hands pointed to twelve and the other to one, representing the one hour time difference that's at the heart of Daylight Saving. But the brainless cretins who recently repainted the sign have set both clocks to noon, representing bugger all. Which is a shame. Don't stop to drown your sorrows, there's a long walk still to go.
Onward past a parade of half-timbered Tudorbethan shops (more 1935 than 1539) where the bored daytime wives of Petts Wood go to fritter away their husbands' salaries on tanning salons and interior design. And onward into the leafy avenues that surround the station, into one of the finest garden suburbs in southeast London. A typical avenue, off to your right beside the church, has been named Willett Way [photo]. It's full of exactly the sort of houses that William himself would have built, had he lived 20 years longer [photo]. It's a long street of black and white executive villas with pristine lawns and well-trimmed rose bushes. It's a privileged commuter haven complete with two-car garages and diamond latticed windows. It's the top of the property ladder, or at least as top as most of us could hope to aspire. It's extremely Metroland, apart from being on the wrong side of the capital. And there is, to be honest, absolutely no reason to walk down it apart from its name. Seen enough? Contain your seething jealousy, retrace your steps and head back towards the local recreation ground.
Yes, obviously, this is the Willett Recreation Ground, what else? Within its hedges you'll find the Petts Wood Bowling Club (please take great care - the path to the pavilion is slippery) and the Petts Wood Cricket Club. Surely some mistake there - two sporting facilities that haven't been named after our favourite Edwardian celebrity. But there's a treat in store embedded in the grass by the cricket pavilion [photo]. It's a very special memorial sundial, the hours marked out by colourful Roman numerals designed by pupils at a nearby primary school. There's no central spike - you have to stand in the middle and see which way your own shadow points [photo]. And, rather delightfully, this is a British Summer Time sundial. During the summer months it tells the correct time, while from November to March it runs an hour ahead of GMT. Unlike normal sundials this one tells the correct time for more than half of the year, and for the part of the year with maximum daylight too. Our William would be justly proud.
Going Overground
Olympic update
That's what I wrote on this blog back in November 2003 when the idea of an Olympic Stadium just outside Stratford was first mooted. Four years on, not only is this stadium set to become reality but we also now have the first plans of what it'll actually look like. The Olympic stadium will be a big sloping circular amphitheatre with a sports field in the middle, a bit like a giant gooseberry tart. There'll be room for eighty thousand seats around the rim, with several pebble-like pods scattered outside the perimeter for selling fast food and branded souvenirs. The stadium looks nothing like the funky muscled design that London 2012 published in their bid book back in 2004. In fact this newly launched structure isn't in any way a thriller, is it? Compared to other Olympic stadia of recent years it's really a bit dull. And, I must say, thank Zeus for that.
In the meantime, demolition on the Olympic stadium site continues. I've been back to the Greenway bridge several times since the rest of the Lower Lea Valley was sealed off, and every time I go back something else has disappeared. Two weeks ago [photo] everything to the left of Marshgate Lane had been razed and levelled, while piles of crumbled brickwork littered the ground close by to the right. Gone, gone, gone, gone. And, if I view the BBC's latest aerial shots correctly, during the last fortnight every other building on "Stadium Island" has been wiped out of existence. I would go back and check for myself, but it's November and it's dark so I can't be certain (until the weekend) that the salmon factory and net curtain warehouse have been destroyed.
It's a busy life being Queen. In the morning you go to the Houses of Parliament in your gold coach and read out a tedious speech to cynical MPs, and in the evening you get to reopen a station. Not just any station though, this was St Pancras, surely the most magnificent rail terminus in London. Over the last few years its soaring glass roof and Victorian brickwork have all been painstakingly restored ready for the arrival of Eurostar services next week, and last night the Queen officiated at the official reopening ceremony. Two Gothic masterpieces in one day.
Marking the meridian
It's early November and there are a lot of organised firework displays about. Most of us will end up going to one, just because it's easier (and cheaper) than setting fire to £100 of gunpowder in one's own garden. And most of us will take a camera. It's quite hard not to take a camera to an event these days, because most mobile phones double up as portable megapixel devices. And it's quite hard to avoid whipping your camera out and taking pictures of things, because everybody takes photos of everything these days. If it moves - click. If it's pretty - click. If you've just happy-slapped a grandma - click. Honestly, we've become a nation of instinctive image-snapping addicts. But please try to resist.
I mean, why are you taking photographs of a firework display anyway? It's dark for a start, with only a few points of bright light across a black background. There's also that annoying time delay which means that the pretty explosion will be over before your camera reacts. And what are you going to do with these hundreds of photos afterwards? Stick them in an online gallery? Nobody cares you know. There are millions of firework photos online already, all pretty much the same, and nobody really wants to see yours. They'll add nothing to the global collection of firework photography, they're just be pointless internet clutter. Or maybe you intend to email your bonfire night snaps to some friends. Like they'll care. They've all seen fireworks before, and they'll not be interested in your splotchy digital canvases. Really, there's no point, so don't.
C4+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1
Londyńskie
Wlazł kotek na płotek i mruga,
7 simple steps to an eco-friendly Hallowe'en
Tube Week Extra Updated tube map
, as do new arrivals Watford Junction and Clapham Junction.
no weekend service". Same thing at Old Street and Highbury & Islington. Like anybody cares. It's even wordier at Sudbury Hill on the Piccadilly line, which now reads "Sudbury Hill
The Willett Way continues up a side alley, underneath the railway and out into deep green woodland. This is what's left of the ancient forest of Petts Wood, the bit that hasn't disappeared beneath a carpet of suburbia. The wood was bought by public subscription in 1927 and handed over to the National Trust, and has since acted as a buffer against unfettered housing development [photo]. And it's rather delightful. Twisting tracks and muddy bridleways lead beneath a leafy canopy, with the occasional view out across sheep-infested fields. And it must have been much the same when local builder William Willett took his morning constitutional 100 years ago. He was riding his horse through Petts Wood early one morning when he noticed that all his neighbours were still asleep in bed. What a waste of daylight, he thought. What if we could shift an hour of summer daylight from the morning to the evening? Being a man of action he went home and wrote a polemic pamphlet entitled "The Waste of Daylight", and campaigned to get his timeshifting plans forced through Parliament. And what do you know, he was actually successful. Eventually.
Introducing British Summer Time took rather longer than William Willett expected. The first Daylight Saving Bill was introduced in 1908, but struggled to get through Parliament despite support from a majority of MPs. It took a world war to focus Europe's attention on the importance of saving daylight, and therefore fuel, and Germany was first to take the plunge. A coal shortage forced Britain to follow suit shortly afterwards, and on 21st May 1916 a bemused nation turned its carriage clocks and fobwatches forward by 60 pioneering minutes. In 1925 a permanent British Summertime Act was passed, and the grateful people of Petts Wood erected this memorial sundial in honour of its trailblazing inventor. It stands in a silent clearing in the middle of the wood [photo] and commemorates William as "the untiring advocate of Summer Time" [photo]. It's another very special hour-ahead sundial, running on BST rather than GMT, with the Latin phrase beneath the dial translating as "I only keep the Summer hours" [photo]. I arrived in the clearing when the sun was almost exactly overhead, so the shadowed time in my photograph indicates 1pm BST rather the more normal 12 noon GMT. Of all the sights along the Willett Way, this was the most special.
But William never lived to see his ideas come to fruition. He died in 1915, just a year too early, and was buried in the churchyard at St Nicholas's in Chislehurst [photo]. The Willett Way passes his burial site, and you can slip beneath the lych gate into the churchyard and search out his grave in the southeastern corner. It's a sorry sight, at least in comparison to some of the more upright memorials close by [photo]. William's marble cross headstone has been snapped off and now lies folornly across the top of a bare earth grave [photo]. Some of the plot's low stone borders have also toppled over, and the text on what's left of the gravestone is barely readable. You wouldn't ever imagine, looking at this mess from the pavement outside, that here was the last resting place of a man once so revered that he had his own waxwork in Madame Tussauds.
The Willett Way terminates just up the road at William's self-built home - The Cedars [photo]. It's an impressive detached pile overlooking Chislehurst Common, and Bromley Council have placed a plaque by the front door to commemorate "the initiator of British Summer Time". Thank goodness a few people still remember William Willett - the ordinary man whose early morning horse-ride ended up changing the world. Ah, if only changing all those clocks back an hour didn't take so long! Damn you William, damn you!
Everyone appreciates the long light evenings. Everyone laments their shrinkage as Autumn approaches, and nearly everyone has given utterance to a regret that the clear bright light of early morning, during Spring and Summer months, is so seldom seen or used. Nevertheless, Standard time remains so fixed, that for nearly half the year the sun shines for several hours each day, while we are asleep, and is rapidly nearing the horizon when we reach home after the work of the day is over. There then remains only a brief spell of declining daylight in which to spend the short period of leisure at our disposal. Now, if one of the hours of sunlight wasted in the morning could be added to the end of the day, many advantages would be gained by all, and especially by those who would spend in the open air, whatever time they might have at their disposal after the duties of the day have been discharged.• Walk the Willett WayThe people of Petts Wood in southeast London are understandably proud of William Willett. Look, here he is commemorated on the town sign in Queensway, just outside Woolworths [photo]. The sun and moon in the lower right quarter represent Daylight Saving (and then there's a horse representing Kent, an old coat of arms and an Elizabethan galleon built from local timber). And it's beneath this sign that a very special walking trail begins - the Willett Way. This three mile walk [pdf] has been put together by a local historian as part of a special centenary exhibition at the Royal Greenwich Observatory [link]. It's not a terribly exciting walk, just a trudge down suburban avenues and through a bit of woodland, but there's a certain charm in following in the footsteps of the man who invented BST. And this weekend would be perfect, because you've got an extra hour to do it.
Cross the railway by Petts Wood station and you'll find a matching sign, and a pub. The pub has been named in honour of William Willett (as have a lot of things round here - you'll get the hang of it as we proceed) and it's called the Daylight Inn [photo]. They do beer and food (and a trivia quiz on Tuesdays) just like any normal pub, but they also specialise in badly-repainted pub signs. The sign may look quite impressive, featuring a big smiling sun flanked by two clocks, but only until you peer a little closer [photo]. In the original pub sign one of the hour hands pointed to twelve and the other to one, representing the one hour time difference that's at the heart of Daylight Saving. But the brainless cretins who recently repainted the sign have set both clocks to noon, representing bugger all. Which is a shame. Don't stop to drown your sorrows, there's a long walk still to go.
Onward past a parade of half-timbered Tudorbethan shops (more 1935 than 1539) where the bored daytime wives of Petts Wood go to fritter away their husbands' salaries on tanning salons and interior design. And onward into the leafy avenues that surround the station, into one of the finest garden suburbs in southeast London. A typical avenue, off to your right beside the church, has been named Willett Way [photo]. It's full of exactly the sort of houses that William himself would have built, had he lived 20 years longer [photo]. It's a long street of black and white executive villas with pristine lawns and well-trimmed rose bushes. It's a privileged commuter haven complete with two-car garages and diamond latticed windows. It's the top of the property ladder, or at least as top as most of us could hope to aspire. It's extremely Metroland, apart from being on the wrong side of the capital. And there is, to be honest, absolutely no reason to walk down it apart from its name. Seen enough? Contain your seething jealousy, retrace your steps and head back towards the local recreation ground.
Yes, obviously, this is the Willett Recreation Ground, what else? Within its hedges you'll find the Petts Wood Bowling Club (please take great care - the path to the pavilion is slippery) and the Petts Wood Cricket Club. Surely some mistake there - two sporting facilities that haven't been named after our favourite Edwardian celebrity. But there's a treat in store embedded in the grass by the cricket pavilion [photo]. It's a very special memorial sundial, the hours marked out by colourful Roman numerals designed by pupils at a nearby primary school. There's no central spike - you have to stand in the middle and see which way your own shadow points [photo]. And, rather delightfully, this is a British Summer Time sundial. During the summer months it tells the correct time, while from November to March it runs an hour ahead of GMT. Unlike normal sundials this one tells the correct time for more than half of the year, and for the part of the year with maximum daylight too. Our William would be justly proud.
