So, by way of experiment, I've listed below my most and least viewed photographs. No thumbnail, just a link and a brief (maybe tempting) description. And then I intend to update the list once every hour, for the rest of the day. If I can entice enough of you to take a look, maybe the list will change several times during the day. Let's see...
My most viewed photo(12 midnight - final update)
» London Eye - New Year 2006(1 January 2006) [2115 views] New Year fireworks viewed from the Embankment
My least viewed photo(9am)(10am)(11am)(12noon)(1pm)(4pm)(5pm)(6pm)(7pm)(8pm)(9pm)(10pm)(11pm)(12 midnight) » London City Airport approach(8 December 2007) [15 views] The runway at London's smallest airport, with a Docklands backdrop » Puffin edge(23 June 2007) [19 views] 50 very small puffins lined up along a Northumbrian cliff » Autumn leaves(10 November 2007) [22 views] Golden leaves in Greenwich Park » Green Park(26 October 2005) [26 views] A very shadowy number 38 Routemaster in lower Piccadilly » Langdon ParkDLR station(and footbridge)(9 December 2007) [18 views] Opening morning at London's newest station » Rupert Street (Trocadero)(26 October 2005) [27 views] Close-up of a 38 Routemaster speeding along Shaftesbury Avenue » Old Bond Street(26 October 2005) [28 views] Last of the rarely-viewed Routemaster photos, honest » Skegness seafront(10 April 2007) [32 views] All the bleak beachside joy of the Lincolnshire coast » Skeggy buckets(10 April 2007) [33 views] A rack of brightly coloured buckets and spades, like seaside holidays used to be » Under the bridge(25 March 2007) [34 views] Monochrome shot from the beach beneath the Millennium Bridge » The Willett Memorial(27 October 2007) [35 views] 1-hour-ahead sundial commemorating British Summer Time's inventor » Waterworks River(4 July 2007) [36 views] Peaceful Olympic backwater, before the bulldozers moved in » BeadnellHarbour(24 June 2007) [36 views each] Two boat-y Northumberland photos (at least one of which would make a nice jigsaw)
» AtopBecktonAlp(9 December 2007) [0 views each] The view at the summit of East London's derelict ski slope
It's always dangerous to try to turn an acclaimed book into a film. People who've read the book will watch the film and say "but that's not what happens, and you've missed loads of bits out". And people who haven't read the book will say "hang on, I don't quite understand what's going on". This film, based on Philip Pulman's trilogy His Dark Materials, is no exception. The book is brooding, complex and philosophical, while the film has to be suitable for 8 year-olds. It was always going to be a fine balancing act. Thankfully it's just fine enough.
The film is in two parts. First a gradual set-up, in and around a fictional Oxford college, with characters rounded and the basic back story established. This bit of the film works, pretty much. It's fun to see how the director has brought heroine Lyra's alternate universe to life, especially the animal "daemons" and the ornate fantastical skyline. This could almost be an urban Harry Potter movie, were it to remain coddled within academia. But then suddenly part two kicks in. Suddenly Lyra and a motley crowd of hangers-on are on a quest to the snowbound Arctic, first in a boat then in a balloon, haring after some secret evil experimental facility in which the world's pre-teens are being emotionally neutered, 50 at a time. Oh, and there are talking ice bears who wrestle one another clad in armour made of sky-iron. Please, now is the time to suspend disbelief.
Nicole Kidman is very good as the evil Mrs Coulter, a scheming blonde in heels. Daniel Craig is underused as Lord Asriel (as indeed are most of the starring names - a few lines here and there, every now and then). Just as well that the actress who plays young Lyra is so convincing, as she virtually holds the plot together. I particularly enjoyed trying to spot where certain scenes had been filmed, especially when it turned out I'd visited several of them in the last six months. Look, the Old RoyalNaval College in Greenwich, and Chatham Naval Dockard, and even Kempton Steam Engines in Hounslow.
The film really ought to have a third part. There were muted sighs of disappointment in the cinema when it became apparent that a not-really conclusive point in the plot was the closing scene. Those who've read the book will be particularly disappointed, although the actor destined to die a few chapters after the credits will no doubt relish the opportunity to come back in the follow-up movie. Ah yes, there's a lot more of this franchise still to come. And I might be back to see which bits of the next volume they cut out, you never know.
King's Cross Thameslink Opened: 10 January 1863 [this is (near enough) the site of King's Cross underground station, on the Metropolitan Railway, opened on the very first day of London's very first underground railway] Closed: 8 December 2007 [this station terminates today] Reasons for closure: Too small, too crowded, too inconveniently located, too old.
It's not a lovely station, this. It's a long hike from the main King's Cross station, either across several sets of traffic lights or along a very longpedestrian tunnel (the one where they painted "Smile" on the walls to try to cheer up commuters). The steps down to the platforms are narrow, and if you get stuck behind a family lugging a pushchair you're in trouble. The platforms are called A and B, not 1 and 2, so passengers don't get them confused with the mainline station across the road. Everybody waits at the westernend, clogging the platforms, waiting for the next service to Bedford, Brighton or Wimbledon to appear. Can you hear it? No, that's a completely different train chugging invisibly somewhere nearby. The Circle line runs past on the other side of a wall (although it used to stop close by until a new underground station was built up the line). For a quiet wait, walk past Gatwick-bound suitcases or gangs of Luton youths up to the far end of the platform, out in the open air. Waiting here's a risk, because most trains aren't long enough to stop this far up, but you might just get a bench or square metre of platform to yourself. Until escape arrives, up the tunnel, and whisks you away somewhere nicer. Somewhere with a future.
King's Cross Thameslink closes forever at the end of today, to be replaced tomorrow by a brand spanking new station directly beneath St Pancras International. This'll be far more convenient for international travellers and commuters alike, and a lot more spacious too. From a passing train the new station looks like a big grey box, charmless and featureless, and far easier to exit through. But in 24 hours time it'll be the old station that trains will whizz through, past empty benches and fading adverts, past a century and a half of history. All change please.
Not all places of work have an Office Christmas Party. Some, including my own this year, have an Office Christmas Meal instead. A meal is a lot easier to organise than a party, although not generally quite so drunken and debauched. Having attended my OCM this week, here are ten tips to help you survive yours.
1) Never organise the meal yourself: Somebody has to do it, but you'll not gain any friends by organising it yourself. Whichever sort of restaurant you pick - French, Chinese, Indian or whatever - somebody won't be happy and will tell you so, repeatedly, for the next six months. Let somebody else organise things, and then you can slag off their choice along with everyone else.
2) Don't eat lunch beforehand: Office Christmas Meals tend to be scheduled to start during work time, usually mid-afternoon. This allows those with childcare arrangements to participate fully in their work colleagues' social life. It also allows restaurants to fill their tables before the evening rush begins, so expect to be chucked out by seven. It's also a bloody silly time for an enormous meal. So don't eat lunch beforehand.
3) Plan your arrival carefully: The next three hours depend on you arriving at the restaurant with your favourite workmates. Not the boring bloke from accounts, not the tedious secretary from the third floor, and most definitely not your immediate line manager. You really don't want to end up sitting next to them for the entire meal, not with all their boring conversations about work and recycling targets and work and Pink Floyd's back catalogue and yet more work. Make sure you sit at a completely different table and surround yourself with your interesting workmates, the life and soul of the party. Arrive with care.
4) Remember what you ordered: The Office Christmas Meal is always planned far too many weeks in advance. Somewhere in October an officious email will come round with a pdf menu attached, demanding that you select starter, main course and dessert RIGHT NOW because there's a deposit to be paid. And now it's December, and you're sitting in a restaurant under pressure from a stern waitress who's demanding to know who ordered the salmon mousse. C'mon, c'mon! And whose is the soup, and who wanted wild mushroom tartlets? Avoid embarrassment, print out your sent email before you arrive.
5) Don't wear that paper party hat: Look, there's a cheap cracker on the table. It's the restaurant's sole nod towards making this a festive meal, and it contains the usual embarrassing pink/green paper hat. Whatever you do don't place this hat on your head, not even for a minute. Everybody has a camera on their mobile phone these days, and your festive plonker moment will no doubt be captured, uploaded and shared on the office intranet tomorrow morning. Don't let this happen to you.
6) Eat, drink and be merry: Come on, this is the one occasion during the year when your company actually wants you to enjoy yourself, and is paying for the privilege. Order the most expensive stuff you can get away with (especially the wine), because tomorrow you'll be back at your desk trimming down budget forecasts again.
7) Try to keep the conversation flowing: It's difficult isn't it? These aren't the people you'd normally choose to spend a social evening with, they're just a random selection of people who Human Resources have deemed work in the same department as you. You have virtually nothing in common. They know nothing about your interests and you care nothing about theirs. Stick to the usual safe conversational topics (house prices, holiday arrangements, children's TV programmes) and you should make it through.
8) Go to the toilet before you arrive: You didn't, did you? And now all that free wine has trickled through your digestive system to your bladder and is waiting, nay begging, to be released. So it's not good that you're sitting in a seat jammed in the far corner, right up against the wall, trapped behind the chairs of four other semi-drunken colleagues who aren't going to be moving anywhere soon. Keep your legs crossed, it's your own fault.
9) Swap seats during the dessert course: Quick, after you've finally managed to sneak out to the toilet, return and sit down at a completely different table. Leave all the boring sods behind and go sit with the fun crowd, the ones who've been laughing and whooping and knocking back the wine all evening. Go on, be brave and sit down next to the really attractive one, the one you've been eyeing up from afar all year. If this was a proper Office Christmas Party you'd be taking advantage of their drunkenness and snogging them in the stationery cupboard by now, but for now a mild "accidental" grope of their leg will have to do. Until the same time next December.
10) Don't stay for coffee: Make your excuses and leave. Whatever you do don't hang around until the waitress starts clearing away the coffee cups and staring pointedly at her watch. It'll be at this point that somebody will suggest retiring to a nearby pub for the rest of the evening, and only the boring friendless geeks with no social life will take up the offer, and then you'll end up waking in the morning somewhere in the suburbs with a ghastly hangover and your head resting on a colleague's naked chest. Don't let that be you. Go home alone, and come to work semi-sober tomorrow to discover which two other workmates made the dreadful post-pub shagging error. Office Christmas Meals, don't you just love them?
When I was little, baking was a national obsession. Every afternoon the UK's ovens would be heated up ready for a tray or two of something cake-y or pastry-like to be slipped inside, for half an hour or so, before being scooped out, sliced and served up at the kitchen table as a teatime or suppertime treat. Perhaps some fruit cake, or a caramel slice, or an oaty flapjack, or just a small moist cupcake in its fluted paper wrapping. You know, the sort of home-baked delight that a much-loved grandmother might have given you alongside a glass of orange squash or a mug of instant Nescafe. Or that some dear old lady in a flowery hat might have served up on the refreshment stall at a bring and buy sale in a musty church hall. Mmm, chocolate crispie cake and shortbread. Be still my beating tastebuds.
But most people don't bake any more, because they think baking takes time and effort. It certainly involves a lot more washing up than going shopping and buying some cakes instead. I blame Mr Kipling, launched in 1967 with ready-cut Bakewell slices and mini Battenburgs, for kick-starting the rot. Why bake your own almond slices, caramel shortcake and tiffin when some big factory could fill a six-pack for you? For most of us, baking became just too much effort. And now, in the Convenience Age, it seems that we've all completely caved in. Food manufacturers know that we can't resist a slice of cake or a chocolate brownie, especially at any location where hot drinks are sold, and have taken steps to exploit our inner weakness.
Enter the "traybake". There they sit near the cash till, identical small slabs of moulded carbohydrate shrink-wrapped in plastic. See how moist they look. Look at the currants and chocolate chips sprinkled liberally throughout each pastry slice. Imagine those succulent stodgy crumbs slipping down your throat and resting snugly in your stomach. Perhaps best not to look at the list of ingredients printed in tiny writing on the back of the wrapper - emulsifiers, stabilisers, saturated fats, etc - or to check out the unnaturally distant sell-by-date somewhere in the middle of next year. The manufacturers, and the catering establishments in which they sell their wares, just want you to stop and buy one. Mmmm, traybake.
But have you seen the prices they're charging? £1.15 for a small square of pecan & maple syrup flapjack. £1.95 for an individually wrapped organic walnut brownie. £2.20 for a three-bite chunk of chocolate caramel shortbread. I see consumer sheep picking up these pseudo-homemade nibbles every day in the canteen at work, without ever stopping to think what appalling value for money they are. The catering company simply sticks a few easy-to-come-by ingredients into an industrial oven, waits half an hour, and then cuts up the resulting rectangular slab into tiny £1 squares. Easy money. Fancy more profit? Just cut the squares a little smaller, they'll still get eaten. It's nothing more than a modern version of the old catering trick of dividing a restaurant gateau into 20 slices and charging a fiver for each.
I don't care how tasty the ingredients, I hereby pledge never to purchase a mass-produced machine-sliced individually wrapped cake-y chunk. Not at work, not at Starbucks, not at a station kiosk, not anywhere. Join me and "Just say no to traybakes".
londonerama the capital fanzine online edition 2 - December 2007
Welcome to London's essential new online newsletter! londonerama is the number 1 online mag for Europe's number 1 city. We have all the news, all the goss and all the up-front info. Well, some of it anyway. Read on...
NEW LONDON WALKING MAP! Do you need a decent walking map to find your way around the West End? A map you can slip into your pocket rather than read on a big plinth? Well, now you can pick up a folded full colour West End map as part of the Legible London initiative. Apparently it's available from Bond Street tube station (although I didn't see one there myself). Or you can download a copy off the website and, er, print it out onto A3 paper or something. Whatever, it looks rather useful should you ever want to walk from the Angolan Embassy to the Café Royal, or just potter around some posh shopping streets inbetween. Me, I'm waiting with anticipation for further maps covering other bits of town. Please. Download your map here.
OH WHAT A CIRCUS Have you ever wanted to see your name up in lights at Piccadilly Circus? It's easy if you're called Mr Coca Cola, or maybe even TDK Sanyo, but otherwise you're going to have to pay for the privilege. The iconic advertising boards above Eros now have their own website (don't get excited, it's marketing guff) and can be hired by anybody with sufficient money to spend. One minute of scrolling message will cost you £1000 (inclusive of "creative and digitisation" and "one set of ammendments"), while 10 minutes will set you back £4000. I hate to think how many bright young City boys will use the service to propose to their wives-to-be. Read Piccadilly Lights trivia here.
THE BIG SMOKE Is your Smoke collection up to date? The latest edition of the thrice-yearly London fanzine has just hit bookshops, and and no doubt you'll be wanting a copy. Within its covers (bedecked this issue by the gorgeous North Greenwich gasometer) you can read all about Fortress Wapping, Bunhill Fields, the Brentford Musketeer, Jonas Hanway the umbrella man and the 108 bus. And all in a very descriptive essayish style, along with moody photographs, camp statues and the usual Routemaster cartoon. You'll know the score by now. And just £2.90 a copy. Website here, list of stockists here.
BUS ROUTES TWEAKED If you live, work or shop around Shepherd's Bush, you might be interested in proposed adjustments to several local bus services. These changes are related to the new White City shopping centre, and TfL are seeking your feedback before the end of January. Me, I'm much more interested in their proposals for the Bow area. Ooh, we EastEnders can expect a brand new 425 bus service from Stratford to Hackney via Mile End. And they're going to renumber the S2 and call it the 488 (because lettered routes aren't politically correct any more) and terminate it at my local Tesco. If any of this affects you, do click through and have your say, before you end up with a bus network you don't want. White City consultation here, Bow consultation here.
PAPERBACK LONDON If you're looking for an under-a-tenner Christmas present for the Londoner in your life, I can heartily recommend Chambers London Gazeteer. This addictively browseable volume is now available in paperback, and Amazon can sell you a copy for just £8.99. They can also give you a glimpse inside, from Abbey Mills to Aldersgate, giving you an inkling into just how finely detailed each of the thousand other descriptions is. Less than a penny each too, what a bargain. London's bigger than you thought. Visit Hidden London - the website of the book.
There are certain trains that you should never catch. You won't spot them specially marked in any timetable, nor will their doomed status be flagged on any station departure board. But climb aboard and you may never reach your destination, nor indeed any other destination. Two such trains collided in thick fog in southeast London on the evening of Wednesday 4th December 1957. Ninety passengers and crew lost their lives that night, just east of St John's station, in what is still Britain's third worst railway disaster.
It had been a foggy day across southeast England, and by evening all the rail services to Kent were seriously disrupted. Commuters piled aboard delayed trains in an attempt to get home, and one by one each locomotive headed off towards the commuter belt. But the misty conditions, combined with unscheduled timetabling, led to a series of unfortunate mistakes being made. The over-worked signalman at Parks Bridge Junction, just west of Lewisham town centre, accidentally muddled the order of two eastbound trains. He thought the first train was heading to Hayes, whereas the Hayes train was actually second behind a Hastings-bound service. Both trains queued unnecessarily in the fog, protected to the rear by a red signal. But a red signal is only of any use if somebody spots it in time, and the next train driver didn't.
Driver William Trew left Cannon Street station at 6:08pm, on the footplate of a steam engine heading for Ramsgate. His train was a whole hour and a quarter late, and it's likely that he was trying to make up some lost time. Trew steamed through New Cross at 35mph, then rushed onwards through the cutting towards St John's. Two amber signals to the right of the track should have warned him to slow down, but he saw neither out of his tiny window through the thickening fog. A red signal at the far end of the St John's platform therefore came as a complete surprise and, with just 138 yards of clear track remaining, a crash was inevitable.
There are certain carriages that you should never sit in. They're not labelled on the window, and they're not always the obvious ones at the front or rear, but you should never ever climb inside. For the Hayes train, stood waiting on the embankment, the carriage to avoid turned out to be number eight. Carriage ten, at the rear, survived mostly intact because the brakes were on. Carriage nine was shunted forwards and upwards, again mostly intact. But carriage eight had the misfortune to end up directly underneath carriage nine and was almost completely crushed and destroyed.
The carnage in the Ramsgate train was even worse. Trew's engine stayed on the rails but the coal truck behind shot off to the left, smashing into a nearby bridge support. Unfortunately this bridge carried a second railway line, running diagonally over the tracks. Collision with the tender caused the entire central section to collapse, girders and all, flattening the front two and a half carriages of the train below. If only the crash had occurred a few feet further on, just past the bridge, scores of lives might have been saved.
There was one particular lucky escape, however. The driver of a Dartford-bound train chugging towards the overbridge managed to spot the twisted girders ahead just in time, and drew his train to a halt before it toppled down onto the tracks below. But that was the only bright spot. By the time local residents had raised the alarm and the emergency services had pulled survivors from the wreckage, ninety commuters were dead and 176 seriously injured. No other UK rail disaster in the last 50 years has had so high a death toll.
Stand on the lonely island platform at St John's station today (as a handful of irregular commuters still do) and the crash site can still be seen [photo]. You have to walk right to the eastern tip of the platform to be able to view the tracks where the collision happened (over there, beneath the "temporary" replacement overbridge erected two weeks after the crash). Every couple of minutes another sleek white train rushes through this very complicated junction, but there's far less danger nowadays because each is equipped with AWS cab signalling (rolled out nationwide as a direct consequence of this particular incident). Watch them speed by - only a handful of services are actually timetabled to stop at St John's to pick up passengers. Maybe that's why there's no memorial plaque anywhere on the station (councillors decided to erect one on the front of the Lewisham ticket office instead, which is on the wrong line altogether). But there are many people in the area, and across northern Kent, for whom this is a location tinged with great sadness and emotion.
There are certain stations that we should never forget.
Being the sort of bloke who counts things, I thought I'd spend last month totalling up all the money I spent on stuff and things. Just to see if I'm the sort of bloke who doesn't spend very much. And I think I might be. See if you agree.
• Rent & Bills (over £1000): Well, you have to, don't you? Thankfully November wasn't an especially bill-y month, but I think this means there are a lot due imminently.
• Food (£200-ish): Hmm, that's rather more than I was expecting. There were only two trips to a supermarket in there, but also rather a lot of lunches in the works canteen. And I somehow managed to "dine out" five times last month, which is very unlike me (although rest assured that one of the five was a greasy spoon in Plaistow).
• Drink (£75-ish): That's six beery nights out, and me buying a round or two each time. Six nights out, eh? I'm getting more sociable again (even if none of them were Saturday nights).
• Newspapers and magazines (£40-ish): That's a daily paper and a couple of weeklylistings mags. Nothing big and glossy with endless car adverts and pages that smell of aftershave, no thanks.
• Admission charges (£15-ish): Because researching this blog doesn't come free, OK?
• Music (£13): That's one CD (which I played twice and is now sitting gathering dust on a shelf) and one CD single (which I could have downloaded cheaper, but I never did buy into this iTunes lark). I'm slipping.
• Books (£10): Honestly, the publishing industry brings out all these supposed autumn blockbusters and I ignore the lot in favour of an end-of-daysthriller that came out in July.
• Mobile phone (£10 top-up): Ditching my contract phone and switching to pay-as-you-go was one of the best decisions I've made recently. But then I only tend to use my mobile for text messages and the (very) occasional call, I'm not someone who haemorrhages money surfing the net or downloading ringtones.
• Travel (£6-ish): Hmm, I appear not to have left London in November (and I only pay for my Oystercard in September). How green is my carbon footprint?
• Christmas presents (£1): Blimey that's pathetic isn't it? I can foresee hours and hours of December being wasted attempting to buy gifts that nobody really wants. But at least the single quid I've paid out so far was perfectly spent.
• Clothes/shoes (£0): There are sales every January. Why buy stuff inbetween?
• Credit/debt (£0): Go on, tell me I'm not normal.
• Other stuff (£60-ish): I bought a new camera in October but it didn't come with either a memory card or a carrycase, so a bought a memory card and a carrycase. Bit of a con that, I thought. And I bought a very nice map, because I like maps. And I didn't buy anything else. December may be quite different, however...
Blimey, aren't the marketeers at St Pancras desperate to whip up a festive frenzy of excitement? Not to get you to come and ride on Eurostar, that's not their job. Nor even to get you to come and admire the station's great architecture, nothing so innocent. Oh, no, they want you to come shopping. Please.
I first noticed the Pancras PR squad's advertising onslaught on Friday, when some underpaid lackey outside Holborn station tried desperately to force a free copy of the Evening Standard into my hand. The newspaper had a glossy wraparound cover full of arty snowflakes, plus a dangly luggage label stickered to the front on a bit of string. On the back cover was a very long list of all the special events being held at St Pancras over the next three weeks. No times or anything, just dates, but that's still considerably more useful than the Flash version on the website where you can't see the entire list in one go (and, indeed, will probably have fallen asleep before you've clicked through to the end). And inside the cover sheet, in full blue and gold technicolour, a double page spread inviting London to visit "the world's largest advent calendar". So yesterday I went to have a look.
The world's largest advent calendar is indeed very large. It covers one entire end of the majestic Barlow Train Shed, which must slightly piss off anybody who's turned up specifically to take photographs of the original building. Yes the famous station clock is still visible, but it's been incorporated into the central logo and appears somewhat overwhelmed. And what of the 24 windows? We're promised on the website that "Every day at 10am a door the World's Largest Advent Calendar will be opened by a celebrity or intriguing character". That sounds exciting, doesn't it? Except it's not. I do hope you weren't expecting revealed images of any religious significance. Day 1's picture is some orangey-pink Art Deco flower fairy abomination, with the logo of Boots the Chemist slapped rather blatantly across the bottom. This is no Advent Calendar, this is the world's largest Advert Calendar. Is nothing sacred any more? Well, no, obviously not.
Elsewhere inside St Pancras, a Victorian Christmas has arrived. Everywhere I turned yesterday, the crowd was peppered with top-hatted gentlemen and ladyfolk in crinoline dresses and lacy shawls. Their job seemed to be handing out mini Advent Calendars, each a small rectangle of glossy card, again with 24 windows just begging to be ripped open. I couldn't resist taking a peek. "Thursday 06" <rip> "Singles Dance Card Dating Night". "Friday 07" <rip> "Mulled wine and shopping evening". It was at precisely this moment that I realised there are no litter bins anywhere inside St Pancras station. Damn. So I ended up taking the calendar home and blogging about it instead. Cunning that.
Children were rather better catered for. Outside the Body Shop a crowd of almost-animated kids were watching a bunch of costumed actors performing something melodramatic on a mini stage. Further up the undercroft, past the big artificial Christmas tree, Santa was in his grotto. He'd arrived by Eurostar on Saturday morning (from Paris, presumably, or more likely EuroDisney). If you should turn up on a weekday when he's not in, never fear, there's a Father Christmas Post Box you can visit instead. It's also fat and red, but this time surrounded by a circular Habitat-sponsored seating area. A big sign on the front of the box warns children to ensure that their letters to Santa have a stamp on them, otherwise they might not receive a reply. And the postbox slot is filled by a solid black block with a narrow slit across the middle, presumably so that evil terrorist children can't post letterbombs to Santa instead. Such is a 21st century Victorian Christmas.
And does all this shameless marketing work? Yes of course it does. St Pancras was crawling with people yesterday, with far more of them downstairs in the undercroft (where the shops are) than upstairs where the pretty architecture is. There's nothing people like better at Christmas than standing around in a shopping mall buying gift sets of organic body scrub whilst sipping cappucinos, and clearly the King's Cross area has been sadly lacking in such retail opportunities. Up until now, anyway.
Look hard enough at the what's on list and you're bound to spot several interesting-looking events being held at St Pancras between now and Christmas, especially if you like historical guided tours, film screenings, carol singing or munching pfeffernüsse. But if you're not really into shopping or travelling to Paris, and you just want to bring your camera for a good look round, you might want to hold back until January 7th.
Before I moved to London, I lived in a small village in Suffolk. Me and 500 other people. It was a charming village just outside Ipswich, complete with 14th century church, tithe barn and watermill. There was an old pub at the top of the main street, and proper half-timbered cottages painted chocolate box colours, and a millpond down by the river. You know, all the things that make a village utterly perfect. I was a lucky man.
Except that village life wasn't all roses. A major dual carriageway ripped through the river valley and severed the village from surrounding civilisation. The B-road through the village was a rat-run used by an endless stream of rumbling traffic. The local pub was a carvery, so it was full of roast-munchers who'd driven in from miles around. The watermill was a crumbling shell, held up with scaffolding while the owner and the local council battled over who should pay to restore it. The local bus service was one rattly coach every two hours (stopping before 6pm) so I was forced to travel everywhere by car. It was a village where nothing much ever happened - the social highlight of my three year stay was an exhibition of teatowels in the church hall. And, worst of all, it was impossible to buy a pint of milk.
My village boasted one community essential - a tiny post office squashed into half a cottage in the High Street. It smelt a bit funny, and it was very dark inside, but it was oh so convenient for buying a stamp or paying my TV licence or sending a parcel to Australia. The postmaster sold newspapers (generally a big pile of Daily Mails and one of everything else) and also organised a paperboy-based delivery service - it's the only place I've ever lived where I've woken up to a broadsheet on my doormat every morning. The remainder of the post office was given over to a small "shop", which sold all sorts of non-perishable goods that weren't quite useful. Tins of rice pudding, cheap plastic combs, packets of cake mix, that sort of thing. There was also a half-hearted selection of greetings cards for a handful of birthday and anniversary needs, most of them featuring a bouquet of flowers or a racing car on the front. But there was no milk. If I wanted milk I had to hop into my car and drive a couple of miles into nearby Ipswich. Living in the countryside is rarely as green as it sounds.
The post office closed down last year. It's now impossible for local residents to buy a postage stamp or a Daily Mail, and even those tins of Ambrosia creamed rice are unavailable. For elderly residents in particular, the loss is keenly felt. The bus service is still rubbish, and anyone attempting to walk down narrow lanes to the nearest outpost of retail civilisation is likely to be knocked down by a thundering lorry. The only items left to buy in the village are a pint of beer, a roast beef lunch and a guidebook to the local church. I think I got out just in time.
This week regional ITV viewers have been voting for community projects they think are deserving of "The People's Millions". And my old village has pulled together and submitted plans for a new community shop. The western end of the tithe barn, they think, would be the perfect location for an eco-store selling green products and everyday essentials. I agree. Local residents would be able to save time, and petrol, with this new service at the heart of the village. The project was featured on Anglia News on Thursday, along with a phone vote, and expectations were high. Would £80000 of lottery money be coming to rescue a declining community? Alas no. Viewers decided to give the money to a bunchof allotments in Ipswich instead. A new village shop will have to wait.
I'm lucky in London, I can buy milk at countless shops within walking distance. I don't need a car to buy a newspaper or a greetings card, or even a tin of rice pudding. I may not have a view of fields from my window any more, nor a tithe barn on my doorstep, but at least I can brew a cup of tea with ease. Meanwhile, back in Suffolk, my old village has lost out. Sorry folks, no milk today. Something feels very wrong when the future of a village hinges on a failed phone vote. The parish council may be doing a sterling job of maintaining a sense of local community, but without local services more and more people are going to find living in the countryside unsustainable. Let's hope that not everybody follows my example and abandons ship.
November catch-up(because some things have moved on)
St Pancras: If you thought you'd "done" St Pancras, how about St Pancras at Christmas? Anything to get some more shoppers and champagne sippers back into the station. There's a shedload of festive activities scheduled inside the station between now and Christmas Eve, some of which you might actually want to attend. Unfortunately you'll have to negotiate the Flash-ridden Christmas at St Pancras website first (you might want to go and brew a cup of eggnog while it loads). While you're there, don't forget to laugh at all the effort that's gone into spelling "Advent Calendar" wrong.
Legible London: As well as the new miniliths on the street, there's also a Legible London exhibition providing further information on the project. Brilliantly it's been located in a tiny, hard-to-locate backwater off Regent Street, outside the trial prototype area. See if you can find the venue before it closes at 4pm on Saturday. Highlights of the exhibition include, apparently, a replica street sign and a free yellow booklet. If you're interested, there's a good example of LL's new pedestrian mapping style on the exhibition flyer.
The tube map: The ugly November 2007 tube map, the one that includes the London Overground, now appears all over the Underground network. But if you thought that was bad, I've seen an early version of the next map, due out in January...
• Remember I mentioned that the East London line closes down just before Christmas and will be replaced by four bus services? Well, from what I've seen, those four bus services are due to appear on the January tube map. And not in a straight line, oh no, they've been staggered so that each bus service is readily identifiable. Just to give you an idea of how messy this looks, consider Canada Water as an example. At the moment Canada Water station appears as a single blue wheelchair-accessible blob. Not next year. From January Canada Water will appear as three linked circles - one blue blob on the Jubilee line, one connection to bus service ELP to Rotherhithe, and one connection to bus service ELC to New Cross Gate. Hideous. Throw in some additional bus symbols, one red dagger at every former ELL station and a big orange information box, and this is visual clutter of an extreme magnitude.
• Oh hell, what's happened to Canary Wharf? It used to be marked as one station, but now it's two (Jubilee and DLR). These two stations are linked not by a line but by a distance (200m), written diagonally, and Heron Quays (150m) has been joined in the same way. If that wasn't bad enough, in real life the Jubilee station is to the east of the DLR but on the new map it appears to the west. Chuck in three red daggers and the resulting accessibility-fuelled carnage has to be seen to be believed.
• In "new station" news, Langdon Park on the DLR will be open before January (we think it'll open next weekend), while Shepherd's Bush station on the London Overground still won't. And Wood Lane station on the Hammersmith & City line is labelled as opening "late 2008".
• There are no stations labelled Heathrow-something any more. Instead there are three stations called "Terminal 1, 2, 3", "Terminal 4" and "Terminal 5 (opens Spring 2008)". Floating around nearby is a chunky blue box labelled Heathrow Airport.
• There are zonal changes out in Hertfordshire which will benefit Oyster customers. Carpenders Park debuts in zone B, while Bushey and Watford High Street appear in zone C. Watford Junction, however, remains outside the zonal system. For a cheaper journey you should take the Metropolitan line instead, where Watford station remains (rather inconsistently) in zone A.
• Various other stations on the London Overground have shifted zone. In every case this is a "good thing". Acton Central moves from Zone 2 to Zone 3, Willesden Junction will be in Zone 2 as well as Zone 3, and (hallelujah) Hampstead Heath finally moves from Zone 3 into Zone 2. That's an awful lot more LO journeys which can now be made within a single zone. Hurrah.
I don't believe that the new January map is available anywhere online (because it's not January yet), but I hear it'll be in the new London Overground timetable. And now even horribler.
London's streets aren't especially walking-friendly. There's street furniture to negotiate, traffic lights to traverse and a whole host of annoying pedestrians forever getting in your way. Plus it's ever so easy to get lost if you don't know where you're going. Could you (would you?) walk from Covent Garden to Marylebone, or would you just flag down a taxi or take the tube? When even local residents take several years to build up a mental map of inner London, what hope is there for new arrivals and temporary tourists?
Our capital's maps aren't much good for walking either. The A-Z is for drivers, and the tube map (despite being the map of choice for 45% of London's walkers) is geographically distorting and often wildly misleading. The maps on bus shelters used to be invaluable for navigating around unfamiliar parts of town - I used to use them all the time. But then they got redesigned and simplified for the sole benefit of bus travellers, and now alas they're as useless as the tube map for walking from A to B. Without a Multimap print-out in their hand, walkers can just get lost.
Now there's a new project on the streets attempting to make a difference. It's part of an initiative called Legible London, which "proposes to change the existing fragmented approach to walking information into a single reliable, consistent and authoritative system." Or in other words they've erected some new signs. There are 19 prototypes altogether, all of them in the area around Bond Street tube station, where Christmas shoppers are being used to test out the functionality of the new system. Everything was unwrapped yesterday, and very pretty they look too.
These new signs are slim, tall and sleek, with maps and key navigation information etched upon both surfaces. They're called "miniliths" (which, presumably, are just like monoliths but thinner, and so don't get in the way of passing wheelchairs). A memorable neighbourhood, such as Mayfair or Fitzrovia, is namechecked at the top of each post, and beneath that there's directional information to nearby streets, attractions and tube stations. Underneath that are couple of proper maps, with 5- and 15-minute walk radii superimposed, and finally a list of local streets with map references. Meanwhile down the thin edge there's an 0870 number (and unique minilith ID) should you wish to listen toan audio commentary about the location where you're currently standing. The posts are packed with hopefully-useful information. Go on, surely you're now confident enough to give walking a try.
Oxford Street last night was bustling, dark and damp. The miniliths outside Bond Street station weren't quite getting in the way (they've replaced existing street furniture, not added to it), but they weren't quite being noticed either. They're good for standing beside with a pushchair, but not yet part of pedestrian Londoners' everyday orientation. Meanwhile, at the bottom of South Molton Street, the freshly unveiled minilith was having to compete for attention with a series of illuminated Christmas angels. The angels won. But as I hung around attempting to take a photograph, wahey, a couple of passing shoppers stopped to peruse the map and attempted to work out where to walk next. Result.
If the prototypes are a success, you're going to see a lot more of them. There are already tentative plans afoot to erect more across Covent Garden, the South Bank, Richmond, Twickenham & Kew, the Royal Docks and Hackney, and by 2012 much of central and East London may be covered. The new maps will also be appearing in tube stations and, best of all, on appropriate bus shelters. I think I like them. I think they may even be extremely useful.
Now is the time to tell the project organisers what you think, so that future rollout can be even more effective. Should the signs be self-illuminating? Can you cope with that fact that north isn't always at the top? Will Londoners ever develop mental maps based on artificial neighbourhoods named by project consultants? If you're interested to find out more, there's already tons to explore on the project's website. Get your feedback in soon, and let's hope that a proper Legible London becomes a reality.
I SPY LONDON the definitive DG guide to London's sights-worth-seeing Part 20:London Transport Museum
Location: Covent Garden Piazza, WC2E 7BB [map] Open: 10am - 6pm (late opening until 9pm on Fridays) Admission: £8.00 (under 16s free) 5-word summary: looking back at getting around Website:http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk Time to set aside: at least a couple of hours
After a couple of years of shutness and renovation, London's Transport Museum finally reopened to the public last Thursday. You should have seen the queues at the weekend. I did, so I went back yesterday after work instead.
It costs eight quid to get in (even if it's dark and closing time is imminent), and another fiver for the guide book (which is packed with sufficient detail and photos to be worth buying). The first thing you'll see when you enter is a huge glowing wall bedecked with interlocking metro maps of the world [photo]. Don't look too closely, it's geographically irrelevant, and serves only to blocks out the displays behind from the eyes of unpaid members of the public. Head up the ramp (it's not signposted, but head up the ramp) and wait for the lift to the second floor. Enter 2007, exit 1800.
Getting around 19th century London wasn't easy. There was a river, and there were sedan chairs, and there were also rickety vehicles pulled by horses. Highlights on the top floor include a replica of the very first horse-drawn bus carriage (it ran five times a day from Paddington to Bank) and a horse-drawn double decker omnibus (complete with fake dollops of manure). There are several informative panels to read and models to look at, as well as "twirly things" for kids to fiddle with (because they're not interested in proper information, obviously). While you're up here, take time to enjoy the view looking down over the rest of the museum. This used to be the Covent Garden Flower Market, you know, and the glass and ironwork are really rather splendid [photo]. And then descend the (vertigo-inducing) staircase to the Metropolitan mezzanine.
The museum has a bit of a Metro-land fetish, and rightly so. This floor includes a model showing how the first cut-and-cover lines were excavated, and a great big steam locomotive that used to run out of Baker Street, and also a gorgeous wooden carriage full of suburban ladies and stacked luggage. Go sit inside, you know you want to. The view inside the adjacent District line carriage is rather scarier [photo]. I don't know where the curator finds his mannequins, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a 1970s department store.
And now down to the ground floor [photo]. Do try to follow the arrows, although it gets increasingly difficult to work out which route you're supposed to be following as your journey progresses. Now we're into the "underground" section of the tour, with "proper physics" exhibits on tunnel digging and escalators, plus a grim windowless carriage from the pioneering City & South London Railway. Take a seat inside and you'll never complain about your morning commute again. Devotees of London Underground style will be delighted by a gallery given over to countless examples of classic design. The museum's a little light on proper "artefacts" elsewhere, and here at least are lovely leaflets and station models and roundels and, of course, Harry Beck's iconic tube map. Do stay for a while and watch a succession of swirling illuminated displays projected onto the floor [photo]. And remember, all 5000 posters are available to buy in the shop (and online).
There's one last tube carriage to enter, this time from 1938 Northern line stock, with one end given over to a projected film of appropriately costumed travellers from decades past. Ooh look, that passenger's got a mohican and a Union Jack t-shirt - it must be the 1970s. If the queues are short enough you might prefer to try driving a tube simulator (a proper real tube simulator, not your usual museum cop-out button-push) but don't stay in there for too long because the rest of us want a go, thanks. And I bet you'll enjoy a mesmeric animated version of the London tube map, showing the network evolving year by year from 1863 to the present day [photo].
OK, enough of trains, bring on the buses. Not very many buses, admittedly - if they'd really tried there'd have been room to cram another half dozen onto the museum floor. But at least there's an example of each important style - from a 1910 motorbus [photo] to the front slice of a modern wheelchair-accessible cuboid. There's a fine view from the top deck of a Stratford tram (blimey, did people really climb narrow steep staircases like that without falling over?). And yes, of course there's a Routemaster, sandwiched inbetween London's first one-man-operated bus and a single decker Green Line coach[photo]. Oh, and there's a taxi too. Nobody was looking at the taxi.
Rather too much of the ground floor has been given over to 21st century pursuits. The centrepiece isn't a train or a bus but a huge interactive map (very flash, but not quite exciting). Over in the far corner there's an unconvincing DLR mock-up, and a display on sustainability, and some dull words about Oyster cards. Somehow the future is never as interesting as the past. Oh, and I didn't spot a single mention of the new London Overground, not anywhere (except in the gift shop where you can now buy notebooks, pencils and mugs in a delightful shade of vomit-orange). There are a couple of areas set aside for young children to play in, including a minibus to crawl over and a separate activities studio, so don't be afraid to bring your offspring. And there's a mini art gallery too, which is quite the most soulless viewing space I think I've ever entered, with all the charm of a Travelodge foyer. Are we done yet? Take the exit past the trolleybus and maybe you'll be tempted by a souvenir teatowel on the way out.
And my verdict? You'll probably enjoy the first 80% of the tour rather more than the over-corporate finale, but yes, the new streamlined museum is well worth a visit. You'll probably wish there were more objects to look at rather than all that social history to experience, but for those who crave a more hardcore experience there's always the next Acton Depot Open Weekend. You'll probably want to visit the new Covent Garden collection on a schoolday to avoid the crush, and you'll probably wish they'd labelled the larger exhibits more clearly. But there isn't another city on the planet that could assemble as varied and fascinating a transport museum as has London. by tube: Covent Gardenby bus: RV1
One day you won't need to carry a camera in your pocket. One day you'll be able to take pictures of everything, all the time, everywhere you go. One day scientists will be able to shrink a cheap digi-camera small enough to be something you can wear, permanently and nigh invisibly. Maybe it'll be part of your clothes, like a lapel badge or something. Or something that hangs out of your ear like a bluetooth headset or an earring. Or part of a pair of glasses. It'll be spyware as spywear. It'll be inexpensive, and affordable, and acceptable. And it'll see everything you see, and record it all. Sounds great, eh?
One day you'll be able to record your entire life on video. The price of memory will come down so low that it'll be feasible to keep a realtime lifelong videostream in electronic storage, to refer back to whenever you like. Aww look, there's the first time you met your beloved, and your cousin's wedding, and your eldest child leaving for their first day at school, all captured for posterity. And that beautiful sunset you saw last week, and that cute look your kitten gave you this morning, and that gorgeous blue-eyed commuter you saw on the train. One day you need never forget anything you see.
Imagine the convenience of being able to rewind to any point in your life and remind yourself what you were doing. Bored looking out of the window on the bus? One day you'll be able to enjoy replaying last year's holiday video instead. What was that website password you've suddenly forgotten? One day you'll be able to go back and watch yourself typing it in. Whose fault was that car accident you were involved in? One day you'll be able to prove it wasn't you. Hell, why blog? One day you'll be able to simulcast your life via wi-fi and YouTube or something, and it'll be far more interesting.
One day you'll be a walking copyright nightmare. Cinemas aren't going to take kindly to patrons recording every last reel of the latest blockbuster to watch again and again. One day your arguments will be absolutely water-tight. "Yes you did say that actually, and I can prove it by replaying this mini video-clip." One day you'll be the star in your own porn movies. Assuming that anyone ever wants to risk having sex with you ever again, that is, for fear of ending up filmed and recorded on a permanent hard drive.
One day it'll be impossible to forget anything. That impromptu sexist remark you made at work will get you the sack, because everybody else will have recorded it. If you witness a crime, the police will summon you to court to send the guilty bastard down. When you search back through your memories, Google will add relevant adverts in a floating sidebar. Losing the memory stick containing your LifeMovieTM will mean you really have lost your identity.
One day the government will demand that everybody films their own lives and records the results on a biometric chip. The system will be introduced for "security reasons", and subject to a compulsory annual subscription charge. Some secret police department will have the job of downloading the nation's optical experiences and reviewing them for security transgressions. If you've not done anything wrong, you'll have nothing to fear, honest. One day Big Brother will be watching what you see, and seeing what you watch.
In amongst all the celebrations surrounding the Queen's diamond wedding anniversary last week, you may have missed one particularly forward-looking announcement. London is to get a new long distance footpath. It'll be opening in 2012 - an auspicious year not just because of the Olympics but also because Her Majesty will be celebrating her Diamond Jubilee. The new footpath will be called the Jubilee Greenway, and it'll be a companion route to the existing Jubilee Walkway (established 1977). The Jubilee Greenway will be 60 kilometres long (did you see what they did there?) and will circle Central London linking together all the 2012 Olympic venues. Even better, the entire footpath already exists. All that the organisers have to do is to make it a bit more accessible and add some nice benches, and it'll be ready. Let's just hope that Her Maj doesn't snuff it prematurely during the next fifty months, rendering all their preparations unnecessary.
So, do you fancy walking the Jubilee Greenway five years early? Easy. Here's where it goes...
» Buckingham Palace: This being a circular route you can start anywhere. But starting outside the Queen's bedroom window somehow feels most appropriate. Head up Constitution Hill, dodging the traffic lights across Hyde Park Corner, and into... » Hyde Park: This is Olympic Venue number 1, with the Serpentine due to host the wet bit of the Triathlon. The route passes the Diana Memorial Fountain, just in case you want slip over on some granite, then passes Kensington Palace, just in case you want to read any mad Diana poems tied to the front gate. Quick, escape this Diana mournfest by heading north through the backstreets of Paddington to Little Venice. » Regent's Canal: I told you this footpath was nothing new. The Regent's Canal has been open since 1820, and the Jubilee Greenway will follow the towpath all the way from Little Venice to Victoria Park. On its way it passes Olympic Venues 2and 3 - Lord's Cricket Ground (where the archery will be held) and Regent's Park (finishing line for the road cycling). Look, I've taken lots of photographs of the Regent's Canal already, just to show you what you're missing. » Victoria Park: Ah, the green lung of the East End, and a magnificent open space to boot. This is Olympic Venue number 4, where the walking events will take place. Which means, ah yes, we must be very close to the Olympic Park itself. » The Greenway: To us locals, the Greenway is just a long distance muggers paradise built on top of the main North London outfall sewer. But not for long. The western end (straight past the Olympic Stadium) is already getting a pre-2012 upgrade, and improvements are planned for the remainder later. And blimey, who'd have thought, this runty sewage-whiff backalley through Plaistow and East Ham appears to have lent its name to the entire Jubilee Greenway project. » Beckton: Soulless housing estates and acres of dogwaste-littered parkland - what a gorgeous setting for our monarch's Diamond Jubilee tribute. Olympic Venue number 6, the ExCel Exhibition Centre, is almost nearby. » The Woolwich Foot Tunnel: Just when you thought things couldn't get any grimmer, they do. The run-down council blocks of North Woolwich, the subterranean hellhole of the Woolwich Foot Tunnel, and then the estuarine greyness of riverside Woolwich itself. The perfect place for a closely-fought gun battle (at Olympic Venue number 7). » The Thames Path: Hmm, this is a bit of a cop-out. The Jubilee Greenway now follows the Thames Path almost all the way back to Buckingham Palace, which'll save an awful lot of money by not needing to upgrade it. See the Thames Barrier! Experience the grey industrial grimness of the North Greenwich Peninsula. Pause at the Dome (Olympic Venue number 8) for a brief burst of rampant commercialism. Pass through Maritime Greenwich (hey horse riding fans, it's Olympic venue number 9) past a hopefully-restored tea clipper. And then, oh blimey, it's a very long way round the Rotherhithe peninsula, keeping as close to the river as new housing developments will allow. Yes, I've taken lots of photos of this stretch too. » Still the Thames Path: Under Tower Bridge and, finally, into the scenic heart of London. It's only taken us 57 miles to get to the good bit. Here the Jubilee Greenway will follow exactly the same riverside route as the Jubilee Walkway - two for the price of one. Past the Eye, over Westminster Bridge to Big Ben, and up Whitehall. » Horseguards Parade: This is Olympic Venue number 10, solely because a committee of old men believe that beach volleyball's blatant mammary-jiggling deserves a place in the Games portfolio. And look, down at the other end of the Mall, there's Buckingham Palace which is back where we started. God bless you Ma'am, and do please try to hang on until at least your 86th birthday.
The Museum in Docklands chooses to tell the capital's trading history in linear fashion. Visitors enter the galleries via Roman/Medieval London and work their way chronologically through the centuries to end up at a display of modern shiny skyscrapers. The emphasis is very much on London and what Londoners were doing in each time period, as you might expect. And that's how it's been since the Museum opened. Look, you can see the place for yourself in a (lengthy) video walkthrough here with Jonty from Big Brother - one of the museum's guides (no, honestly, it's much better than it sounds).
But earlier this year the management came along and ripped out the first two decades of the 19th century. Sorry to all the old merchants in wigs who battled to get the docks built in the first place, your story has been cast adrift. Instead their gallery has been emptied to make way for something far more important - sugar. Ah no, London didn't get proper rich by trading iron or coal, London got rich by trading human beings.
The London, Sugar and Slavery gallery, which opened at the Museum of London earlier this month, makes for uncomfortable viewing. If you're from an African background it tells the story of how your ancestors were ripped from their homes and transported across the ocean to be sold into a life of submission. And if you like to think that's not your story, then your ancestors were probably responsible for sustaining the slave trade themselves. Be it a ship owner transporting bipedal cargo or just a Georgian householder taking sugar in their new-fangled cuppa, this whole sorry situation was created by their actions.
The gallery opens with a celebration of ancient African culture... from which, just around the corner, the white man stole countless lives. The displays avoid strident inter-racial hectoring, preferring to tell the story of both slaver and enslaved. The language used is carefully selected, but unsanitised ("You will find that some terms that were used in the 1700s are unavoidable"). Feel how heavy the shackles were, see how far the slave ships travelled, and look at that lovely porcelain sugar bowl. Oh, and take a careful look at the bricks of the room you're standing in. The museum is housed in Warehouse No. 1, originally built by the West India Dock Company to store sugar, rum and coffee from the slave plantations of the West Indies. The foundations of the London Docklands were built with blood money.
The focus of the exhibition then shifts to commemorate the abolitionists, fighting to undo the evils of their greedy forefathers and (eventually) changing the system for the better. It's no cosy tale. In a wall display about the spread of Empire, for example, one unusually forthright phrase stands out. "Believing it had a right and duty to police the world, the British Government interfered in the affairs of many countries". And so we did. And that unforgivable interference has brought a lasting cultural legacy to the UK, explored in the final section of the exhibition. Caribbean settlers would never have made their homes in Britain if Britons hadn't transported their ancestors far from home in the first place. It may be too late to apologise, but it's not too late toremember. by DLR: West India Quay by tube: Canary Wharf by bus: 277, D3, D7, D8 open: 10am - 6pm daily admission: £5
My most viewed photo (12 midnight - final update)
It's not a lovely station, this. It's a long hike from the main King's Cross station, either across several sets of traffic lights or along a very long pedestrian tunnel (the one where they painted "Smile" on the walls to try to cheer up commuters). The steps down to the platforms are narrow, and if you get stuck behind a family lugging a pushchair you're in trouble. The platforms are called A and B, not 1 and 2, so passengers don't get them confused with the mainline station across the road. Everybody waits at the western end, clogging the platforms, waiting for the next service to Bedford, Brighton or Wimbledon to appear. Can you hear it? No, that's a completely different train chugging invisibly somewhere nearby. The Circle line runs past on the other side of a wall (although it used to stop close by until a new underground station was built up the line). For a quiet wait, walk past Gatwick-bound suitcases or gangs of Luton youths up to the far end of the platform, out in the open air. Waiting here's a risk, because most trains aren't long enough to stop this far up, but you might just get a bench or square metre of platform to yourself. Until escape arrives, up the tunnel, and whisks you away somewhere nicer. Somewhere with a future.
How to survive the Office Christmas Meal
londonerama
Have you ever wanted to see your name up in lights at Piccadilly Circus? It's easy if you're called Mr Coca Cola, or maybe even TDK Sanyo, but otherwise you're going to have to pay for the privilege. The iconic advertising boards above Eros now have their own website (don't get excited, it's marketing guff) and can be hired by anybody with sufficient money to spend. One minute of scrolling message will cost you £1000 (inclusive of "creative and digitisation" and "one set of ammendments"), while 10 minutes will set you back £4000. I hate to think how many bright young City boys will use the service to propose to their wives-to-be.
Is your Smoke collection up to date? The latest edition of the thrice-yearly London fanzine has just hit bookshops, and and no doubt you'll be wanting a copy. Within its covers (bedecked this issue by the gorgeous North Greenwich gasometer) you can read all about Fortress Wapping, Bunhill Fields, the Brentford Musketeer, Jonas Hanway the umbrella man and the 108 bus. And all in a very descriptive essayish style, along with moody photographs, camp statues and the usual Routemaster cartoon. You'll know the score by now. And just £2.90 a copy.
There are certain trains that you should never catch. You won't spot them specially marked in any timetable, nor will their doomed status be flagged on any station departure board. But climb aboard and you may never reach your destination, nor indeed any other destination. Two such trains collided in thick fog in southeast London on the evening of Wednesday 4th December 1957. Ninety passengers and crew lost their lives that night, just east of St John's station, in what is still Britain's third worst railway disaster.
Driver William Trew left Cannon Street station at 6:08pm, on the footplate of a steam engine heading for Ramsgate. His train was a whole hour and a quarter late, and it's likely that he was trying to make up some lost time. Trew steamed through New Cross at 35mph, then rushed onwards through the cutting towards St John's. Two amber signals to the right of the track should have warned him to slow down, but he saw neither out of his tiny window through the thickening fog. A red signal at the far end of the St John's platform therefore came as a complete surprise and, with just 138 yards of clear track remaining, a crash was inevitable.
There was one particular lucky escape, however. The driver of a Dartford-bound train chugging towards the overbridge managed to spot the twisted girders ahead just in time, and drew his train to a halt before it toppled down onto the tracks below. But that was the only bright spot. By the time local residents had raised the alarm and the emergency services had pulled survivors from the wreckage, ninety commuters were dead and 176 seriously injured. No other UK rail disaster in the last 50 years has had so high a death toll.
Retail checkup (November 2007)
The world's largest advent calendar is indeed very large. It covers one entire end of the majestic Barlow Train Shed, which must slightly piss off anybody who's turned up specifically to take photographs of the original building. Yes the famous station clock is still visible, but it's been incorporated into the central logo and appears somewhat overwhelmed. And what of the 24 windows? We're promised on the website that "Every day at 10am a door the World's Largest Advent Calendar will be opened by a celebrity or intriguing character". That sounds exciting, doesn't it? Except it's not. I do hope you weren't expecting revealed images of any religious significance. Day 1's picture is some orangey-pink Art Deco flower fairy abomination, with the logo of Boots the Chemist slapped rather blatantly across the bottom. This is no Advent Calendar, this is the world's largest Advert Calendar. Is nothing sacred any more? Well, no, obviously not.
Now there's a new project on the streets attempting to make a difference. It's part of an initiative called Legible London, which "proposes to change the existing fragmented approach to walking information into a single reliable, consistent and authoritative system." Or in other words they've erected some new signs. There are 19 prototypes altogether, all of them in the area around Bond Street tube station, where Christmas shoppers are being used to test out the functionality of the new system. Everything was unwrapped yesterday, and very pretty they look too.
Oxford Street last night was bustling, dark and damp. The miniliths outside Bond Street station weren't quite getting in the way (they've replaced existing street furniture, not added to it), but they weren't quite being noticed either. They're good for standing beside with a pushchair, but not yet part of pedestrian Londoners' everyday orientation. Meanwhile, at the bottom of South Molton Street, the freshly unveiled minilith was having to compete for attention with a series of illuminated Christmas angels. The angels won. But as I hung around attempting to take a photograph, wahey, a couple of passing shoppers stopped to peruse the map and attempted to work out where to walk next. Result.
I SPY LONDON
After a couple of years of shutness and renovation, London's Transport Museum finally reopened to the public last Thursday. You should have seen the queues at the weekend. I did, so I went back yesterday after work instead.
And now down to the ground floor [photo]. Do try to follow the arrows, although it gets increasingly difficult to work out which route you're supposed to be following as your journey progresses. Now we're into the "underground" section of the tour, with "proper physics" exhibits on tunnel digging and escalators, plus a grim windowless carriage from the pioneering City & South London Railway. Take a seat inside and you'll never complain about your morning commute again. Devotees of London Underground style will be delighted by a gallery given over to countless examples of classic design. The museum's a little light on proper "artefacts" elsewhere, and here at least are lovely leaflets and station models and roundels and, of course, Harry Beck's iconic tube map. Do stay for a while and watch a succession of swirling illuminated displays projected onto the floor [photo]. And remember, all 5000 posters are available to buy in the shop (and online).
OK, enough of trains, bring on the buses. Not very many buses, admittedly - if they'd really tried there'd have been room to cram another half dozen onto the museum floor. But at least there's an example of each important style - from a 1910 motorbus [photo] to the front slice of a modern wheelchair-accessible cuboid. There's a fine view from the top deck of a Stratford tram (blimey, did people really climb narrow steep staircases like that without falling over?). And yes, of course there's a Routemaster, sandwiched inbetween London's first one-man-operated bus and a single decker Green Line coach [photo]. Oh, and there's a taxi too. Nobody was looking at the taxi.
In amongst all the celebrations surrounding the Queen's diamond wedding anniversary last week, you may have missed one particularly forward-looking announcement. London is to get a new long distance footpath. It'll be opening in 2012 - an auspicious year not just because of the Olympics but also because Her Majesty will be celebrating her Diamond Jubilee. The new footpath will be called the Jubilee Greenway, and it'll be a companion route to the existing Jubilee Walkway (established 1977). The Jubilee Greenway will be 60 kilometres long (did you see what they did there?) and will circle Central London linking together all the 2012 Olympic venues. Even better, the entire footpath already exists. All that the organisers have to do is to make it a bit more accessible and add some nice benches, and it'll be ready. Let's just hope that Her Maj doesn't snuff it prematurely during the next fifty months, rendering all their preparations unnecessary.
The Museum in Docklands chooses to tell the capital's trading history in linear fashion. Visitors enter the galleries via Roman/Medieval London and work their way chronologically through the centuries to end up at a display of modern shiny skyscrapers. The emphasis is very much on London and what Londoners were doing in each time period, as you might expect. And that's how it's been since the Museum opened. Look, you can see the place for yourself in a (lengthy) video walkthrough here with Jonty from Big Brother - one of the museum's guides (no, honestly, it's much better than it sounds).
I SPY LONDON
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